This is the defensive play-by-play analysis for the Rutgers game. This series is borrowing a format used at MGoBlog, the latest of which is located here. Last week’s defensive analysis is located here.

The defense has been the biggest concern of the team thus far. While the offense is now rated as the best in the country according to SP+, the defense still has some work to do. So far though, early returns on the Matt Barnes experiment seem to be promising. Coming into this game, the major questions were of consistency. Sure, the performance against Akron was impressive, but that doesn’t tell us much. Was the performance against Akron a fluke? Also, will the defense continue to change and evolve as the season goes on?

Before the play-by-play chart, I just wanted to mention a quick change for the rest of the series on defense. I am going to be classifying the Bullet position as a defensive back, as it has essentially become just a classic strong safety, where the cover safety has essentially evolved into a nickleback.

Here is the play-by-play chart for the defense:

That looked pretty smothering, but Rutgers has a horrid offense, maybe even the worst the Buckeyes have seen so far. The results from this game may not carry over into the future. The defensive alignments were probably the most interesting result from this game. Kyle Jones pointed out this change in the film study this week, but it is worth repeating that this is a massive structural departure from what was going on three weeks ago. Last week, they split between 1-high safety and 2-high safeties about 50% of the time. Against Oregon, it was over 90% single high. Against Rutgers, 15 snaps had a single high safety, while 56 snaps had 2-high safeties. This is an entirely different defense. With this change has come a lot more Cover-2, Cover-4, and Cover-6. While I haven’t been in the camp of needing to see a new defensive scheme, as, when executed, the previous scheme worked fine, I do like the versatility of being able to run both. Additionally, it is really nice to know that Ryan Day is willing to make a necessary adjustment mid-season, even if it is nearly impossible. I know that there was lots of talk about Day being unwilling to change his philosophy to a 2-high safety base defense, but it seems as if that has happened in the last month. It is good to see Day willing to make necessary adjustments, and it is great to see Barnes doing well in his new role.

I know I just mentioned that Ohio State’s defensive success against Rutgers should be taken with a liberal application of salt, but there is a stat that seems to suggest that Ohio State’s improvements on defense are real. At least, so far. College Football Nerds on Youtube has a great stat that they use for their computer model, which is Percentage of Opponents Average Allowed with regards to yards per carry (YPC) and yards per attempt (YPA). It is a way of adjusting your defensive performance to your competition level. If you are playing a bunch of great offenses, your cumulative, or even per game defensive stats aren’t going to look as good as they might otherwise look if you were playing a bunch of cupcakes. By comparing your defensive performance to how the other teams’ offenses usually perform, you can have an estimate of what you are expected to give up against any given opponent.

Here’s an example: suppose your Team A allows 95% of opponent averages on the ground, and 105% of opponent averages through the air on defense. They are playing Team B this week. Team B averages 4.5 YPC and 8.0 YPA on offense. In this scenario, we would expect Team B to get a little less than what they usually average, with 4.5*0.95 = 4.28 YPC and 8.0*1.05 = 8.4 YPA. This means that Team A has a better than average run defense, and a worse than average pass defense.

So here is where it gets interesting: Ohio State currently allows 92% of opponent YPC, and 87% of opponent YPA, meaning that Ohio State’s defense, even including the Oregon and Minnesota games, have played better than average this year. The Oregon game was especially rough, with 88% of their average YPA allowed (pretty good), and 140% of their average YPC allowed (apocalyptically bad).82%

For some context, here are some other defenses from past and present to compare it to:

Why did I include these particular teams? First, because this year’s Penn State and Alabama teams are considered to be great defenses, though not elite, and they are fairly comparable to Ohio State this year, even with the Oregon loss. I also included last year’s Ohio State team to show that, so far, Ohio State has been much better on defense than they were last year, which might surprise some. 2019 LSU was included to show what I think should be the goal for this team by the end of the year. With arguably the best offense in the country right now, Ohio State can win a national championship with a very good, but not elite defense. I also included 2019 Ohio State to have an elite defense to compare it to. The obvious takeaway? The improvement of the defense since Matt Barnes took over is shocking, and something that I didn’t think was possible.

For now though, I want to pump the breaks a little on the excitement from this game. According to the above stat, Rutgers might have been their worst performance since Barnes took over, as Rutgers got 92% of their YPC and 100% of their YPA against Ohio State. Now, there are a couple of reasons for this despite the good performance. First, Rutgers is horrible offensively, so even if you shut them down, it is hard to make them do much worse than they usually do. Second, the 75 yard touchdown reception really skews the YPA total. Third, most of the bigger issues showed up in garbage time, which is a genuine concern in my opinion, because it shows that Ohio State does not have great depth right now, especially at linebacker, meaning an injury would be catastrophic for their season. We also don’t know if they will perform against the best teams on their schedule.

With all of that being said, early returns are excellent for the new defensive changes. Here is the chart:

The numbers are really good. While I have continually talked about Rutgers’ deficiencies on offense, I do think there was one thing about Rutgers that was a genuine test, and that is their option-based offensive scheme. Oregon ripped through Ohio State by consistently putting their linebackers in conflict. They threw screen after screen while running options on the ground. Oregon really never threw deep, and when they did, Ohio State covered it fine. This game had the potential to expose Ohio State’s new look defense, particularly the linebackers, and it never happened. Ohio State looked as good as they’ve looked the past couple of weeks. The linebackers didn’t look confused. The defensive linemen were constantly making plays on reads. They looked like a functional defense.

