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There were 2 clear takeaways from watching Nebraska and Ohio State on Saturday
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It’s November, which means at this point, you are what you are.
On Saturday, I think we saw exactly what Nebraska and Ohio State are. Both were coming off bye weeks — technically Bethune-Cookman wasn’t a bye week but let’s be real — with plenty of time to prepare for the Week 10 showdown.
Call me crazy, but I think there was an obvious takeaway for each team.
For Nebraska, it was that this group is getting better as a whole. If it could avoid things like whiffing on first-quarter onside kick attempts or having a freshman quarterback wildly throw the ball behind the line of scrimmage to no one, it could actually get a marquee win. The program is trending upwards, and despite what Scott Frost will say about the basic premise of “moral victories,” Saturday was the best possible example of one.
And for Ohio State? Woof.
A team that was expected to have a big bounce-back performance coming off the bye week and the meltdown at Purdue didn’t do that. At all. Instead, the Buckeyes welcomed their fans back with a frustrating, uneasy effort that should’ve made even the casual fan realize something.
This team doesn’t have the makeup of a B1G champ. And if it does turn into one, it’ll be because it transforms into something drastically different than what it’s been for the first 10 weeks of the 2018 season.
Don’t bother with the question “did Ohio State play down to Nebraska’s level or did Nebraska play up to Ohio State’s level?” It’s both. It’s always both until the end of time.
Baffling it was that Ohio State had to convert first downs to hold on to its 5-point lead in the final 2 minutes. No Buckeye fan watched that game and felt like this team was poised to make a Playoff run. Well, at least they shouldn’t have.
The Buckeyes are flawed. Significantly. And I don’t just say that because Dwayne Haskins is roughly 1 percent of the mobile threat that J.T. Barrett was. I say that because when Ohio State should’ve been imposing its offensive will to distance itself from Nebraska in the fourth quarter, it was held to a pair of 3-and-outs. Great teams impose their will in that spot.
Ohio State gained zero yards on 6 plays and took a whopping 103 seconds off the clock with the game still hanging in the balance. Part of that was some odd play-calling to abandon the running game and rely on Haskins, who didn’t look right after he took that hit from Luke Gifford in the first half. He was tentative, inefficient and just not his Heisman Trophy-candidate self.
The interception that Haskins threw right at Lamar Jackson prompted a reaction from Ryan Day that all but summed up the, well, day.
Live look at every Ohio State fan rn pic.twitter.com/jPPitDgkZO
— Connor O'Gara (@cjogara) November 3, 2018
The Buckeyes still racked up nearly 500 yards of offense and hey, they even had 3 red-zone touchdowns once it remembered that J.K. Dobbins and Mike Weber were pretty good at football. That seemed like a crazy concept after the Purdue debacle.
But the reality is Ohio State puts a ton of pressure on its offense to look like a well-oiled machine at all times. It simply doesn’t have the play-makers on the defensive side of the ball that it did in years past. That’s not just a Nick Bosa issue, and Jordan Fuller’s targeting ejection probably wasn’t the reason that OSU’s defense played like it was on its heels for most of the afternoon (that was a solid third quarter, though).
Credit Nebraska for executing some chunk plays against an OSU defense that’s plenty familiar with surrendering those. Adrian Martinez flashed a lot of the potential that confirmed the belief that he’s one of the most talented young signal-callers in college football. The throw he had to Stanley Morgan was one that Husker fans hope to see plenty more of in the next few years.
If you’re a Nebraska fan, you felt good about seeing the Huskers light up a defense that had next-level athletes on it. It was a vastly different showing than the one they put together in their last road trip against a B1G big boy.
Y’all remember Michigan? The takeaway from that one was that it was probably smart to let Martinez not face the Michigan defense in the second half.
And it doesn’t take Nick Saban to realize that the Wolverines are better on that side of the ball than the Buckeyes are. Duh. It’s because of that fact that Ohio State fans probably already have legitimate concerns about that regular-season finale in Columbus.
Saturday was supposed to be the get-right game for Ohio State. It wasn’t. It was a head-scratcher. Urban Meyer’s OSU teams came into Saturday averaging a 35-point win coming off a loss. Add the bye week to the mix and that’s why Frost said this wasn’t the ideal time to face Ohio State.
But it was Nebraska who looked like the team who made the right in-season adjustments.
We don’t know what the rest of the season holds for either team. We do know that OSU’s 118-17 advantage against Nebraska the last 2 years was a distant memory by game’s end. Saturday felt like two teams that were much more evenly matched, which nobody in their right mind would’ve suggested a month ago.
It’s November, though, and at this point, you are what you are.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Tradition. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.