Ohio State Football: Jim Knowles has worked a miracle

The Ohio State football team was able to beat Penn State without having their best offensive game. Marvin Harrison Jr. was incredible, but everyone else was just average. Yet, the Buckeyes beat the Nittany Lions 20-12. How were they able to do that? With defense.

Ohio State flexed its muscles on the defensive side of the ball. They didn’t allow any big plays from Penn State the entire game. They held Drew Allar to just 191 yards passing and only allowed him to complete just 42.8% of his passes. They stifled anything the Nittany Lions tried to do.

Jim Knowles has proven that he can work miracles on the defensive side of the ball. In 2022, which was his first year with the Buckeyes, he transformed the defense into a top-ten defense. He saw that they allowed too many big plays against good teams, so he made another change this year.

Now, the defense has done a phenomenal job of keeping plays in front of them and big plays to a minimum. Ohio State allows just 10 points per game. They have played two certified good teams in Notre Dame and Penn State and also beat a pretty good Maryland team.

Ohio State has proven that they can win games with defense against great teams. That’s what they did on Saturday afternoon. It was an extremely impressive statement that they made. I think that the Buckeyes made a claim to have the best defense in the country.

Even if the Ohio State football team doesn’t have as explosive of an offense as they did last year, they can still win games because of how good this defense is. Late in the season when the weather starts to turn, that’s something that not a lot of teams have.

Now, the Buckeyes just have to prove that they can beat Michigan with this defense. I’m more confident in that than I was just a few short months ago.