The defensive line was nearly perfect. While they didn’t get many sacks, Rutgers rarely threw the ball across the line of scrimmage. In the same way that we shouldn’t expect sacks against the service academies, we shouldn’t expect sacks against Rutgers/Oregon. All of their success was against the run. It is really hard to pick out standouts though. As you can see, no player had more than 5 positive points on the defensive line, which is rare. Jean-Baptiste made a spectacular play against a screen with 3:12 left in the second quarter. Tuimoloau made a great play with 9:12 in the third quarter, being the defender read on a zone read, and still managing to tackle the running back. Jackson had a great game, making a huge stop on fourth down seemingly all by himself with 8:59 remaining in the second quarter, and then nearly making another fourth down stop all on his own with 8:18 remaining in the third quarter, this time with inches to go. He was unbelievably disruptive. This group is hard to talk about though since they were all great. All of them were sound against the run, and there wasn’t really any passing situations to highlight, except for the two interceptions forced by Harrison with 4:31 in the third and Tyleik Williams on the first play of the fourth. This was an outstanding performance by everyone. It is worth pointing out that Williams got snaps at 1-tech for a bit, which I would like to see more going forward. It is also frustrating only seeing him in the fourth, as he has played well enough to be a starter, and even well enough for PFF to rate him as Ohio State’s best player on defense.

The linebackers did decent, but they still aren’t starring. Cody Simon had his best game yet in my opinion. He made a couple of nice plays, and rarely looked out of place in coverage. He needs to continue to play like this for the defense to have success. He also needs to stay healthy. The other linebacker that is worth highlighting is Tommy Eichenberg, who has benefitted more from the defensive staff change than any other individual player. For the second week in a row, I didn’t see a big mistake from him, and he even got an interception. His tackle on the screen with 1:05 left in the third quarter was a thing of beauty. With Simon getting dinged up as much as he has been, Eichenberg needs to continue playing at this level for the team to have future success.

The defensive backs also did well, even with the coverage changing more toward Cover-2. Will that be a permanent change? I have no idea. Burke is still playing really well, but teams keep throwing at him. I don’t have to remind anyone about his pick six, but it was excellent coverage over top, with Cameron Martinez sitting in a zone underneath. Denzel Burke’s been the team’s best corner, and has been so fun to watch. Brown and Banks didn’t do much today, which was just fine. Rutgers didn’t test either of them at all.

Ransom and Shaw don’t score a ton of points with this scoring, which is honestly fine, especially against a team who is rarely passing deep. Shaw is playing better; with 9:31 in the third, I thought he made a great play to get to the sideline and push out the Rutgers receiver for a six yard game, even though Martinez was late getting to his zone. Other than that, a quiet day from the safeties is just fine for me.

The cover safety/nickleback spot is a tough one for me, as I think Williamson needs more time; he has been playing so well and is so good at tackling in the open field. With 6:21 in the second, Williamson recognizes a play as soon as the ball is snapped. The play design is the exact same as the series before, with 11:52 left in the second, where Rutgers got a first down on a HB flat. Williamson sees the play happening again, and aggressively blows up the play immediately for no gain. He has been so good.

Martinez played maybe his best game as a Buckeye though, so I don’t know how you take him off the field either. I already mentioned his coverage on the pick six from Burke, and he almost had a pick six himself on the fake punt. I was impressed also with his ability to help out against the run though, particularly with the Inverted Veer call with 5:21 in the third quarter. He combined with Hickman to make the tackle at the line of scrimmage, and was around the box all day. I expected his willingness to tackle to be his biggest weakness, which is why I think Williamson would work in this spot too, but if Martinez can continue to defend against the run like this, it is hard to take him out of coverage. PFF seems to agree, as they rate these two as the highest rated members of the back 7.

Ronnie Hickman though, isn’t far behind, and I think he is probably the MVP of the secondary right now. He is around every play, and is getting work as a deep boundary safety now too. If it weren’t for the long touchdown pass, he would have had the best game of anyone. With 9:34 in the second quarter, he made an excellent play on third and three to force a punt. Even though he is being read by the QB, he has great coverage on a TE in the flat, and tackles him behind the line to gain. He is just a really good football player right now.

Next week will certainly be a bigger test for this defense. Maryland has a way better offense than Rutgers with a far more dynamic quarterback and talented wide receivers. So far, Ohio State’s coaches have adjusted, but this game will tell us a lot about the rest of the year.

I am going to say something a little ridiculous, but stick with me. IF the defense is for real, and that is a colossal IF, then Ohio State can accomplish all of their goals. Usually, after 4-5 games, I know which teams have a shot at the National Championship and which ones don’t. I thought the 2014, 2017, and 2019 Ohio State teams could have won it all (the 2017 Iowa game is still the weirdest game I have ever seen). Every other team had no shot due to either not having a good enough defense or not having a good enough offense. This defense right now is playing at a high level, and if the Oregon game would not have happened, I would call them great, but not elite. Even still, that is all it takes most of the time. This weekend should tell us a lot. If they shut down Maryland, it could get wild this year. They still have a long way to go, but the coaches have been doing well so far.

I am not worried about that though. Cumulative stats will be posted next week when we are half way through the season. Go Bucks.