Ohio State football: Three takeaways from win vs. Notre Dame
By Ryan Stano
The Ohio State football team is 1-0 to start the 2022 season after defeating Notre Dame 21-10 in the season opener on Saturday night. It was a fantastic atmosphere to be a part of as the crowd was loud from the very start of the game until the final whistle.
It was a great win for the Buckeyes and they will be rewarded for beating a top-five team early in the season. This is an excellent non-conference victory to have when you’re a team trying to make the College Football Playoff. It makes their conference schedule so much easier.
As Week 2 is here and the Buckeyes start to prepare for our next moment, we take a look back at this opening game once more for some takeaways we can grab. There are three that specifically stand out to me as being the most significant moving forward.
The Ohio State football team’s defense is for real
We heard talk all off-season about how the Buckeyes were going to be better on the defensive side of the ball. Jim Knowles was brought in to fix a unit that has woefully underperformed the last two seasons. It seems that he has already made a big impact with this unit.
The Buckeyes held Notre Dame to just 253 yards and 10 points and also shut them out completely in the second half. They had players on all three levels of the defense play well and keep the Fighting Irish from doing much after they got settled down.
If this is the type of defense that Ohio State is going to play all season, then this team is going to be really dangerous. We know the offense will be explosive, but this defense showed me a lot on Saturday. They showed me that they may be better than average. In fact, they might be pretty darn good.
The second takeaway from his game is another thing that was a concern heading into the game that seems to be improved.