My homer pick didn’t pan out to well.
Ohio State is a very good football team that just flat out does not make mistakes. They have the talent to do way more offensively than they do, but their style is to grind it out, refuse to turn over the ball and score enough to beat your. And they have the talent to make it work.
There were some things I did note during the game.
Iowa receivers were wide open throughout most of the game. Tate had several passes that were way over/under thrown. He also had a ton of passes that were dropped. On most of those incomplete passes, there was no defender around to influence the catch. The offense would have looked quite a bit better if they completed those easy plays.
I can’t help but wonder if the abdominal strain that Tate is recovering from is hurting him a little more than he lets on to the press.
The defense is pretty good. Ohio State’s receivers are really really fast. Iowa did not get burnt on deep passes the way I expected. They got burnt on short passes where the receiver (Anthony Gonzalez normally) went crazy after the catch. The running defense did a good job of stuffing anything up the middle. Most of the big runs were plays designed up the middle where the back saw nothing there and took off toward the sideline. Ohio State is fast and won those semi-broken play battles. Anytime you ask your defense to be on the field for more than 40 minutes and more than 24 minutes of the second half, they are going to give up some points.
Plus, Iowa was missing Paschal and his backup. Not a good game for that. A lot of those 3rd and longs that OSU converted might have turned out a little different if one or both of them were available.
In the end, OSU is deeper, more skilled, and a very well coached football team that won a very tough road game and deserve to be ranked number 1.