Following his successful call to score a touchdown when a knee to run out the clock would have sufficed in Michigan State’s 35-11 win over Michigan on Saturday, Spartans head coach Mark Dantonio admitted that he was attempting to make a statement.
“I just felt like we needed to put a stake in them at that point,” Dantonio said, via Ralph D. Russo of The Associated Press, via ABC News.
And why not? After all, Saturday’s battle for the Paul Bunyan Trophy was Michigan State’s last chance to make an exclamation point before a bye week precedes its Nov. 8 showdown with Ohio State.
But if this weekend was about punctuation marks, then the Buckeyes’ 31-24 double-overtime win over Penn State could best be described as an ellipsis. Because, while Ohio State will likely head to East Lansing with a 7-1 record in tow, its latest effort made it clear that there’s still much to be determined about this Buckeyes team.
Sure, Ohio State managed to head into one of the most hostile environments in the country and beat one of the nation’s highest-ranked defenses with an injured freshman quarterback leading the way. But for much of the game, the Buckeyes looked less like the team that scored an average of 56 points in its previous four games, and more like the one that suffered a now-embarrassing loss to Virginia Tech on Sept. 6.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do as we continue this journey,” OSU head coach Urban Meyer put it to ESPN’s Holly Rowe after the game.
Quarterback…
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