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Ohio State knows how to win ugly. Give the Buckeyes that much.
Saturday’s 26-6 victory at Michigan State, in which OSU led just 7-6 with a minute left in the third quarter, was an old-fashioned performance.
It was a game Woody Hayes would have mostly recognized. Well, except that Hayes would have torn apart every yard marker in the state of Michigan before he let his quarterback throw 39 times in a game, as Dwayne Haskins did against the Spartans.
Still, it was a good, old-fashioned field position battle. Forget all those newfangled offensive formations. Just hang onto the ball, maybe score if you can, but mostly punt deep into the other team’s territory and let your defense take over.
That was what coach Urban Meyer’s Buckeyes did at Spartan Stadium. No, this won’t impress anybody on the College Football Playoff selection committee any more than any other OSU performance has in the past several weeks.
That’s somewhat of a problem — the way 10th-ranked OSU looked was from a bygone era where there was no CFP, no committee, just a bunch of sportswriters with their AP Poll and nothing grander than a shot at the Rose Bowl on the horizon.
Haskins passed for a pedestrian (by his standards) 227 yards. The Buckeyes ran for a pedestrian 120 yards on 45 attempts (a 2.7-yard average). In all, Ohio State’s 347 yards of offense represented a low point this season.
The OSU offensive line looked shaky again (this, Hayes would not have tolerated) and one of the scoring drives — a scoring drive, mind you — went for minus-3 yards.
But it’s worth remembering that Michigan State led the nation in rushing defense coming in. It’s also worth pointing out that the Buckeyes are 9-1.
Michigan State quarterback Brian Lewerke is battling a shoulder injury and running back LJ Scott was out injured as well. This is a banged-up Spartans offense that was not blowing anybody’s doors off when everybody was healthy.
Still, give the OSU defense and special teams a ton of credit. Punter Drue Chrisman was so good, he got a helmet sticker on ESPN’s College Football Final, leaving the hosts to ask aloud if a punter had ever gotten a helmet sticker. Chrisman, and the players who sprint downfield to down the ball on punts, pinned the Spartans inside their own 6-yard line on five consecutive drives.
And pinned that deep that often, MSU basically panicked. Once the Spartans snapped a ball out of the end zone rather than punt, giving the Buckeyes a safety. On an ensuing drive, Ohio State recovered a botched Spartans snap in the end zone for a defensive touchdown. That’s nine points directly attributable to the special teams and defense. OSU held Michigan State to 274 yards, the best defensive effort for the Scarlet and Gray since the Tulane game in September.
Playing the field position game and relying on defense might not make CFP voters swoon and it might not produce flashy highlights.
But it usually produces results, as it did Saturday. That’s as true now as it was in your grandpa’s Big Ten 60 years ago.
Longtime newspaper veteran Jim Tomlin is a writer and editor for saturdaytradition.com and saturdaydownsouth.com.