Ohio State football: Stats that show the defense’s improvement
By Ryan Stano
The thing that Ohio State football fans talked about the most during the offseason was the defense. Ohio State was not very good on defense last year, finishing 26th in the country in points per game allowed. They allowed almost 21 points per contest.
If you’re looking at yards given up, they were even worse. They were 52nd in the country in total yards per game given up, allowing 366.6 yards. If the Ohio State football team is going to compete for a national title, they have to be way better than that.
Through two games of the 2022 season, they have been. Ohio State is 23rd in yards per game right now on defense. They’ve been really good with their run defense, only giving up 64.5 yards per game. That’s good enough for 11th in the country.
The passing defense is where the Buckeyes still need to improve. They are 53rd in that category right now at 200 yards per game. It’s only been two games, so the number of yards will go up but their overall ranking very well could still go down by the end of the year.
Even though it’s only been two games, you can still see the improvement the Buckeyes have made. Notre Dame is a Power 5 school. Arkansas State isn’t a terrible team in the G5 either. Both of those teams are a lot better than some of the other team’s schools are playing right now.
Even without the stats, you can tell the defense has improved. The eye test tells you that they have been much better so far this year. Two games isn’t a large sample size, but it’s safe to say this is at least an average defensive team right now.
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Average may be all that the Buckeyes need to be in order to win a national championship because of how elite the offense is. We’ll find out a lot more about the defense in two weeks when Wisconsin comes to town.