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Hello and welcome to another edition of Cus Words Sports!
Here are some more thoughts on Ohio State’s loss to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game and the Buckeyes’ draw in the College Football Playoff…
“The efforts to develop a more physical team paid off a week ago at Michigan, but the Wolverines are not Indiana.”
That is a real sentence I wrote about college football in the year 2025 for Press Pros Magazine.
(Check out that link here.)
That’s not a knock on the Hoosiers… at least not THESE Hoosiers.
The 2025 Indiana football team proved it is legit, but that doesn’t change the fact they have literally never been as good as they are this season.
(It’s also a slight of Michigan, but, well, you know.)
I was definitely among the Indiana skeptics even leading into the game Saturday.
I certainly believed Indiana was a top 10 team, but I didn’t think they could hold up against Ohio State. Part of the reason I expected the Buckeyes to win by a couple of touchdowns was Fernando Mendoza had thrown critical interceptions against Oregon and Penn State.
The Buckeyes had one pick against him Saturday night, though it was early in the game and not really his fault as Lorenzo Styles Jr. jumped a bubble screen and deflected the ball into the air.
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Overall, the game included a classic formula for an upset as Ohio State wasted multiple scoring opportunities and also seemed to fail to play to its strengths.
Perhaps Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate were secretly on pitch counts. Maybe the coaching staff thought it could create some advantages by leaning even more into its multiple tight end sets than usual.
The offensive line was overwhelmed at times, which wasn’t a shock because that is still just an average unit and Indiana has a good front seven
Julian Sayin actually looked like a redshirt freshman first-year starter at times, again because Indiana has a good secondary and smart coaching staff.
Maybe Ohio State anticipated that and that is why they wanted to lean into the running game, but that turned out to be a massive miscalculation…. Except it almost worked?
Yeah, football is weird sometimes.
There are 22 guys out there on the field all the time, and they can be moved around all over the field and told to do different things from play to play.
Sometimes they do them well. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they just don’t do them as well as the guy across from them.
Anyway, you know that but sometimes I find it useful to lay it out again for myself just to contextualize the complexity of the sport.
That is why analyzing it is both so fun and confounding, but as Ryan Day said after the game every idea is good unless it doesn’t work.
No doubt that is true.
The coaches have more information than we do on the outside as far as what they see in matchups and who is actually healthy or not, so they typically deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Sometimes they make bad decisions, though.
Last year Ryan Day got more involved in the offense when the playoffs began, and it was a massive success.
Will that happen again this year?
Will the failures against Indiana inspire some necessary tweaks they would not have made otherwise?
I suspect Day himself knew of potential problems, but maybe he was still not overriding what Brian Hartline et al were doing as far as game planning. Maybe this loss will inspire better execution in practice. Maybe some pride will finally spur the line and tight ends to block better?
There is plenty of time to debate all that before they start the playoffs…
Speaking of the College Football Playoff, I don’t think the Buckeyes got the best draw.
I’m not really sure why Georgia didn’t pass Ohio State in the rankings because the Bulldogs have a better resume, but this committee has been pretty bad (as was last year’s) so it’s best not to waste too much time thinking about it now that things are set.
Texas A&M and Miami (Fla.) are both ahead of Mississippi (Ohio State’s likely opponent if the Buckeyes had been No. 3) in the 247Sports Talent Composite, and they both still have their head coach.
They are both slightly ahead of the Rebels in F/+, an advanced state that combines play-by-play efficiency and drive success on both sides of the ball.
Before I even start studying the Aggies or Hurricanes, one thing I suspect is likely true is Ohio State will not be able to just rely on speed and athleticism against these teams like they can many others (even other good Big Ten teams).
This playoff will test the Buckeyes’ strength and physicality because they are going to have to win the line of scrimmage to make life easier for the guys on the outside, and that goes for both sides of the ball.
That doesn’t mean “establish the run,” per se. The best game plan is likely still to get the ball to the receivers as much as possible as early as possible, but that still relies on defenses respecting the run because that limits the types of coverage and blitzes they can call…
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Another note on the running game: As much as it improved in the second half of the year, they still left a lot of meat on the bone against Indiana. Bo Jackson had multiple runs that looked like he could break big but he just got taken down by a hand or a hip. He is great at setting up tacklers and making them miss, but his play strength is lacking at this point as a true freshman.
If he had been just a little bit better that Ohio State game plan might have looked brilliant.
How will Ohio State respond to seeing its own blood?
That was the main question of my Press Pros piece, but I must say I liked the demeanor of Ryan Day and Julian Sayin in the postgame press conference.
Neither was crushed, but they were both obviously stung by the loss. I would describe it as cold, calculating disgust at the thought they missed out on an opportunity but would get more.
That was most notable for Sayin since we had not talked to him after a loss before. He described some of the things he saw in detail and had a good grasp of how things went down, which also tells you he knows what he’s looking at out there (even though Indiana seemed to have him uncertain at times).
What are you worried about after that game? Thoughts on the potential playoff matchups? Feel free to hit me up with any questions you might have about the season, the last game, the next game or anything else.
You can reply to this email any time!
Maybe if I get enough questions, I could do a good ol’ fashioned mailbag.
At any rate, until we meet again, thanks for reading (and don’t forget to click those ads!)!