Stephen Means, Stefan Krajisnik and Andrew Gillis discuss Ohio State football's 38-14 win over Indiana.
Listen to Buckeye Talk, your favorite Ohio State football podcast, five days a week with Stephen Means, Stefan Krajisnik and Andrew Gillis.got its second top-five win of the season thanks to a 38-15 victory of the season. Now it’s one win away from returning to the Big Ten Championship Game.
lead in this game. The problem is Indiana finished the game with 151 yards and I think the other 40 of their excuse me, they had two drives, a 70 yard drive and a 75 play yard drive where that’s where all their yardage came from essentially that first drive of the game and then their last drive of the game where Ohio State was also rotating in some backups. But this game played out exactly how I thought. Early on, Indiana will get some things going but eventually Ohio State would show.
I thought that that was where you were really going to start to see Ohio State pull away, but I did not think it was going to be as easy, frankly, as it was for Ohio State. You definitely saw the talent gap. That was notable. You definitely saw how good Ohio State was, how deep Ohio State was. I’m not going to do the thing that I’m sure people are probably doing where it’s, well, Indiana probably just wasn’t that good anyway.
I agree with you, Stefan. He helped flip this game and I’m going to talk about Caleb Downs because I just love talking about Caleb Downs. That’s the first punt return for a touchdown Ohio State has had since 2014 when Jaylen Marshall took one back against guess who? Indiana. Guess how that season played out. Guess what happened that year for a team who also had some injuries at some key positions and had to have some makeshift things happen.
not great in that regard in terms of getting out the field on third down and then I mean the rest of the game Indiana went six of fourteen so what is that three of eleven the rest of the game that that that those are numbers you will take every single week.This, this defense, this was kind of the pinnacle performance of how this defense has changed. And it’s impressive, man. It looks like we’re watching a completely different team than, what we saw in the Oregon game.
He started the game, he was five of seven in his first seven passes and finished the game eight of 18 for 68 yards. So Ohio State decided they’re gonna not let Kurdish work, be able to be any level of effective in the passing. And a lot of that again, goes back to Kudos to Cody Simon for getting home and getting to the quarterback. And I think it unlocked Jack Sawyer. I think it unlocked JT Twinmoloa. I think it unlocked his defensive line as a whole.
JT was unblocked once or twice. Jack came right up the middle, Jack Sawyer, and there was nobody there. Like it just felt like they were causing havoc. And you don’t want to, you don’t want to throw this allegation out for a quarterback because it is kind of like not great. It’s not a great look on them, but it kind of felt like Curtis Rourke was seeing ghosts a little bit.
As they showed it in Indiana, they can. It allows you to send to Cody Simon. It allows you to send Sonny Styles one more blitzes, because what that does is it gives defensive line juice. And we saw that play out. And this is.What about not even matter if you if you you if they’re not gonna hold up a coverage it might not matter if you’re just gonna get after Gabriel quick enough it like that might they might they might have a terrible game.
But there’s a ton of talent around Dylan Gabriel and he’s always mentioned in a Heisman conversation. Yeah, I think Will Howard should be. And I don’t know, I really can’t put my finger on it on why it is that he’s talked about the way he’s talked about it. And we’re part of that as well, right? There’s been moments where we probably haven’t given him the flowers that he deserves, but it is such a strange dynamic because all the numbers suggest that he should be there.
even if he doesn’t have the weapons to do it. Those are all the guys, if I’m remembering that correctly, who were ahead of him in the Heisenauts coming in this Saturday. So because of that, Andrew.Yeah, I went with that. Yes, that’s where I was going with that. You’ve been the hardest, you’ve been the most difficult grader on him and been the toughest on him all year.
He’s played really well, so I think he’s kind of been exactly what I thought. I think over these last couple of weeks, though, that like intermediate passing game for him has gotten really, really dead.Well, in terms of X’s and O’s, I agree with Andrew. So I’m to go a different route. There’s a confidence to him right now. I think he’s playing with little Moxie that we didn’t see. Maybe he just didn’t express it a ton early in year. Maybe he had it, but we didn’t see it as much.
He hasn’t really had the this is my game moment yet, but also he has to have that this is my game moment Maybe it’s Caleb downs now though. I am I’m taking early stake in the cave of Dallas Heisman Trophy race for 2025. I’m justI mean, listen, we’ve seen freshmen take over the Michigan game before. Crystal Lavey and Garrett Wolfson did it. So we’ve seen it before. And also we’ve seen freshmen receivers get on the playoff stage and take over too.
in September. Now granted they were playing Akron so it wasn’t needed but I had not seen anything from even when we’re going back to the spring and watching practice and fall camp practices that suggested, hey we get into a playoff game he’s gonna be able to do this and he’s doing that type of stuff now excuse me. That’s a different ball game. That’s a...
and wasn’t afraid to like take on and grab it by the throat. Everything that comes with being an Ohio State quarterback. And I agree, you are seeing that funnel through the rest of this team, but. shouldn’t have scored that last touchdown. should have just taken a knee and end of the game. I don’t care about that either. I think trash talk is cool and good. I think that if you’re sitting at the one, you just had a player stop at the one yard line when he should have had a touchdown. And then they were like, okay, well, we’re just going to score. like, what’s the difference? I super did not care.Yeah, it’s, I will say this funny.
Indiana came in here thinking they were ready to fight with the big boys. So guess what? It’s the job of the big boy to do Let you know you’re not in our weight class yet. They should have played not like us when they were trolling Indiana I’m so serious. They should have played out like us and I’m saying this as a person who is still in the group of Indiana as a playoff team.
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