TOUGH ENOUGH?
In the end, losses to Oregon, Michigan raise big questions about Buckeyes
Michigan running back Hassan Haskins jumps over Ohio State cornerback Cameron Brown in the Wolverines’ 42-27 win last week. Haskins rushed for 169 yards and five touchdowns.
Ohio State’s glass ceiling turned out to be a glass jaw. The Buckeyes couldn’t take a punch. Oregon hit them squarely in the mouth and down they went. Michigan slugged them in the mug and they fell again. Two punches. Two losses.
Entering the season, we thought the lack of an experienced quarterback might be OSU’S downfall. Instead, the Buckeyes ultimately got knocked out of playoff contention because they tried to slap rather than pound their opponent into submission.
Two days after Michigan’s 42-27 win, UM offensive coordinator Josh Gattis stoked the rivalry by calling Ohio State’s defense soft.
“They’re a good team,” Gattis said on the “Inside Michigan Football” radio show. “They’re a finesse team, they’re not a tough team. And we knew that going into the game that we can out-physical them, we can out-tough and that was gonna be the key to the game, and that’s what we prepared for all year long.”
The truth about Ohio State’s toughness
You don’t have to like the messenger, but don’t shoot him. Gattis was just delivering the truth. What happened in Ann Arbor cannot be pinned solely on the Buckeyes’ lack of tenacity — penalties, mental mistakes and questionable coaching all contributed — but clearly Ohio State brought surgical gloves to a bare-knuckle brawl.
It wasn’t just the OSU defense that demurred, either. The offensive line got boat raced by a Michigan defense that sacked C.J. Stroud four times, with edge rusher Aidan Hutchinson getting three takedowns of the Ohio State quarterback.
Hutchinson was a physical force, but just as important was his emotional impact on The Game. He brings a contagious intensity that inspires teammates to give the extra effort needed to win big games. Michigan often lacked that larger-than-life leadership during its eightgame losing streak to Ohio State, but this season it was the Buckeyes who failed to muster the emotion.
A tangent of sorts: Watching the Michigan game reminded me of two infamous Ohio State losses morphed into one. In 1969, the No. 1 Buckeyes went to Ann Arbor as 17-point favorites and got drilled 24-12. Few on the OSU side of things saw the upset coming, especially after the Buckeyes embarrassed No. 10 Purdue 42-14 the previous week. But UM players remembered what happened the year before, when Woody Hayes went for two points late in the Buckeyes’ 50-14 win in Columbus, and the Wolverines turned the apparent lack of respect into a year-long quest for payback.
Similarly, this year’s Michigan players gained emotional fuel from Day’s warning during a 2020 preseason team meeting that the Wolverines better hope for a mercy rule because the Buckeyes “are going to hang 100 on them.”
Also similarly, the rest of college football may have been impressed by OSU’S 56-7 takedown of No. 7 Michigan State the week before the Michigan game, just as it was in 1969 with the dominating win against Purdue, but the Maize and Blue were having none of it.
Fast forward 26 years to 1995, when UM tailback Tim Biakabutuka shredded Ohio State’s defense for 313 yards in a 3123 win that had Buckeyes fans muttering “What just happened?” Then fast forward another 26 years to Hassan Haskins rushing for five touchdowns and 169 of UM’S 297 yards on the ground last week against the Buckeyes.
In both the 1969 and 1995 losses Ohio State barely showed up while Michigan bowed up. It happened again in 2021.
Why Michigan game wasn’t necessarily a fluke
It wasn’t just Michigan. Oregon manhandled the Buckeyes the same way in September during its 35-28 win in Ohio
Stadium. When assessing the overall 10-2 regular season, it may well be that lack of dynamic leadership was the core issue impacting both sides of the ball. Only the coaching staff can say for sure, and Ryan Day is not one to get into the weeds on the psychology of football, but it would make sense if OSU’S soft spots could be traced to quiet/timid personalities among the leading upperclassmen.
At least that’s one explanation. The other possibility is more alarming, namely that Day’s way of focusing on offense — and within that his way of favoring the passing game over a pounding running attack — by trickle down creates a finesse-over-force mentality among the entire group.
I always go back to something OSU assistant coach Kevin Wilson said four years ago when explaining why Big 12 teams tend to excel at offense but lay eggs on defense. What a head coach deems most important gets emphasized during practice, which means less time spent on other important parts of the game.
That’s not to suggest Day minimizes defense, but clearly his passion comes from creating a passing offense that is nearly impossible to stop. But at what cost to building toughness in the trenches?
To be sure, the Michigan and Oregon games offer only a small sample size, so drawing hard conclusions proves challenging. But if Gattis is to be believed, and my sense is his comments were more than mere rivalry bluster, the Wolverines may have found a blueprint for beating the Buckeyes: punch them in the kisser and watch them hit the canvas. roller@dispatch.com @rollercd