Ohio State Football Schedule Prep: Western Michigan

The Ohio State football team meets up with the Western Michigan Broncos on September 7th for their second game of the season, in Ohio Stadium. The Broncos are coming off a very disappointing 4-8 season a year ago as head coach Lance Taylor tries to make Western Michigan relevant in the MAC Conference once again.

Taylor will be entering his second season as the Broncos head coach, but this offseason was marked with some controversy as they hired former Alabama assistant coach Robert Bala as their new defensive coordinator, only for him to leave two weeks later to take on a role with Washington's new staff. Taylor eventually turned to Scott Power as the next coordinator, a former Louisiana Tech assistant.

Western Michigan is led on offense by their running game and MAC Freshman of the Year Jalen Buckley at running back. Buckley totaled over 1,000 yards on the ground as a true freshman and scored 10 touchdowns as well.

Western Michigan will lean on junior quarterback Hayden Wolff to help develop some sort of downfield passing attack. He started five games for the Broncos in 2023 and was by far their best passer, throwing for 1,505 yards and eight touchdowns in those games. But overall, it's going to be very hard for them to score on this veteran Buckeye defense come September 7th in Columbus.

Defensively, the Broncos are heavily reliant on Senior safety Tate Hallock and his tackling abilities. He led the team with 75 total tackles in 2023 while also having a forced fumble and two interceptions. Western Michigan can also get after the QB a bit, having registered 25 total sacks as a team in 2023.

But overall, this game is much like the Akron one before it. It will be used as a tune-up for Big Ten play and hopefully they can use the game to build cohesion offensively with a new starting QB and three new starting offensive linemen.

Early Prediction: Ohio State 48, Western Michigan 7