Ohio State Football: Results matter

The Ohio State football team won all of their games last year up until The Game. They were in the top four in the country and were ready to exact revenge on TTUN after having lost to them in 2021. Instead, they got their brains beat in and didn’t get a chance to win a Big Ten title.

Fast forward about six weeks and the Buckeyes had a shot to make the National Championship Game. They were playing Georgia in the Peach Bowl and had a double-digit lead heading into the fourth quarter. Instead, they blew the lead and went home.

Those games have started becoming a bit too frequent over the last few years. The two big games that Ryan Day has won at the end of the season were the Michigan game in 2019 and the Clemson semi-final game in 2020. Other than that, there haven’t been too many games that mattered at the end that he’s won.

Yes, the Buckeyes won the Big Ten Championship Game over a good Wisconsin team in 2019, but that game didn’t truly matter in the grand scheme of things. The Buckeyes would’ve made the College Football Playoff anyway with a loss in that one. I guess winning the conference is nice.

But there are too many instances at the end of the year where Day’s teams have faltered once they play the elite teams. The Clemson game in 2019, the Alabama game in 2020, and the two games I mentioned at the top are all instances of late-season losses in huge games.

The results have to matter. Those results will matter this season because it’s make-or-break for Ryan Day. I tend to think he will rise to the challenge. I still like Day and what he can bring to the program, but there have been some troubling trends.

Hopefully, next year is the year that he is able to buck some of these trends and get the Ohio State football program back on top where they belong.