As Ohio State fans I think we all watched the Tulsa game and thought the team just performed poorly against a team we expected to completely destroy.  I still see lots of messages in the forums talking about how bad the team looked.  I thought I'd provide a little additional perspective on that Tulsa team, which many people don't even realize were ranked in the top 25 for parts of 2020.

Week 1 - Lost 17-19 to UC-Davis - Yeah, you never want to lose to an FCS team.  I get that.  UC-Davis was the #8 ranked team in FCS up until their loss last week to Idaho State and are currently the #13 ranked FCS team in the country.  The gap between top tier FCS teams and mid-tier FBS teams isn't as wide as it used to be. 

Week 2 - Lost 23-28 to Oklahoma State - Is Oklahoma State overrated? Is the sky blue?  Still, a 5 points loss on the road against the #12 ranked team in the country is not really a bad loss.  

Week 3 - Lost 20-41 to Ohio State - We all watched this one.  Too close for comfort right up until the end.

Week 4 - Won 41-34 against Arkansas State - Doesn't everyone have a bad game after they play Ohio State?  Still won against a bad Arkansas State team.

Week 5 - Lost 10-45 to Houston - No real shame in losing to a 5-1 Houston team.  Looking like maybe the wheels might be falling off.

Week 6 - Won 35-29 against Memphis - This win was against a 3-2 Memphis team that had lost both games by a combined 6 points and had a win against Mississippi State.  Solid win to get back on track.

My point here is that maybe some of the performance against Tulsa was inefficiency, youth and CJ's bum shoulder, but we all discount the fact that maybe it was just that Tulsa isn't the team we remember beating into submission in 2018.  Maybe they can even catch Cincinnati sleeping on November 6th.