Ohio State very good but not good enough after beating Penn State

The Buckeyes lost 13-0 in the second quarter before a touchdown just before halftime, narrowing the Nittany Lions' lead to 13-7 and briefly passing the Buckeyes cap. The Ohio State had to deal with deficits of 20-14 and 26-14 in the fourth quarter.

McSorley set a total offensive record at 461 yards for a single game at Penn State, with 286 points in the air and 175 more on the ground. Penn State as a whole defeated the Buckeyes by 103 yards. The Nittany Lions averaged an additional two yards per pass attempt against the Buckeyes, plus one and a half meters more per run.

Ohio State has committed 10 penalties for 105 penalty yards. The offense converted only four of its 17 attempts into third. The same offense that swept the unfortunate Oregon State and Woebegone Rutgers learned shortly after the start of the first half that Penn State accounted for a lot but not the Oregon State or Rutgers.

"The first half was awful in so many ways," said Ohio State coach Urban Meyer. "The penalties are awful. We have to correct that, because in general you do not win such a match. "

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It was a game that Penn State had almost no business to lose. The Lions of Nittany had the family environment in their favor. They had the best player on the field, McSorley, who led the offensive to a semblance of cohesion in the second half. They had a 12-point lead eight minutes from the end, but they all managed to help Ohio State fight the pace of play. It was a match that Penn State had lost so much that it was a match won by Ohio State, but no more.

"It was not pretty," said quarterback Dwayne Haskins, "pretty much all of the game".

All the peripherals – the box score, the gameplay, the advantage of two possessions in the fourth quarter – called Penn State a better team than the Ohio State, if only that night. The dashboard says the opposite, which is why the state of Ohio is now driving the Big Ten Conference. But the dashboard does not hide the fact that the Ohio State is not ready for a more rigorous test than the one presented by the Nittany Lions on Saturday.

Penn State is a very good team. Postgame, a James Franklin enthusiast says it perfectly: Penn State is a great program and Ohio State an elite. As a team, the Buckeyes are one point better than the Nittany Lions. Have a better point than Penn State does not inspire a great confidence in the final goal of the Buckeyes when you consider a possible competition.

The state of Ohio wants to win a national championship, as this program always does, and is, in some ways, perfectly equipped to do it. Even without Nick Bosa in good health, the All-America ends up with an injury indefinitely, the defensive line ranks among the best in college football. A body of disheartened receivers has become an asset. There is speed and athleticism to burn at offensive positions and in the defensive field. In Haskins, the Buckeyes came across another talent that changed the game.

The fact that this program has such ambitious goals means it does not compare to Penn State. As Franklin said, Nittany Lions are not yet in this category. Ohio State is compared to Alabama. At present, the comparison is not reflected well on the Buckeyes. That almost all teams are ridiculous compared to Crimson Tide is no excuse.

Asked about the areas in which, according to him, his team has not yet exploited all his potential, Mr. Meyer said: "establish a big circle around the first half".

"All," he said. "We dropped a big shot, a 95-yard touchdown or something. The biggest thing is just offensive, inept. Do not block guys. Do not run.

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In the meetings with the two Power Five opponents in their schedule, Penn State and TCU, the Buckeyes grant a whisper of more than 500 yards per game and 6.6 yards per game. Each of these games has seen the defense of the Buckeyes allow at least one scrum game of 90 yards or more. Throughout the first half of Saturday and many of the second, Penn State's offensive defense has made Haskins less like a rising star in college football than another. strategist.

"It's been tough for a while," said Ohio State offensive coordinator Ryan Day. "It was a learning game for the attack and for (Haskins)."

There are mitigating factors at play. On the one hand, the occasional gloom of Ohio State could be a by-product of the chaos surrounding this program, which sent Meyer into a three-game coaching hiatus and changed the makeup. fragile of a new team of contributors on both sides of the ball.

The fact that the offensive did not click through much of Saturday's win could be due to a handful of factors: the hostile Penn State crowd, the Nittany Lions defensive system and Haskins' inexperience. The fact that the defense has continued to juggle greed and porosity could be the result of a particular factor – it's McSorley, who has shown that even in defeat, the Penn State story should be 'accentuate.

There are two takeaways on Saturday night, and while they may seem contradictory, they are not mutually exclusive. The first is that the Ohio State is a very good team and it could improve from October, after four games against the Big Ten, and the Buckeyes will be almost unbeaten in November.

"We are not even at our full potential yet," said junior defensive tackle Davon Hamilton. "That's how I feel, we let go parts that should not have been left, just purely, small mistakes, really, we have so much more potential to show, people do not even know the real Buckeyes of the Ohio State even after this game. "

The second is as follows: the state of Ohio must improve and must reach its full potential, if not against the state of Penn before the last week of December. As the heart of the game begins, it looks like a team capable of winning the Big Ten and participating in a national semifinal of the college football playoffs. It's pretty good. But except improvement, this is where the Buckeyes season ends.