Ohio State Football vs. Western Kentucky: 3 keys to victory
By Ryan Stano
The Ohio State football team is taking on one more easy non-conference opponent this season. That opponent is Western Kentucky. Despite playing two easy opponents prior to this weekend, the Buckeyes have yet to look like a national title-contending team.
The Buckeyes have several things they need to work on in this game in preparation for next week’s battle against Notre Dame. While they aren’t truly at risk of losing to the Hilltoppers on Saturday, they still need to be as sharp as possible so they can be on their “A” game heading into South Bend.
There are three keys for the Ohio State football team to get that “A” game. If Ohio State can do these three things, they will dominate WKU this weekend, which is what fans want to see. Quite frankly, it’s what the coaches want to see the week before the Notre Dame game as well.
The first one starts with the offensive line.
1. The Ohio State football team must run-block better
Blocking in the run game has been a significant struggle for the Ohio State football team so far this season. Holes just aren’t being opened. The offensive linemen are struggling to get off their blocks on the line and they can’t seem to get to the second level of the defense.
That sort of mediocre blocking might be fine against Western Kentucky this week, but it certainly won’t be next week against the Irish. We need to see the line be better in the run game this week so they have confidence going into next week that they can run the ball at will.
Specifically, I want to see the offensive line get more of a push in third-and-short situations, as well as fourth-down scenarios. Ohio State is one of the worst teams in the country in third-down conversion rate through two games. A lot of those have come in third-and-short yardages.
That needs to be fixed this week against an inferior opponent. Otherwise, the passing game is going to be burdened even further. Speaking of the passing game, that moves me to our next key.