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What Went Wrong In Ohio State's Cotton Bowl Loss To Missouri? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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  Welcome to Buckeyes tomorrow morning for Saturday, December thirtieth. I'm your host,
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  Tom Moore. The Akron game is in two hundred and forty five days.
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  Gonna have to get used to saying that the game against Michigan in three hundred
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  and thirty six days. The twenty twenty three Ohio State football season is dead,
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  long lived. The twenty twenty four Ohio State football season. Buckeyes wrapped
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  up their twenty twenty three season with a little bit of a thud in the
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  Cotton Bowl. They lost fourteen to three to Missouri. Definitely one of the
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  weirder Ohio State games I can remember. It was one where you it was
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  a little disjointed from the start, change on the offensive line, different quarterbacks
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  starting, and then the game it can sort of started off a little raggedy,
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  and then as soon as Devin Brown went down with an injury, it
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  was like, Oh, Okay, this is going to be how that goes.
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  Yeah. I've been looking for past games to try and find comparisons,
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  and I think I have to kind of frankenstein it a little bit. It
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  felt in some ways like the championship game against Florida when Ted Genen Junior was
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  tackled by Roy Hall and oh, by the way, we really leveraged everything
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  in how we were going to use tedgin junior. But with that being said,
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  Ted Ginten Junior, you know, was a known commodity, whereas Devin
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  Brown was an unknown commodity largely. And it felt as if they put really
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  all the eggs in that basket. And then you have to bring in Lincoln
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  Keenholtz, who not only had few reps, probably had like no reps,
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  and he was ineffective for a large part of the game. And we go
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  to the fourth quarter with Ohio State still leading the game three nothing, and
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  fine, yes, Missouri scored I think on the first offensive play of the
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  fourth quarter, but through three quarters the defense held. And there going to
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  be people who are going to point out that Ohio State gave up a pair
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  of ninety plus yard drives in the fourth quarter, but that's not where the
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  problems start. Yeah, and I think it's worth pointing out that putting in
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  Lincoln keyholes it was the right move, very clearly the right move. Devin
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  Brown, he was four of six or twenty yards, was three runs for
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  negative twelve yards. That was the extent of his day. But he was
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  very clearly compromised and very clearly just a sitting duck back there. His legs
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  are a big part of his game. As soon as he got hurt,
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  it was just that was it. And you can't even drive the ball if
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  your lives are bad, right, yeah, it was. It was very
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  clearly the right decision to pull him. But at that point, you've got
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  a true freshman who was not in for the spring, who played his high
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  school football in a small you know, small schools in South Dakota, so
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  you're not playing SEC in Big ten level competition, and who only got a
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  little taste of the field this fall. So that's really an unfair position to
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  put Lincoln Keenhols in. You can you can look at his stat line and
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  go, well, that's not very good, but it's an unfair position for
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  to put him in. And he talked after the game about the fact that
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  this is something that's going to make him better having you know, he said
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  it was you know, it's kind of cool to be out there. I
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  was like, all right, well, this is I don't think he was
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  necessarily expecting to be thrown into the first half of that game. But that's
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  a memorable day for him and this is a learning experience for him. And
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  the offensive line he was playing behind was not great. They had a change
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  on the offensive line, and the change did not you know, did not
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  suddenly turn this into a better offensive line. Yeah, you know what was
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  not cool for linkln keenholes that final strip sack where he got Malachie crunched and
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  gave the ball up and they they they looked, they looked to see if
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  made he threw a pass there, and he didn't. It was absolutely a
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  fumble. But yeah, the offensive line struggled mightily. Matt Jones moves to
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  center Enokamahi and comes into the lineup at guard Carson Hinsman. It appears maybe
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  it had developed a little bit of a case of the yips and it was
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  just not working out at that point. That doesn't mean that Hensman's journey as
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  a Buckeye is done, by any stretch of the imagination. It just meant
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  that he wasn't really in a position to play. Today people are going to
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  say, obviously the line was not working out. You had three quarters to
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  figure that out. Why didn't you make a change to who exactly to who.
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  There are a lot of things that can be said about the coaches not
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  getting this or not getting that, but they are fully aware that stuff was
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  not working there. And the fact that they did not have a solution I
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  don't think was out of sheer stubbornness or ignorance or anything like that. I
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  just think it was a matter of them not having the pieces necessary to succeed
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  there. And that is a problem. Yeah, that is a problem,
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  and that's a problem. The good news. We were asked on our postgame
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  show, you know, is there any reason for hope for twenty twenty four?
