What Ohio State Football team’s win over Notre Dame means
By Tyler Lyman
The Ohio State football team beat Notre Dame 17-14. There were a lot of clear signs from this game, things such as Cade Stover is clearly McCord’s favorite target, and that the secondary could be doing more.
In the first drive we could see McCord was clearly hesitant to throw the ball due to how big this game is. We could also see that our line needs to hold its block.
On the defensive side of the ball, we saw that Ohio State’s d-line put a ton of pressure on the former Wake Forrest QB Hartman. Our open-field tackling has also gotten better since the playoff game against Georgia.
After Ohio State does a 3 and out on their second drive, Notre Dame gets the ball back. This drive ended with a missed FG from The Fighting Irish.
The first quarter really shows us that McCord loves to throw that ball to Cade Stover, but not Harrison Jr. Ryan Day also wasn’t calling as many passing plays as we thought in the first quarter.
On Notre Dame’s 3rd possession of the ball we see that Ohio State’s defense gets good stops but when it’s third down the stop just isn’t there. They would let up a couple of runs for 15 to 20 yards.
Marvin Harrison Jr. got his first target at 3:34 in the second quarter. If you’re targeting the best receiver in the nation for the first time when it’s almost the end of the half, you need to fix something.
Harrison made a long catch that got called incomplete, but with pass interference Ohio State moved closer to scoring. With two more big passing plays, the Ohio State football team moved to the red zone and ended up with a field goal.
At the start of the half, Ohio State’s defensive players Ransom and Styles made a crazy stop on fourth down to get The Buckeyes the ball back. On the first play of Ohio State’s fifth drive, Henderson scores on a 61-yard run! Harrison Jr. also came down with an ankle injury when he was blocking. Luckily Harrison would come back the next drive.
With Ohio State making the score 10-0, Notre Dame came out with a couple of big yardage plays. Those eventually turned into a rushing touchdown for Notre Dame, turning the score to 10-7.
Ohio State’s passing started to look a lot better, but Notre Dame was able to stop Ohio State, allowing them to have the ball. Notre Dame was able to score again, making them go up 14-10 against the Buckeyes.
The Ohio State football team was able to drive a little down the field, with McCord looking a lot better than we did in the first half. Johnson makes a huge catch at the 30. Then Ryan Day called a Jet Sweep to Egbuka on 4th down that didn’t work.
Ohio State’s defensive line was able to put back-to-back pressure on Hartman, which caused the Fighting Irish to punt. With only a short amount of time left Egbuka makes a catch. The O-line was clearly tired because they couldn’t hold their blocks on a couple of plays.
Fleming gets a first down, and so does Harrison Jr. Then Egbuka makes an amazing catch at the one. After a failed attempt at a touchdown, Ohio State has one chance left to score a touchdown. Then Miyan Williams was able to punch it in for the game-winning touchdown!
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This game showed us McCord can show up. Cade Stover is an absolute beast on the field when McCord passes the ball to him. Ohio State’s performance looked a lot better once they started having McCord pass more. Overall, the Ohio State football team has little things here and there to fix but they can beat both Penn State and Michigan.