How Ohio State football’s defense turned early failure into second-half dominance of Notre Dame: Nathan Baird’s observations

 

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COLUMBUS, Ohio — Three observations from Ohio State football’s 21-10 victory over Notre Dame.

1. Jim Knowles’ first play call as Ohio State’s defensive coordinator was a near-total failure.

He aggressively blitzed cornerback Denzel Burke, and the sophomore nearly got home on Notre Dame quarterback Tyler Buchner. He threw into the blitz and connected with Lorenzo Styles. What should have been an 8 or 9-yard gain became a 54-yard blowout when safety Josh Proctor missed the tackle.

Two important things happened as a result of that mishap.

• Ohio State’s defensive line, led by redshirt freshman Mike Hall Jr. making his first career start, stepped up and stuffed Notre Dame runs for three straight plays. Field goal kicked, crisis mitigated, tone set.

“The next play is the most important play is our mentality,” linebacker Tommy Eichenberg said. “Things happen and we just rebounded.”

• Lathan Ransom replaced Proctor on OSU’s second defensive series and rarely left the game. Knowles said he simply believes in playing the hot hand and saw no reason not to stick with Ransom.

“His talent is seeing a play, diagnosing and reacting — and he’s not afraid to get after it,” Knowles said. “He’ll take the shot, and that’s a big deal.”

One year after the defense looked so unsettled and so unsure of its identity, this group seemed much more certain of who needed to be on the field. From Hall’s first career start and extensive snaps to Eichenberg rarely leaving the field to Burke and Cam Brown locking down cornerback, Knowles and his staff appear to have a clear picture of their top 11 players.

Could that have been said at any point last season? “Confidence” became the defense’s critical buzzword in preseason camp, relating to both how the players felt inside it and how the coaches felt about those players.

While Buchner did find a handful of holes to exploit in the air, for the most part, that confidence was on display throughout Saturday. In the second half, OSU held Notre Dame to net 72 yards — only 23 yards on 12 carries.

“I think you just saw what I was talking about leading into the game – energy, running to the ball. being decisive, playing fast,” OSU coach Ryan Day said. “If they gave up a big play it wasn’t a panic. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my god, the world’s coming to an end. They just keep fighting.”

Knowles called the game from the coaches box in the press box. He said he could do so only because of the trust he had in his assistants down through the support personnel.

He prefers that vantage point to better diagnose and identify developing formations. But that wasn’t the only reason he enjoyed the view Saturday.

Notre Dame defensive lineman Howard Cross III (56) tries to drag down OSU running back Miyan Williams (3) during the second half of the Buckeyes' 21-10 victory.David Petkiewicz, 

2. The box score shows a near-even distribution between runs and pass plays for Ohio State. Yet that tells you nothing about the true proportions for most of the game.

Entering the fourth quarter, the Buckeyes had run the ball only 19 times while throwing it 30 times. Whereas last season’s offense threw the ball 53.8% of time — already higher than normal under Day – the split through three quarters against Notre Dame was 61.2% pass.

TreVeyon Henderson and Miyan Williams then shouldered the load in the fourth quarter, carrying on 10 of 14 plays during the game-sealing touchdown drive.

At one point in the third quarter, OSU was averaging 4.8 yards per pass attempt and 4.5 yards per carry. The game began to resemble the 2020 Big Ten championship against Northwestern, when Day stuck to the pass even when Justin Fields had a hand injury and Chris Olave was absent due to COVID-19.

In both cases, Day adjusted soon enough to use the running game to get the offense on track.

3. Who knows how this game might have ended up had Ohio State not held such an edge on kickoffs?

Notre Dame was called for a personal foul om OSU’s first point-after kick, which moved the ensuing kickoff to the 50-yard line. Walk-on kicker Jayden Fielding sent that one out the back of the end zone for a touchback.

On the two kickoffs Notre Dame actually returned, Chris Tyree managed only 11 yards each. Chip Trayanum took him down at the Irish 15 on the game’s opening kickoff. Xavier Johnson followed up his go-ahead touchdown catch late in the third with an open-field tackle of Tyree at the 13.

“We’ve got to fix out kickoff return unit,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said. “We wanted to be aggressive. If they were going to give us a return we were going to return it. But our execution wasn’t where we wanted it to be.”