Let's just say it was a good weekend to be a member of the Ohio State offense.
In a pulverizing performance against Purdue, the Buckeyes found their stride to once again resemble the nation's top offense on Saturday, and several performers across the group will be rewarded for their efforts accordingly in this week's stock report.
On defense, things weren't quite as pretty for Ohio State, but finishing with a win is more than some top teams can claim as the regular season winds down into its final weeks.
Let's take a look at who's trending up this week and whose stock took a hit after the latest slate of games.
Stock Up
Garrett Wilson
With a show-stopping four-touchdown performance on Saturday, Garrett Wilson showed why the Buckeye offense simply isn’t the same without him.
After missing the Nebraska game due to concussion protocol, the junior wideout set season-highs with 10 receptions and 126 receiving yards and set career-highs with three receiving touchdowns and 177 total yards from scrimmage against Purdue. Fifty-one of those came on an end-around handoff to the end zone that gave Wilson his first career rushing score.
There's 10:48 left in the 3Q.@GarrettWilson_V has 4 TDs, and counting. pic.twitter.com/OGiFF0w9Yt
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) November 13, 2021
Somehow after all that, Wilson was not even the Buckeyes’ leading receiver on the day, as Jaxon Smith-Njigba finished with 139 yards. But Wilson’s outing was without doubt the most memorable, and likely the most impressive of his career to date.
C.J. Stroud
Although his Heisman Trophy campaign may have stalled slightly during consecutive out-of-sync performances from the Ohio State offense against Penn State and Nebraska, C.J. Stroud’s road to New York got right back on track with perhaps his best game of the season on Saturday.
Stroud completed nearly 82 percent of his passes, his most accurate game of the year, and sliced up the Boilermaker secondary to the tune of 361 yards and five touchdowns in the 59-31 win.
It was an outing good enough to vault Stroud into Heisman favorite status among many oddsmakers, and we won’t argue with their assessment.
Ohio State offensive line
Not only did the Ohio State run game struggle mightily during the past two games entering Saturday, but Stroud had been harassed far more frequently when dropping back to throw the ball against the Huskers in particular.
Both of those issues were remedied against Purdue, as the Buckeye offensive line boosted its stock with a bounceback performance on both fronts. Even with the presence of vaunted edge rusher George Karlaftis, the Boilermakers didn’t register a sack or a quarterback hurry on Stroud the entire evening and finished with just three tackles for loss in the game.
On the ground, the Buckeyes had their second-best yardage total of the season, finishing with 263 on a whopping 8.5 yards per carry. TreVeyon Henderson ran for 98 yards and two scores on just 13 carries, and Miyan Williams had his best game since the season opener with a 117-yard performance of his own.
Hit the hole and just DUSTED everyone.
— Eleven Warriors (@11W) November 13, 2021
TreVeyon Henderson looking like he was shot out of a cannon. pic.twitter.com/BtHg22J7nf
Buckeyes nearing records
After another explosive day from the Ohio State offense (to put it mildly) a couple of all-time program records are just about ready to fall here in the next week or so.
Henderson scored his 16th and 17th touchdowns of the season on Saturday, putting him just one shy of Maurice Clarett’s all-time Ohio State freshman mark of 18, set in 2002. The next time Henderson crosses the goal line, which has happened in every Buckeye game but one this season, the five-star recruit will share the record with the aforementioned former Ohio State running back.
At wide receiver, Chris Olave is one touchdown short of tying David Boston’s all-time mark of 34 receiving scores in scarlet and gray. Olave caught his team-leading 11th touchdown of the year on, and with two more, he’ll be the new career receiving touchdowns leader at Ohio State.
Should Wilson gain 187 receiving yards next week, which is not out of the question given Michigan State’s pass defense, the Buckeyes will also have two 1,000-yard receivers in the same season for the first time in program history.
If Garrett Wilson gets 187 more receiving yards this season and Chris Olave gets 292, Ohio State will have three 1,000-yard receivers in 2021.
— Griffin Strom (@GriffinStrom3) November 14, 2021
Keep in mind, only five Buckeyes all-time had ever had 1,000 receiving yards in a season entering this year.
Wisconsin
The Badgers earn another spot on the good side of the stock report as they continue their rise from the ashes this season, having now rattled off six straight wins after blowing the doors off of Northwestern this weekend.
