First, I must apologize for not having defensive ones out the last couple of weeks. I ran out of time during the Iowa week, and my internet connection went out last Thursday as I was completing the Penn State review, so I was unable to complete that one in time either. As a result, all three game grades will be posted here.

Since I will be posting all three grades here, I do think that this is a good opportunity to take stock over the past three games and see how fans and other pundits are viewing Ohio State’s recent performances. For the third straight week, fans were left wanting more from the team after a sloppy win. I have heard fans concerned that this was the worst performance against the run for the entire season, and that the team is regressing as they head into the Michigan game. I know others have bemoaned the Buckeyes’ defensive line rotation, specifically, the lack of Michael Hall Jr. Are these concerns valid? Are their opinions correct?

Sort of. Here is the play-by-play chart for the Northwestern game:

Here is the defensive grades for the Northwestern game:

I mostly agree with the people who said that this was Ohio State’s worst defensive game of the year, adjusted for the quality of the opponent. The only other game I have worse based on their YPC and YPA for the year was Notre Dame. The only other game where Ohio State was worse opponent-adjusted against the run was Wisconsin, and that was solely due to garbage time.

However, I don’t think the players played poorly at all on the defensive side of the ball. Lathan Ransom probably had his worst game of the year, but he improved significantly in the second half. Similarly, Steele Chambers had a couple of issues early, but seemed to figure it out as the game went on. The players did well.

The only thing that kept popping up was the lack of aggression from the safeties in coming up to fill the gaps. It is true that if Ohio State was more willing to bring all of the safeties into the box, bring the corners up, and be super aggressive, the defense might have performed better. And while Knowles has the reputation for being ultra-aggressive, this felt like a Jim Tressel special. I haven’t seen Ohio State play this conservatively all year, but I think that might have been the right decision.

Northwestern and Ohio State had the same number of yards, but Ohio State ended up winning 21-7. I have seen some people say that this was just due to being more talented than Northwestern, but I think there is more nuance to it. Despite the weather, the teams took opposite approaches on defense: Northwestern was extra aggressive attacking zone runs and jumping on all underneath routes, while Ohio State would often leave safeties ten yards back and wait for the running back to get to the second level before providing run support. Even though these two approaches were completely opposite to one another, they were exactly what each team needed to do.

Northwestern knows that they cannot compete with Ohio State if they just play them straight up, so they have to cheat toward certain plays and otherwise play unsound. Before the half, when Ohio State only ran different zone variations, Northwestern feasted on the offense. After the half, when Ohio State had added a couple counters and some zone reads, Northwestern was consistently gashed for ten yards per carry. More importantly, they gave up both of Stroud’s huge runs, Williams’ big run for a touchdown, and even Egbuka’s touchdown. They took risks, which paid dividends on quite a few drives, but it also ended up hurting them on all of Ohio State’s touchdown drives.

Ohio State was in the opposite position: they knew that they would win if they just played clean due to their increased talent. While Northwestern occasionally had some good runs, especially in early downs, they were not able to sustain them for more than a single drive. Given the wind and the quality of Northwestern’s specialists, Ohio State knew that the only way Northwestern was going to score is if they scored touchdowns, so they were willing to let Northwestern take some yardage underneath in exchange for a lower rate of explosives. This is the Iowa approach to defense most of the time – force your opponent to drive the length of the field, and the defense will have the advantage in the red zone. Ohio State pulled it off, as Northwestern failed to convert a play longer than 20 yards. Once they figured out the Wildcat, Northwestern wasn’t nearly as much of a threat.

I get that people want to see aggressive defenses that dominate an opponent, but in a game like this, I think that this was the right call. If Northwestern had just popped one or two big plays, which could have easily been a fluke, the game looks even closer. It definitely wasn’t a comfortable game, but those who watched when Tressel was the coach know that level of comfort doesn’t equate to wins. This game was a throwback. There is a reason why Tressel managed games like this; he won a lot of them.

Of course, most people don’t really care about this game in particular. Everyone expected a win against Northwestern. The fans are interested in the larger context of the year; what does this game mean for the Michigan game? While I have talked about why I think this game is largely discardable, I usually say that any singular datapoint in a season doesn’t really tell you much about a team. To get a better picture, it helps to consider the dataset as a whole. I won’t post every defensive grade here, but I will post the last two weeks I have missed:

There are a couple of trends over the past three games that are worth addressing. First, for the first time all season, I graded the defense negatively against Penn State and Northwestern. Some of this was discussed above for Northwestern; Ohio State largely kept things as vanilla as possible to prevent the big play, so they didn’t do much on the positive side. Northwestern had a below average day scheming against Ohio State’s defense as a result, but the total is lopsided due to Ohio State’s approach. Penn State had a genuinely outstanding gameplan. Because that game ended up not having an official write up, I haven’t talked about it yet, but they were consistently running a triple option in that game with the option for Clifford to hand it off, run it, or throw it on a screen. While I am not sure if Ohio State knew this was coming, it is a tough play to defend and always puts Penn State in a good position number wise. Also, unlike a lot of people out there, I think Sean Clifford is probably the second-best quarterback in the Big Ten behind Stroud. His mobility is underrated, and his passing is solid. I think he is more consistent than McCarthy and has less to work with regarding his offensive line. His competence allowed Penn State to be creative with its play calls. While other offenses might be as prepared as Penn State, I don’t think the Northwestern game will be repeated any time soon.

