The Ohio State football team still has one big thing to work on

The Ohio State football team has a lot of things that they would need in order to make a national championship run. They have one of the best defenses in the country. It was fantastic last year and it should only be better now that most of the guys are returning.

Offensively, the Buckeyes are hoping that they have an upgrade with Will Howard at quarterback. They hope that he is going to be better than Kyle McCord was. McCord was above average, but not good. They need someone to just be good, not even great.

Still, with everything that this Ohio State football team has, they still don't have one key thing. That key thing is championship experience. They hardly have any experience winning big games. Most of the players on this team have yet to beat Michigan, let alone win a national championship.

The Buckeyes need to make up for that with some good coaching. There's no substitute for experience, but the coaching can get close. Ryan Day has coached in a National Championship Game. Chip Kelly has too, albeit as an offensive coordinator. They need to be at their best too.

Talent should hopefully outweigh the lack of championship experience. The Buckeyes are one of the best teams in the country in terms of pure talent. It's going to be hard for a team to beat them on pure talent alone. They might need to hurt themselves in the regular season to lose.

There's now reason this team shouldn't at least make the expanded College Football Playoff. At that point, that championship experience might be a problem. But until then, they should be fine. They have three big games that they have to deal with in the regular season.

I don't expect the Buckeyes to falter down the stretch. If they do, we'll know why though,