Ohio State Football: IU game a poor barometer for defensive dominance

The Ohio State football team held the Indiana Hoosiers to only three points last Saturday. The Buckeyes will face tougher competition soon.

The Ohio State football team and defensive coordinator Jim Knowles held the Indiana Hoosier to only three points last Saturday in Bloomington. While that’s a great start to the season, we as fans shouldn’t get too caught up in thinking that the Buckeyes have a dominant defense just yet.

While it does appear that the Silver Bullets are indeed vastly improved from the past few seasons defensively, Indiana and in particular their head coach, Tom Allen, didn’t pose much of a threat to them on Saturday.

Coming out and running a triple-option offense, something they’ve never done under Allen, was puzzling, to say the least. And it’s pretty obvious that they don’t have a quarterback who could threaten any secondary, let alone Ohio State’s.

Allen clearly played to keep the game close and to just eat the clock. And to that extent, he succeeded. Allen seemed to be pretty happy to lose to Ohio State by only 20 points. Truly a pathetic effort by IU as they are a football program with some serious questions surrounding what they actually strive to be. But we’re here to talk about Ohio State. And it’s just tough to gauge how good they are defensively because of Indiana’s game plan.

I personally think the Buckeyes played terrific on defense given the circumstances. It was impossible to judge the pass rush but on the few occasions that they were given an opportunity, it looked like they were able to pressure the quarterbacks. Caden Curry really stood out from that perspective.

Denzel Burke was a blanket on his man all game. Davison Igbinosun looks like a big hitter for the secondary, something I didn’t necessarily expect of him. And Sonny Styles was very noticeable on Saturday, seemingly to always be around the ball.

I think Jim Knowles did a solid job as well in play-calling. But we’re really not going to know how this defense stacks up until at least game three against Western Kentucky. Youngstown State is an FCS school as there should be a significant talent gap. But WKU can sling it a bit and is known to score points in bunches.

So for now, let’s be happy with how the defense is playing, but let’s also remember that they aren’t exactly playing world-beaters these first few weeks of the season.