In Depth Recap: Rutgers-Ohio State

Stop me if you have heard this one before. The Buckeyes amassed 585 total yards on offense and score 56 points.

J.T. Barrett and company didn’t miss a beat after the bye week and scored 50 points in four straight games for the first time in its 125 years of existence. During this historic run the Scarlet and Gray are averaging 56 points and 614 yards per game. Kind of ironic that they are averaging that yardage per game am I right (repping the 614). While their defense hasn’t been stellar they are only giving up an average of 17.25 points and 300.75 yards during this same time frame.

Offense

Barrett is inserting himself into the Heisman talk, throwing for 3 touchdowns on 261 yards passing while also rushing for two touchdowns and 107 yards. J.T. did not throw an interception nor was he sacked. Once again Barrett distributed the ball well hitting nine different receivers allowing TE Nick Vannett to catch two touchdown passes and Evan Spencer to grab a beautiful one handed touchdown pass himself. The offensive line and his elusiveness helped keep the Big Ten sack leaders at bay. The offensive line did a great job giving Barrett time to go through his progressions. Ezekiel Elliot had 12 carries for 69 yards and Curtis Samuels only had 4 but he had 59 huge yards. This offense is clicking on all cylinders right now and the scary thing is there are still things that they need to work on.

What are some of those things you ask? Starters catching the ball too many drops , I know I am being critical but you can’t have these against Sparty in a couple of weeks. Also penalties, but they are getting so much better that seriously there so little to criticize.

Defense

Gary Nova and company came into this game averaging 426 yards a game and 268 of that was through the air. Buckeyes defense came in with only 12 sacks and still had question marks with their secondary even though we have seen improvement in their last game against Maryland. You would have thought that with the loss of Paul James and question surrounding Rutgers running game Buckeyes would have an easy time with that but here’s whats weird. Ohio State allowed 147 yards on the ground but limited Nova to 196 yards passing and forced an interception. The Ohio State defense also sacked Nova 4 times and held the Scarlet Knights to a total of 345 offensive yards.

The defense is improving still a ways away from being the Silver Bullets but this team is growing each and every week and the key is that they are truly getting better each and every week. The maturity and growth we are witnessing each week is great to see and honestly kind of scary on how high their ceiling really is.

Final Thoughts

Winning their 18 consecutive Big Ten game it is such a joy to watch this high octane offense run. I know many would like to have a redo at the Virginia Tech game and sure the players would but its not going to happen. The continued growth and experience is making for a extremely dangerous Ohio State team.No matter how many in the national media want to hush out the talk of a possible Big Ten team in the national playoffs, if Buckeyes win out and keep winning big they will be in. You can say Rutgers wasn’t that great of a team but they came into Columbus with a 5-1 record and left with the worse loss in 12 years.

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