Ohio State is One of the Worst Teams at One Important Thing

Two plays in Ohio State’s narrow Week 9 win over Nebraska told the story of the Buckeyes’ run game and Ryan Day’s lack of confidence in it. 

The first play was a 4th-and-1 from the Huskers’ 27 on Ohio State’s first drive. Will Howard handed off to TreVeyon Henderson, who ran up the middle behind standard zone blocking. The Huskers, who had eight defenders in the box against eight blockers, blew the play up. Henderson met contact at the line and went backward as Nebraska took over on downs. 

With 8 minutes left and Ohio State trailing 17-14 at home, the Buckeyes faced a nearly identical situation: 4th-and-half a yard at the Nebraska 28. This time, Day was not interested in testing his short-yardage run game. Howard took a shotgun snap, sprinted out to his right, and found Emeka Egbuka on the sideline for a 2-yard gain and a first down. 

A few plays later, Ohio State took the lead, which it held onto for a 21-17 survival against a less talented team. So, OSU can beat Nebraska without a reliable short-yardage attack. Whether it can beat Penn State, Oregon, Texas, or Georgia is an open question entering Week 10. 

The Buckeyes’ inability to reliably run the ball on obvious run downs is a bizarre story that goes well beyond the Nebraska game. 

Generally, Ohio State runs the ball well. 

Big shocker: An Ohio State team with Henderson and Quinshon Judkins will have pretty good rushing stats. OSU is 10th in the power conferences in rushing success rate (45.6%) and ninth in rushing yards per play (6.1).

The Buckeyes are also first in the Big Ten and fourth in the nation in rushing TRACR, which is a net efficiency metric that evaluates how well a team performs based on who it plays.

Judkins has produced several highlight-reel carries in his first year after arriving via the transfer portal from Ole Miss. He and Henderson have been similarly productive, with Judkins taking a few more carries so far (80 to 62), Henderson averaging a better carry by yardage (7.1 to 6.5). 

There have been warning signs along the way, though. The biggest was the Nebraska game, in which Ohio State ball carriers averaged a miserable 1.1 yards before contact, the offensive line allowed run disruptions on 58.3% of OSU’s attempts, and the team posted a 21.7% run success rate. 

The Nebraska game left a bad taste in Ohio State fans’ mouths heading into a blockbuster game at Penn State in Week 10. Those fans have good reason to be concerned. 

In crunch time, Ohio State’s run game evaporates. 

How do you define crunch time? There are any number of ways. Overall, Ohio State averages 5.4 yards per carry, but it averages 6.9 in the first half and 4.1 in the second. Ohio State averages 4.2 yards per carry when the game is tied and 2.8 when it’s trailing. 

Of course, you’d expect a team to run the ball less effectively when it’s salting away the clock with a big lead, or when things are going badly enough that a team as talented as Ohio State is behind. But what really tells the story of Ohio State’s failure to run in big spots is short yardage. 

The Buckeyes have run 28 plays this season on third or fourth down with 2 yards or fewer to convert their set of downs. These plays say a lot about Ohio State’s belief in this part of its game: 

• Ohio State runs the ball 71.4% of the time in these short-yardage moments. The Power Four average is higher (75.8%), and many of the sport’s blue-blood programs opt for the run much more frequently than that. Ohio State’s two closest peer programs in recruiting, Alabama and Georgia, run 86.4% and 81.5% of the time, respectively. 
• Ohio State’s success rate when it does run the ball on these downs is 65.0%. The power conference average is 73.6%. Here are the programs with a worse rushing success rate in short yardage than Ohio State this year: Purdue, Maryland, Washington, BYU, Louisville, Arizona, Stanford, Washington State, and Cal. Not the company Ohio State prefers to keep! 
• None of this is because opponents are doing anything special. Ohio State has faced a 50.0 bad box percentage (eight men or more in the defensive front). The Power Four average is 55.5%. 

It has all gotten worse lately. Since Week 7, Ohio State has carried seven times on 3rd- or 4th-and-2 or less and failed on four of those attempts, averaging 1.3 yards on them. 

The Buckeyes do not like to run the ball on the juiciest running downs, because they are bad at it. Not “bad for a program of Ohio State’s stature,” but bad by the standards of a power conference team. 

What is the problem? Well, it could be a few things. 

Ohio State runs the ball roughly as well on zone concepts (6.3 yards per carry on inside and outside zone) as it does on gap plays (6.2 yards per carry on power and counter). On short-yardage downs, Ohio State doesn’t fool around with power or counter runs at all, instead preferring to use standard inside zone runs or “duo,” the latter failing on three of four short-yardage tries in 2024. 

Maybe there’s an Xs-and-Os lever that Day and line coach Justin Frye could pull to improve their fortunes. 

That probably overcomplicates things, though. A more pressing problem is that Ohio State’s offensive line recruiting has lagged the rest of its talent acquisition for several cycles now, and this year’s unit has seen various injuries to a handful of starters. The Buckeyes have churned out plenty of NFL linemen, but they haven’t had one drafted in the first three rounds since 2022 (tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere) and haven’t had a top-two-rounder since 2021 (center Josh Myers). 

Sure, a program that puts someone in the league every year is doing fine in lineman recruiting compared to most college teams. But Ohio State’s parade of first- and second-round picks at other positions (five the past two years) outflanks what it produces on the line. 

How does a team with Henderson and Judkins manage to be mediocre at running the ball when it most needs it? That’s how. 

The problem is likely not fixable this season. Day needs to use the rest of a championship-caliber roster to get around a shortcoming of his own making. 

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