Barrett passes Buckeyes back into playoff picture
For those PISCATAWAY, N.J. — who fell asleep in front of the TV on Saturday night, what lodged in your cortex wasn’t one of those nonsensical dreams that bothers you all day, like your cat cooking breakfast for you, your third-grade teacher and Iman Shumpert.
Rutgers actually is in the Big Ten. That’s still real, and still boring.
The score from Ohio State’s dalliance with the Scarlet Knights was 56-0, the score for the four-year conference history of Rutgers vs. Ohio State now at 219-24. If teams could score negative points in a game, the Rutgers’ four-year total might have dropped back to zero Saturday.
But here’s what happened at High Point Solutions Stadium. The playoff push resumed. Ohio State either always was or is once again a legitimate College Football Playoff contender. Bama is Bama and defending national champion Clemson may not have lost a step. Oklahoma isn’t a rematch Ohio State should be angling for, and the Penn State game on Oct. 28 grows in magnitude every week.
But the Buckeyes belong in the pack and belong in the conversation. They belong there because the offense continues to mature and the defense continues to attack. It is not perfect, but watch USC lose to Washington State and injury-plagued Florida State vanish and Oklahoma State go down to TCU last week and understand perfection isn’t happening many places outside of Tuscaloosa and Death Valley.
Oklahoma trailed Baylor late in the third quarter last week. Baylor is 0-5.
Given a fifth-year quarterback and a flash of a freshman running back and a defensive line filled with future high NFL draft picks, Ohio State right next to Alabama and Clemson in the college football hierarchy would be preferable to fans.
That’s not the case. But the Buckeyes are clearly in the next group, and when Week 2 ends with Baker Mayfield plunging a stake into your Block O, you take this trajectory.
Ohio State is on the way back.
At 4-1 now, the Buckeyes entered the week ranked No. 11, but worry not about the rankings. If they run the table, they will make the playoff, because they will have earned it and the committee will appreciate them. If they lose one more, the playoff dream is over, but save your disappointment for if that comes. It’s an if, not a when. An expansion of the passing game is what was needed and expected, and it’s what the Buckeyes provided. Understand the lack of talent among the Scarlet Knights, but don’t let that erase what J.T. Barrett did. This was a conference game, and when an opponent like this presents itself, Ohio State must do what it did.
Dominate, but with a purpose. Not dominance for the sake of dominance.
Barrett was 14-of-22 for 275 yards. His yards per attempt, an important measure of passing competence, was 12.5 yards. Coming into the game, his yards per attempt were 8.1.
In the first four weeks, Barrett had completed two passes where the ball had traveled more than 20 yards in the air. Saturday, he hit three and his prettiest pass of the night, a 67-yard touchdown to Jonnie Dixon, was wiped out by a questionable pass interference call on Dixon on a moderate left arm pushoff. That one spiraled 45 yards in the air and nestled into Dixon’s outstretched arms.
Barrett, after he saw the flag, was left momentarily slump-shouldered at midfield. It didn’t count in the stats or on the scoreboard, but let it count in your heart. And let it count in his.
No, this wasn’t a quality opponent, but you have to deal with what’s in front of you. The only question in Piscataway was WHY IS RUTGERS IN THE BIG TEN? Maybe sometime in the next decade we’ll stop shouting that every time these teams play. A year ago, after Ohio State’s 58-0 win in Columbus, I wrote Rutgers would never beat Ohio State ever, and the search is on this year for some length of time longer than ever.
But when Oklahoma knocks your feet out from under you so early in the season, the Saturdays that follow are never about the opposition. They are about you.
Ohio State knows where it is headed. That might be back to the playoff.
The end may be near in Tennessee. It is certainly much closer after Saturday.
Meanwhile, at LSU this is just the beginning of the Ed Orgeron era and it could not be going much worse.
The college football weekend ramped up Friday night with Southern California becoming the third preseason Top-10 team to lose before Oct. 1. On Saturday, things got very negative in Knoxville, Tennessee, for Butch Jones. LSU suffered its most embarrassing home loss in 17 years. And Penn State’s Saquon Barkley wasn’t the only running back making a Heisman Trophy statement.
Takeaways, thoughts and takedowns from Week 5 of the college football season.
1. As the fans poured out of Neyland Stadium and Georgia’s fourth-string tailback scored a touchdown, what came to mind was this: When is Tennessee’s off week? Because that would be an opportune time to fire Butch Jones.
2. Jones, the former University of Cincinnati coach, said after the Volunteers’ first shutout loss since 1994 that it was “gut-check” time for Tennessee. Too late.
3. But this very much felt like a point-of-no-return game for Jones and Tennessee. The Vols are off next Saturday, by the way.
4. It is way too soon for LSU to consider firing its coach — right? — but Tigers fans can only hope that losing to Troy on homecoming is rock bottom. LSU had a streak of 49 straight nonconference home victories dating to 2000, when Nick Saban was coach and the Tigers lost to UAB.
5. In case you are wondering, Orgeron has a $12 million buyout after this season.
6. In 11-plus seasons as LSU coach, Les Miles never lost to a team outside a power conference.
7. With each passing week, Alabama-Clemson III seems more likely.
8. Losing to Clemson does not make a team bad. See: Auburn.
9. Beating LSU does not make a team good. See: Mississippi State.
10. Jacob Eason returned to action for No. 7 Georgia, but there should be no quarterback controversy. Jake Fromm is the Bulldogs’ guy.
11. The year of the quarterback has turned into the year of the running back. If you put together a Heisman Trophy ballot right now: Barkley and Stanford’s Bryce Love would have to be in the top three.
12. Barkley ran for 56 yards against Indiana and was the star of the show with a 98-yard kick return, a touchdown pass and a silly onehanded catch.
13. Love, meanwhile, surpassed 1,000 yards rushing before October with 301 against Arizona State. At 11 yards per carry, just hand it to Love every time.
14. Florida State slogged through another day of growing pains for quarterback James Blackman to beat Wake Forest in a game that brought back memories of the end to the Bobby Bowden era.
16. Quite a bit of chatter among college football Twitter about how USC’s loss at Washington State exposed the Trojans as overrated. The logic of this is flawed.
17. For all the time fans spend killing teams because “They ain’t played nobody,” USC has already played four Power Five teams (Stanford, Texas, Cal and Washington State) , and all look to be somewhere between pretty good and very good.
18. The Trojans and Sam Darnold have not lived up to their hype, but this is what happens to teams when they play competitive opponents every week instead of FCS teams and the soft underbelly of the Group of Five.