It was late on the night of September 6th but then-No. 8 Ohio State’s season, sitting at 1-1, was over. The vultures were circling moments after the team fell 35-21 to Virginia Tech and the outlook for Urban Meyer’s program (and the Big Ten in general) seemed to be relegated to a nice postseason trip to a Florida bowl game if they were lucky. The Buckeyes had just lost for the third time in their past four games and given up seven sacks to Bud Foster’s tough Hokies defense. There were calls to bench quarterback J.T. Barrett after he threw three interceptions in just his second start and even Meyer’s personally coached unit of special teams had failed OSU that night several times, including with a 24-yard punt to setup a touchdown. “We just gotta get a lot better. And that starts tomorrow,” Meyer said in his press conference at the time. “We had a good meeting as a team. You really find out about people. And I have a lot of confidence that some of these young people —now they’re veteran guys— that are going to get better and better each week.” As hard as it was to believe when those coach-speak words left Meyer’s mouth, that’s exactly what happened with the Buckeyes…
Continue Reading: Who Will Be This Year’s Ohio State?
