Ohio State football: Three takeaways from win vs. Northwestern
By Ryan Stano
It wasn’t pretty, but the Ohio State football team was able to walk out of Evanston with a win. They beat the wildcats 21-7 after playing in some truly terrible weather conditions where it rained off and on and the wind was gusting up to 50 mph at times.
Because of those conditions, neither team was able to pass the ball effectively, even while downwind. The two teams combined for just 175 yards passing. Neither team turned the ball over, so it was a rushing attack that was needed for both teams.
Even with how bad the weather was, I expected Ohio State to be able to score the ball much better than they did on Saturday. Northwestern came into this game with one win on the season so I expected the Buckeyes to be able to have their way with them.
That’s not what happened. Instead, the Buckeyes struggled to move the ball the entire game. There are three main takeaways from this game that I want to talk about and how they matter for this team down the stretch.
The first takeaway is perhaps the biggest concern with this Ohio State football team right now.
1. The Ohio State football team can’t run the ball.
Once again, the Buckeyes failed to run the ball well. Against Iowa, it was understandable because of how good the Hawkeyes’ defense is. When they couldn’t do it against Penn State, the alarm was raised. Now, this has become a five-alarm fire situation.
The conditions were bad so Northwestern knew that the Buckeyes were going to try to run the ball a lot, especially going into the wind. With that in mind, they stuffed the box with extra guys to try to stop the run. There’s no reason that should matter though.
It shouldn’t matter because Ohio State has four and five-star guys out there on offense while Northwestern has two and three-star guys on defense. The talent disparity is huge. There’s no reason why Ohio State shouldn’t have been able to move Northwestern off their spot in the running game.
The final numbers show that Ohio State ran the ball 35 times for 207 yards and three touchdowns as a team. That’s 5.9 yards per carry. Just looking at the stat sheet, that’s pretty good! Only it wasn’t. C.J. Stroud had one run for 44 yards and one of Miyan Williams‘ touchdown runs was for 27. Take those two runs away, and now they only averaged 4 yards per carry.
Anyone that watched this game knows the struggle with the run game is a massive issue. It’s something they have to fix before they play Michigan. If they don’t, they will lose to them again. It’s as simple as that.
The second takeaway from this game has to deal with Ryan Day.