Dequann Finn became a legend in the Shoe on Saturday night, as the Toledo Rockets came into Columbus and scored 21 on the third-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes. Sure, the final score was 21-77, but those of us who saw the game won’t soon forget Finn’s heroics.

I think any Buckeye fan will take 77 points and not think about the defense for more than a second. When the offense can do that, the defense doesn’t matter. As anyone who watched Ohio State last year can attest, the offense won’t always be on. Sometimes, the defense will need to step up. To be a championship team, every little mistake counts.

For this game at least, the defense was good on most plays, but the three plays that resulted in touchdowns represented a total of 39% of Toledo’s total yardage on the day. For a comparison, the eleven (lol) plays that resulted in touchdowns represented a total of 13% of Ohio State’s total yardage. Only one of those touchdowns resulted in a yardage greater than Toledo’s shortest touchdown. This is both encouraging and concerning – encouraging because there are only a few plays per game to fix, and concerning because this has been the case for the first few games.

Some of this is the style of defense that Knowles wants to run, and that is completely fine. If this defense gives up 21 points or less to every opponent on the schedule this year, no one at Ohio State will complain.

The result of this game seemed to validate some early trends with this particular version of the Ohio State defense. Here is the play-by-play:

Dequann Finn was better than could reasonably be expected. Toledo’s entire offense revolved around him doing something amazing. He accounted for 77% of their total offense, and most of that yardage was on broken plays, including the three touchdowns.

This doesn’t really change what Ohio State fans should take away from this game on defense. Big plays hit them again. There has been some talk around the league that the Ohio State defense hasn’t been improved at all and is still extremely leaky.

The idea that this defense has not improved is, of course, false, as anyone who has watched the games can see. The run defense is vastly improved and is bordering on an elite unit this year. This was the primary concern after last season, and it appears to have been fixed. The pass defense is…different than last year. Previously, the defense would give up oodles of plays underneath, and they would experience death by 1000 papercuts. This year’s team gets big plays on defense, but it gives up big plays in return. The good news is that it is a lot easier to imagine a couple of plays a game being fixed rather than every play.

I don’t think that this is a huge deal, and even if the defense stays around this level the entire year, I think this team can reach tremendous heights. I have said it before, but this style of defense is so much more conducive to a successful offense than the previous one they were running. As this defense showed in the Notre Dame game, it is going to be hard to salt the game away against this front. The opposing offense will always have to try and fish for big plays. Sometimes this will work, and other times this will not. Most importantly, this will never take a lot of time. This gives the Ohio State offense more possessions to play with. While I think this offense can go through a cold streak, I don’t think it can consistently be held down. A defense that allows the offense to get the ball more often is a huge improvement over last year, where Michigan could take huge chunks of the clock off while scoring. They will either score quickly, or they will give the ball up. This style of defense is also conducive to getting blown out when things snowball, but I could care less if it gives Ohio State a better chance of winning overall.

Here is the individual chart:

All last season, I talked about how the defensive line was playing pretty well, because even though they weren’t creating much pressure, they were carrying the load against the run. It was no coincidence that the first time they played poorly against the run was Michigan. Today was almost the exact opposite; they were undisciplined at times against the run but were very effective at getting pressure on the quarterback. Every one of the touchdowns was off a scramble due to pressure from the defensive linemen.

Seeing the defensive linemen play too aggressively is honestly probably a good thing, at least in terms of future production. Last year I thought they were somewhat hesitant in rushing the passer as they were so focused on their run responsibilities. Was that actually the case? It is hard to tell. I never mind when teams go too far in the other direction in a genuine attempt to fix a previous issue. It is much preferred to doing nothing.

As a final note on the defensive linemen, Javonte Jean-Baptiste played the game of his life with two sacks and nearly getting a third. Does it mean much? Probably not in terms of production this year. Still, the light can turn on at any time, so who knows. At the very least, it may mean more playing time in games where the Jack is utilized more heavily.

The linebackers played well once again, though they weren’t as involved as they were the past couple of weeks. The three-week mark is when I feel comfortable making some judgments about the team. It is abundantly clear that the linebackers are one of the strengths of the team, and Tommy Eichenberg may be the best individual player on the team. Just like everyone predicted last year. Right?

While I love taking a victory lap for calling out Eichenberg’s improvement as early as the Tulsa game and calling for him to start about a month later, I was as guilty as anyone of wanting him benched after the Oregon game. Furthermore, even when he was improving, he still looked to be playing second-fiddle to Steele Chambers, who seemed to be the linebacker destined for stardom. While Chambers has played well this season, and Cody Simon has had a great start to the year, Eichenberg has established himself as a bona fide star. Give him a couple more weeks and he will be a national name at this pace.

