Ohio State football: Least Valuable Player

The Ohio State football team had no shortage of disappointing players in 2022. The collective failure of the offense in the fourth quarter against Michigan is why they lost that game. Failure of the defense is why the Buckeyes ended up not winning a national championship.

It’s hard to pick the absolute Least Valuable Player on this team when so many players failed late in the season. Instead, I decided to pick an entire unit that ended up being named Least Valuable Player. That unit is the entire secondary, which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

The corners were bad for most of the year. Denzel Burke had a much worse year in 2022 than he did in 2021. I thought he had a chance to be an All-American type season this year. I was very wrong about that. Cam Brown and Jordan Hancock fell below expectations

Lathan Ransom fell twice in the last two games and allowed about 160 yards and two touchdowns because of that. If the secondary had held up for three more quarters this season, the Buckeyes might have gone undefeated. Instead, they lost the final two games.

It’s not going to get much better next year either. They are running low on scholarship corners and the ones they have coming back are part of this Least Valuable Player group. The incoming freshmen have promise, but they are still extremely young.

All of the members of the secondary need to play better next year if Ohio State wants to win a national championship. The defense simply can’t play as poorly as they did at the end of the year if that is still the ultimate goal. It’s a group that needs to be better coached and needs to improve in the offseason.

I’m hoping that the coaches know what they are doing to make this unit better in the offseason to make them better and make the team better overall by proxy.