It wasn’t all that long ago that everyone in college football nation seemed to believe that the 2015 Ohio State Buckeyes were unbeatable. After all, in the wake of that fairly impressive Week 1 performance—and in the much wider wake of that stunning championship run-in to the 2014 season—every indication was that Urban Meyer’s latest bunch of superstars was his strongest yet. These ’15 Buckeyes, we agreed, had the nation’s best defensive end (Joey Bosa), one of the nation’s best tailbacks (Ezekiel Elliott), one of the nation’s most promising X-factors (Braxton Miller) and, perhaps most importantly, two of the nation’s finest and most battle-proven quarterbacks (J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones). The Buckeyes didn’t play a flawless game in that Week 1 showdown with the Hokies, no, but when they needed to, they made plays—astounding plays, really. Miller stepped up and Ezekiel stepped up and, yeah, those dueling quarterbacks stepped up too. Jones threw for 187 yards and two touchdowns, Barrett chipped in another, and in the immediate aftermath, we couldn’t help but conclude that, yes, the Buckeyes were the very best team in the country. By a wide margin. What a difference two weeks makes. Since that impressive Week 1 triumph, the Buckeyes haven’t exactly been anywhere near as good, and on offense, they often been inept. In Week 2, Ohio State won 38-0 against Hawaii, but while the final score may have made the performance appear dominant, it really wasn’t; neither Jones nor Barrett threw a touchdown pass on the day, and both ended up with quarterback ratings under 48. [embedded content] Then came a Week 3 tussle with Northern Illinois, the day when the alarms in Columbus really started to go off; Meyer’s vaunted team managed all of 298 yards and 14 first downs against the Huskies, and, most distressingly, Barrett and Jones were, in a word, awful…
Continue Reading: At Ohio State, Quarterback Struggles Aren’t Just On the Quarterbacks