The safeties are also still playing well. Ransom had a bit of a rough game in this one, but I am not worried at all. It was only two plays, and besides that he played just fine. Also, on the first touchdown, it may have also been Martinez who had the deep zone. I thought it was supposed to be Ransom, but I do not know for sure. His performance in the first two weeks have a much greater weight at this point in the season, and even in this game his negatives were small and arguably not his. Speaking of Cameron Martinez, he also had a great game for his first game starting. His tackle (3Q 11:00) deep in Toledo’s territory was a pretty tough tackle in the open field. That was the only knock on him last year – he (and Ransom, to be fair) really struggled tackling which made it hard to put him on the field. The only reason Marcus Williamson played more was because he was arguably the best tackler on the team. Martinez always had the cover skills, and if he can continue to showcase better tackling, he can be a viable starter. Ronnie Hickman also continues his reliability from last year with fewer mistakes and way more “wow” plays. At times last year, I had a hard time giving him points, since most of the tackles he was making were down the field after a decent gain, and he was just in the vicinity. This year he is making tackles close to the line of scrimmage even while taking more deep safety responsibilities. He was known as an excellent player last year, and I think his play this year has validated that reputation.

The corners are probably the biggest worry spot on the team right now, though Cam Brown continues to play well. JK Johnson also played well until he got beat on the last play I charted. Even so, I think he looks like a viable cornerback currently, which is just fine. Denzel Burke has had three straight negative graded games, which is the threshold I have for officially saying that something is a trend or a problem. He is clearly trying a new technique, as he is much less physical than last year, probably trying to avoid pass interference. I could easily see this going away soon, but until it does, this is the position of most concern on the defense.

What should we worry about?

The passing defense in general. I think Burke has gotten most of the attention, but he isn’t the only one who has gotten burned. This is going to be an issue with the defense the entire year. According to CFB Nerds on Youtube, the Buckeyes are currently allowing about 74% of their opponent per-play averages against the run (very good) and 101% of their opponent per-play averages against the pass (slightly below average). This would imply that Graham Mertz is going to throw for over 11 YPA, which is about what Stroud has been throwing for this year.

While Mertz has been better this year, this is still not a good sign for Ohio State. I don’t think this number is terribly likely, as it is very hard to throw for that type of efficiency against even an average defense. However, I think there is about a 15% chance that this does happen, and Wisconsin puts up ~31 points.

This is the game where that 101% number must go down. Even if Mertz throws for 8 YPA, which is about what Finn threw for against Ohio State, it will be a good defensive effort. Either that, or Mertz has played way better than he could be reasonably expected to play (this seems likely). I honestly think that Mertz could throw for 5 YPA or 11 YPA. I have no idea. If that number is closer to 11 YPA, this defense is going to have issues all year long. If that number is closer to 5 YPA, we might be seeing some encouraging signs. If that number is around 8 YPA, we will still have no idea how good the pass defense is.

What should we not worry about?

The standard of the 2019 Buckeyes team. What does that have to do with the 2022 team, you ask?

When we compare Ohio State to other seasons, we go straight to that one, as that team had real balance and was a championship caliber team. I think that season is the gold standard, but the lack of a national championship probably makes already an impossibly high standard even higher to reach.

That 2019 Ohio State Buckeyes team was the best college football team since 1974 according to College Football Reference’s SRS stat. However, because they didn’t win the national championship, we as a fanbase believe that Ohio State must be better than that team to win the national championship.

This isn’t true at all. Again, every national championship winner between 1975-2019 was arguably worse than that Ohio State team, and they still ended up winning the championship. It took an injured Justin Fields, and injured JK Dobbins, an ejected Shaun Wade leading to a touchdown instead of a punt, an overturned fumble recovery for a touchdown, and a miscommunication on the last play of the game to lose that game. The following year, with a worse Ohio State team and a better Clemson team, Ohio State wiped the floor with them with more average gameday luck.

The 2022 Ohio State defense doesn’t have to be as good as Georgia last year. They don’t have to be one of the best in the country. The 2019 LSU team often called the greatest team of all time had the 1st rated offense and the 20th rated defense according to SP+, just like the 2021 Ohio State team. If this defense is just moderately better than last year, they will be in great shape to win a national championship if the offense is what we think it is. While some of the big plays are a concern, I am much more concerned with a defense that gives this offense the chance to win.

What should we be excited about?

The floor of this defense is continuing to rise. While a performance like this may not feel like much to celebrate, stringing together performances in which the defense looks noticeably better than last year is huge. The only stretch last year where the defense looked this good was the Akron-Rutgers-Maryland—Indiana stretch, where the offenses had an average F+ rating of 96th in the country. At least in this stretch, the offenses have an average F+ rating of 67th. Progress.

Also, the run defense is looking quite stout. Most of Toledo’s running success in this game was from Finn’s scrambling ability. Against designed runs they look outstanding. Compared to some of the games last year, this has been a breath of fresh air.