Even though it didn’t show up in this game, the pressure has been outstanding in the past few games highlighted by the continuously excellent play from Jaylahn Tuimoloau and Zach Harrison. I think that most fans are starting to get more comfortable with the idea that you can have adequate pressure without racking up the sacks, especially considering that Georgia and Michigan are largely in the same place right now.

The secondary is still the biggest worry spot on the team for me, but it has largely been steady during this stretch. There aren’t any outright trouble spots in this unit, but there aren’t any stars either other than perhaps Ransom.  Even though he struggled against NW, he has been good for almost the entire season. JK Johnson had a terrible game against PSU, but he has otherwise been good this year. I don’t think they’ve solved all of their issues, but I do like that Burke has gone a month without a catastrophic mistake. This is a team full of #2 corners, and while there are worse places to be, I do think that this could be exploited against a team who throws a lot.

Finally, the front six have been quite good. Eichenberg is definitely playing better than Chambers, but Chambers hasn’t been bad by any means. The defensive ends definitely drop off after J.T. and Harrison, but the defensive tackles are a little different. I like Vincent a lot, but Tyleik Williams has had a couple nice plays in recent weeks and has flashed in the past. The other tackle spot has three guys that have different strengths: Hall is easily the best pass rusher of the group, while Cage and Hamilton are better at holding up to double-teams. I thought that Hall got bullied a bit in the Penn State game and was volatile in the Iowa game. Still, he has the highest upside of the group, and I imagine he would be the guy to get the most time in a playoff game.

What should we worry about for the rest of the season?

The corners, and it hasn’t changed from last month. I think Jordan Hancock probably helps the group, but I don’t think he is going to be a superstar down the stretch. Despite the concern, they’ve been solid for the last month excepting JK Johnson’s game against Penn State. It isn’t that they are bad; they just aren’t as good as the rest of the team, and an elite passing attack could exploit them. The good news? I am not sure if they will face an elite offense for the rest of the season, including the playoffs.

The other major concern is that this defense has slowly regressed the last few weeks regarding performance adjusted for average opponent quality. Here is a table for the opponent adjusted defensive metrics for a few select teams:

For a while, this defense was tracking with the best defenses that Ohio State has had over the last decade: 2017 and 2019. Now, the defense is tracking more with the 2014 team. Still a quality defense and one that can win a lot of games, but that defense was not nearly as dominant as those units. Furthermore, the best performances for this defense (even adjusting for opponent quality) have been against their worst opponents, meaning that as the level of competition increases, their excellence may not scale well. They could be the defensive equivalent of the mid 2010’s Ed Warriner offenses. Do I think this is the case? No, I do not. However, if Michigan has their best offensive day against the Buckeyes, we may have had the signs in front of us the entire year.

Compared to recent years, these complaints are minor. The corners are only pretty good. The defense is only very good, not the best in the country. Still, in a year where the National Championship is in reach, every criticism will be looked at through a microscope.  

What should we not worry about for the rest of the season?

The run defense in general. While this run defense isn’t as dominant against the run as we might have thought a couple of weeks ago, they have still been better. Furthermore, last year’s run defense was pretty good, if severely basic after Barnes took over. That defense had a lot of issues, but the run defense was surprisingly the most functional part of it until the Michigan game, where Michigan figured out that Ohio State’s patchwork run defense was not overly comprehensive. I do not think that the Michigan performance from last year is likely again. In that game, Ohio State had its worst performance defending the run, defending the pass, and running the football even adjusted for the opponent’s YPC/YPA. That was a massive statistical outlier for the season, and fans should view the game as such. Even if this unit is about as good as last year but can adjust mid-game, this year’s game is not going to be a repeat of last year. Based on what we’ve seen thus far, I think we can safely conclude that this defense is good enough to slow down Michigan.

I am also not worried about the defensive play-calling, as I thought the conservative approach was appropriate for this game, and I thought Penn State prepared well. While Knowles might get outschemed early by some teams, I don’t expect to see anything like this for the rest of the year. My grading has gone from almost all negative play-calling days to almost all positive ones with a couple of negatives. This is a big improvement over last year, and even a little regression to the mean is not something to be overly concerned about.

What should we get excited about for the rest of the season?

J.T. and Zach Harrison. Since I didn’t have a write-up after the Penn State game, it needs to be said. These are two of the best defensive ends in the Big Ten, and it feels good to have that again. The biggest surprise for these two has been their versatility, so they can be used as viable interior linemen when they want to get more defensive ends on the field for a boosted pass rush. Seeing both of them make impact plays regularly outside of the typical pass rush has been a welcome surprise.

The big plays are also something that we should get excited about. While I mentioned concern over the defense giving up more yardage on a per-play basis than they were at the beginning of the year, I think the story of this defense isn’t complete without mentioning the big plays. Whether it was turnovers against Iowa and Penn State or fourth down stops against Northwestern, this defense added value beyond just holding opponents to a low per-play total. The Penn State game might have been lost without the effort of J.T. and the rest of the defense. While I never like relying on big plays, this is clearly a big positive for this defense right now, and aggressive defenses will always be judged on how many big plays they can generate. The defense has more than exceeded expectations this year. I have no idea if this team will get everything in order all at once down the stretch, but they look capable of it. At this point, we won’t know until the Michigan game.