Winning The Game: What Ohio State’s O Must Do

Game week is here and for the Buckeyes the stakes don’t get any higher.

Sure, there are still a lot of bad feelings about the way the team looked in their last game at home, and that is all we really need to say about that one.

For the 12 teams in the College Football Playoff, the mission is simple. Win and advance, lose and go home for the long winter/spring/summer.

It has been a while since Ohio State’s last postseason win (Jan. 1^st, 2022, vs. Utah in the Rose Bowl) and the natives are starting to get restless with Ryan Day and the Buckeyes alike, especially with the nation’s most talented roster from top-to-bottom.

Over the next two days, we will look at a few things that the Buckeyes need to do on each side of the ball to get out of round one and secure a traditional New Year’s Day date in the Rose Bowl with Big Ten Champion Oregon.

Hopefully in this piece, we will be able to go deeper than just the “score more points” than the opponent and “hold them to fewer points” level of analysis.

We will start with the offensive side of the ball, the side of the ball where the Buckeyes gave a lot back in the last outing and a side of the ball where the numbers have been inconsistent to a certain degree for the second half of the season.

SCORE MORE THAN 24 POINTS

There are people who think that Ohio State is going to need to get up into the 30s, but when the Vols have been beaten recently, it is because Tennessee is unable to put points on the board.

The Vols have lost eight times over the course of the last three seasons and seven of those losses saw Tennessee score 20 or fewer points with a 2022 loss to South Carolina being the lone exception when Tennessee lost with 36 points.

Now, this follows the assumption that the Buckeyes are going to win, because Tennessee is plenty capable of putting up points in wins, usually.

This current season has been different however with the Vols only putting up 25 points per game in their SEC league games. In fact, the Vols have only outscored their league mates by just 5.7 points per game this season over the course of the eight-game SEC schedule and have only broken the 30-point plateau just twice in the season, against two of the bottom teams in the league with Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.

GET OFF TO A FAST START

Nobody is going to try and say that the Buckeyes are a great first quarter team in 2024. The Buckeyes went five games without scoring on their first drive and finally broke through against Michigan, getting a field goal on the first drive, but we would be having a different conversation at a later date if the Buckeyes would have had four more points.

Through nine league games, Ohio State has scored 41 points in the first quarters of games while Tennessee has allowed 33 points in the first quarters of its eight conference games.

It just does not seem that the Vols have been all that explosive against their league foes and while Tennessee did play an ACC team out of conference, NC State is nowhere close to Ohio State in terms of offensive prowess.

Both Ohio State and Tennessee heat up in the 2^nd and 3^rd quarters, but if the Buckeyes can find success and get the Vols down a couple of scores and force Tennessee to reevaluate its rushing offense, that would be a huge win for Ryan Day’s Buckeyes.

As I said in the previous note, I think 24 points wins the game for Ohio State, not to the point that I would put money down on it, but the Vols scored a combined 31 points in their two losses, it just doesn’t feel like a cold Saturday night at The Horseshoe is going to be conducive for a shootout.

RUSH FOR 140+ YARDS

Right now, that feels like a tall order. The Buckeyes have not hit that number in their last two games and continued injures on the offensive line have obviously slowed down the rushing attack.

Don’t forget that the Buckeyes had three games prior of rushing in the 170s, with two touchdowns a game. And sure, one of those games was against Purdue, the bottom team in the league, but the other two were against solid run defenses with Penn State (9^th) and even Northwestern (38^th).

Both Indiana and Michigan have statistically more impressive run defenses, but it comes down to the day (or night) that you play a team and the Vols will have plenty of challenges.

In four of Tennessee’s last eight losses, teams have run for fewer than 140 yards, while in two more, teams just got into the 150s.

The hope is that Ryan Day doesn’t feel that this game must be won in a phone booth, going against that Tennessee defensive line. The Buckeyes have the full field to work with and there has been a much higher probability of success when the Buckeyes do that.

Just before anyone asks about passing numbers from opponents, those numbers are all over the board and teams have won without throwing for a touchdown (Arkansas – 2024) all the way up to throwing for half a dozen (South Carolina – 2022).

COMMIT NO MORE THAN ONE TURNOVER

This isn’t even about turnover margin. Sure, the Buckeyes could turn it over twice but if the Buckeyes have five takeaways to go plus-three, that would be a positive.

But one of the themes of teams that have beaten Tennessee in the past is being careful with the ball.

In four of the eight games, the victorious opponent committed a total of zero turnovers while in three of the remaining games, teams only committed just one turnover. The lone exception was the 2022 game against Georgia where the Bulldogs lost a pair of fumbles, but it didn’t matter as UGA came out on top.

Will Howard is going to have to bring his best decision-making game to the table. The Vols can take the ball away and Ohio State has been a little too fast and loose with it in the throw game.

If Howard plays a clean came or at least a very close to clean game, it dramatically improves Ohio State’s chances.

ALLOW TWO OR FEWER SACKS

While people may be concerned about the turnovers, I know a lot of people that are terrified on this one, the whole question of sacks.

People will not listen to me when I tell them that Ohio State has recorded more sacks than Tennessee has. It’s true, those are facts. But it is also fact that Tennessee has quite a few more TFLs on its tally than Ohio State does.

What is Ohio State’s offensive line going to look like? It is Monday, we don’t know yet. Even if we knew the five names, we still don’t know how they are going to play, how they are going to react to the Vols edge rushers.

But I do know that in six of the Vols last eight losses, opponents have been sacked two or fewer times. That even includes the 2023 Florida game where former Wisconsin quarterback Graham Mertz got the best of the Vols, while only being sacked once.

The two games where more sacks were to be had included the Bama game of 2023 where a mobile Jalen Milroe ran himself into a few sacks, to end the day with four allowed and then the Missouri game where Brady Cook was dropped three times.

But if you listen to Ohio State fans, we are on the verge of seeing a 10-sack game against the Vols. That would be suboptimal for Ohio State’s chances to win the game, in a game where Ohio State must stay ahead of the chains.

If Ohio State’s offensive line can hold up, even if it is only in pass protection, the Buckeyes hold a real advantage.

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