On a roster posted on the back wall of the Ohio State football team’s meeting room, each player’s name is accompanied by the number of Buckeye Leader Awards he has earned from each game.
The column for Saturday’s game against Michigan State had not yet been filled in on Monday, but it seems safe to say that the top honorees so far this season — the junior running back Ezekiel Elliott on offense and the junior end Joey Bosa on defense — will not be getting many plaudits for that 17-14 loss.
Bosa had one of his worst performances of the year, committing three offside penalties — one on a critical fourth-and-8 on a Michigan State drive that tied the score at 14-14. Elliott, who had 12 carries for 33 yards and a touchdown, caused a stir after the game by questioning the team’s play-calling and saying he had played his final home game for the Buckeyes — an all but explicit sign that he planned to leave for the NFL after the season.
“I feel like we just weren’t put in the right opportunity to win,” Elliott told reporters.
On Monday, as coach Urban Meyer held a news conference, Elliott issued an apology on Twitter for his postgame comments, writing, “My intentions were not to point fingers at anyone for OUR failure.” Meyer said that Elliott had apologized to him Sunday. While Meyer said Elliott was wrong to make his comments publicly, Meyer blamed himself for poor play-calling and said the team had “squashed” the issue.
But the result of Saturday’s game, played in driving rain against a tough Spartans squad, will linger: The loss ended a 23-game winning streak for the Buckeyes and made the path to defending their national championship much more difficult.
“I haven’t watched the film,” Bosa said Monday. “Not going to watch the film.”
Meyer said, “Got to move forward.”
“Moving forward” is among the hardiest clichés athletes and coaches spout — right up there with “take it one game at a time” and “we need to execute better.” But rarely has it seemed so apt. The No. 8 Buckeyes (10-1, 6-1 Big Ten) can still secure a spot in the conference championship game — and maybe put themselves in position for a College Football Playoff berth — with a win at Michigan in their regular-season finale Saturday and a loss by No. 6 Michigan State (10-1, 6-1) against Penn State.
The importance of the Buckeyes’ game is not precisely tied to the stakes, though. The latest edition in one of college football’s biggest rivalries, set for noon Eastern in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will be the 112th meeting between Michigan and Ohio State and the first pitting Meyer against Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh.
“National championships come around every so often, but you play that team every year,” Ohio State senior linebacker Joshua Perry said.
Much as superstitious actors refer to “Macbeth” as “the Scottish play,” many Ohio State players and coaches, including Meyer, do not refer to Michigan by name, instead resorting to euphemisms like “that team up north.” On Monday morning, a sign for the Les Wexner Football Complex in Columbus had the “M” blocked out with scarlet tape.
To beat the Wolverines, Ohio State may have to address some failures that go beyond the loss to the Spartans.
This season, the Buckeyes returned most of the talent from their title-winning team, converted quarterback Braxton Miller into an electric halfback and, if anything, improved their defensive play. But the offense has struggled against inferior competition, and more than halfway through the season, Meyer swapped quarterbacks, replacing redshirt junior Cardale Jones with sophomore J.T. Barrett.
Barrett was suspended for a game after he was cited late last month on suspicion of operating a vehicle while impaired. Bosa and three other players had already been suspended for the season’s first game for unspecified violations of team policy, which gave the team a snake-bitten feel that was validated amid Saturday’s downpour.
“If it was something that firm or singular, you would fix it immediately,” Meyer said Monday. “There’s a variety of things. We’re just not — we’re not operating at maximum capacity.”
He added: “Don’t worry; that will be flipped over upside-down, inside-out. Not now, as our focus is on this.”
“This,” of course, was Saturday’s game, which — in addition to the matchup between Meyer, who grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio, and Harbaugh, a former Wolverines quarterback — will feature two of the top scoring defenses in the FBS, with Ohio State ranked second and Michigan sixth.
Ohio State has won 10 of the last 11 games in the series, with Michigan generally on a downswing in recent years. But this Wolverines team, which is 9-2 overall and 6-1 in conference play and is ranked 12th, looks likely to make it close. For them, too, a win and a Michigan State loss would put them in the Big Ten championship game, against No. 3 Iowa.
That result would deny Ohio State’s players pride as well as the gold pins, shaped like pants, that they get for beating the Wolverines.
“This rivalry is so huge, and it’s been huge the last two years,” Bosa said, “but to know that we’re playing such a good team and it’s back to how it used to be — two of the top teams in college football going at it — I think it makes it more exciting.”
Raekwon McMillan, an Ohio State sophomore linebacker and a Georgia native, said the rivalry was a significant part of Ohio State’s recruiting pitch to him.
But Perry, the senior linebacker, needed no introduction. He hails from Galena, Ohio, and has always been aware of the rivalry.
“The one thing that will make me feel better,” he said he told his parents after the Michigan State game, “is getting a fourth pair of gold pants.”
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