With a 35-7 win over the Wildcats, Wisconsin now sits at 7-3 on the season and 5-2 in conference play, with winnable games against Nebraska and Minnesota standing as the only obstacle to an 8-0 run to end the regular season.
Big Ten West standings with two weeks to go:
— Zach Heilprin (@ZachHeilprin) November 14, 2021
Wisconsin - 5-2
Iowa - 5-2
Minnesota - 4-3
Purdue - 4-3
Illinois - 3-4
Nebraska - 1-6
Northwestern - 1-6
Paul Chryst’s program has an identical conference record as Iowa, which has now won two in a row in its own right, but the Badgers own the head-to-head advantage in the Big Ten West title race from their 27-7 win over the Hawkeyes on Oct. 30.
Stock Down
Buckeye pass defense
While the Ohio State offense dazzled on Saturday, the defense left much to be desired with the numbers Purdue put up in the passing game.
Aidan O’Connell finished with 390 yards, four scores and no turnovers against the Buckeyes, and Purdue completed seven pass plays of at least 20 yards during its 31-point effort. That point total was the most Ohio State has allowed to any opponent since its loss to Oregon, and Purdue’s 481 total yards were the most against the Buckeyes since they gave up 501 to Tulsa in Week 3.
Purdue ties it up 7-7 pic.twitter.com/vsCW4oxU4n
— ESPN College Football (@ESPNCFB) November 13, 2021
Purdue actually played the Buckeyes to a draw in the second half, although Ohio State ran out the clock deep in Boilermaker territory to end the game, and that was because the Buckeye defense struggled to defend the pass in an otherwise dominant performance.
Ohio State pass rush
Whether it was a cause or effect of the poor performance from the pass defense, Ohio State came up empty-handed in the sack department against Purdue.
Ohio State’s pass rush curried plenty of good favor with the stock report over the last several weeks, improving from its slow start to the season to become one of the nation’s top defenses in terms of sack production entering Saturday’s game.
But the Buckeyes failed to tally a single sack against the Boilermakers and were credited with just one quarterback hurry, per Pro Football Focus. The only other time Ohio State has been held without a sack this season was during its Sept. 11 loss to Oregon, while it hadn’t been held below 10 quarterback pressures in any previous game.
Oklahoma
After teetering on the edge of disaster for much of the 2021 season, Oklahoma finally fell off the cliff on Saturday.
The warning signs were there during five single-digit Sooner wins leading into the weekend, and many of them against subpar opposition, but Baylor became the first team to hand Lincoln Riley and company a loss.
Caleb Williams second interception of the day
— Bally Sports (@BallySports) November 13, 2021
(via @CFBONFOX) pic.twitter.com/0TOnICajby
The 27-14 game saw Oklahoma fail to muster more than 260 yards of total offense, and two Caleb Williams interceptions helped usher in the return of Spencer Rattler at quarterback. Even when undefeated, the Sooners were not among the top seven teams in the country in the eyes of the College Football Playoff selection committee, and after Saturday’s loss, they are likely to fall even further out of contention.
Indiana
We knew Indiana was bad. But 35-point blowout loss to Rutgers bad? That might be another rung below.
The Hoosiers fell to 0-7 in conference play and 2-8 on the season after suffering a 38-3 loss to Greg Schiano’s Scarlet Knights at home. Rutgers itself had only one win in conference play entering the game, but when a team hands the ball over six times like the Hoosiers did Saturday, it becomes pretty difficult not to win.
Texas
The 'Horns were downed once again in Austin this weekend.
Hook 'em? Nah. COOK 'EM!!
— Bally Sports (@BallySports) November 14, 2021
Kansas knocks off Texas 57-56 in OT with this 2-pt conversion!
(via @SportsCenter)pic.twitter.com/W0BHmQmR3i
A 1-8 Kansas team put up 57 points on Steve Sarkisian and company, including the game-winning 2-point conversion in overtime, to hand Texas its sixth loss of 2021 and a particularly bad one at that. The Jayhawks were a 31-point underdog but still managed to increase the Longhorns’ losing streak to five games during a disappointing season on all fronts for Sark.
To make matters worse, star running back Bijan Robinson suffered a season-ending elbow injury in the loss.