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  And the reason for hope for twenty twenty four is, yeah, you
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  know where your holes are right now. You at home know where the holes
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  are right now. Ohio State probably has a party good sense for where the
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  holes are. And if not, they can just check Twitter or check our
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  message board and people will let them know. Just ask us, Yeah,
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  just ask us. It has never been easier to fix holes. You just
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  need to go out and bring guys into the portal. Free agency has come
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  to college football, and in some ways people don't particularly like that, and
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  I understand that. But also, if you're a big brand team with more
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  resources than just about anyone else in the sport. You can fix your problems,
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  so that's not necessarily you know, the twenty twenty four season is far
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  from doomed. There is quite a bit of smoke around former Kansas State quarterback
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  Will Howard already in the transfer portal potentially being connected to Ohio State. We'll
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  see if that happens. We'll see if they pursue some offensive lineman. We'll
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  see who comes back from that defense. Because, boyle boy, that defense
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  was good, good like good good for a huge chunk of that game before
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  they really kind of wore down in the fourth quarter. Ye still, even
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  after the two ninety yard drives, gave up four point seven yards per play
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  to Missouri, three point eight yards rushing to Missouri, and for a huge
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  chunk of the game Missouri was running for basically nothing. Brady Cook was run
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  absolutely running for his life most of the game. Ohio State because mister Jack
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  Sawyer among others. Yes, yeah, Ohio State finished with six sacks,
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  Jack Sawyer three sacks, J T. Twumalua one, Jordan Hancock won,
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  Ty Hamilton won eight tackles for loss. That was As for I feel like
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  for four years since since Chase Young left, we've been talking about the fact
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  that, well, the Ohio State defensive line just doesn't get to the quarterback.
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  And you know, you can have a good performance without getting to quarterback.
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  But it's been like four years of boy, this team just doesn't quite
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  get to the quarterback. Boy, howdy they got to the quarterback. No,
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  they absolutely did. And let's not forget Missouri had a semi finalist team
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  for the Joe Moore Award that goes in the nation's top offensive line. So
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  this wasn't like they were going against the Vanderbilt offensive line and that this was
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  a known weakness for Missouri. No, it was a known strength for Missouri.
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  How well their offensive line played. I mean, they did get knocked
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  around a little bit against some of the better teams they played. Ohio State
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  obviously was able to knock them around a little bit. But the thing that
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  was not there was, Okay, Ohio State has gotten self in trouble,
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  but we know that they can flip a switch and have a twenty one point
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  quarter. I don't know how many quarters Ohio State would have had to play
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  to get twenty one points. I'm thinking were at least double digit. I
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  mean at least double digit. And even for the couple of good plays they
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  had offensively, then they were followed up by bad plays. And you just
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  can't have those types of killers. And Missouri did not respect Ohio State's ability
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  to throw the ball, was putting eight, nine, ten, twenty guys
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  in the box. And I'm sure there are going to be people who are
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  going to be critical of Trevon Henderson and guys like that. But when you're
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  getting contacted three yards four yards behind the line of scrimmage, not at the
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  line of scrimmage, behind the line of scrimmage, there's not much that you
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  can do. But I haven't even really had a chance as we are recording
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  the show to replay the game in my mind. The replay on the TV.
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  I don't know when I'm going to be ready for that one, but
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  replay it on my mind. We said, oh, we're not gonna do
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  our longest morning show, and now I'm gonna wind Tom up. And I'm
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  the one who wants to leave the most. But what the how did we
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  watch on special teams? Nothing is the answer. You watch It's like Seinfeld,
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  It's a show about nothing. You have. Your kick return game is
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  stand there and watch the ball sale over your head. Your punt return game
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  is fair catch it your punt block in a game where you don't have an
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  offense functionally for huge stretches a game because of all the factors you talked about.
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  Offensive line was a big problem, which makes the run game a problem,
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  which makes the past game impossible. Plus you got a true freshman quarterback,
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  so you got all this stuff. The offense, for reasons that are
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  probably someone's fault and for reasons that are not somebody's fault, was not a
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  factor. The defense was spectacular for three quarters for the most part, and
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  then eventually wore down. There is a third phase of the game where if
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  your offense is not doing anything, you can make a game changing play in
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  special teams. Now, Rutgers did that in the pinstripe ball. Now it
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  helps that Miami is coached by a bunch of morons and have put nine players
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  out on a punt. So Rutgers was a block a punt for a touchdown
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  and that was the winning score of the game. That is the thing you
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  can do. You can you can try something on special teams. No,
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  I mean the fake punts haven't worked great recently, so maybe not that.
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  But you could maybe try and block a punt. You could maybe try returning
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  to kick. You have incredible skill talent, you could do that. That's
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  the thing you could try. It feels like that's something that you might consider
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  doing it. So well, I think all of that has to be there.
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  And in all of this talk about how bad special teams was, special
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  props to Jesse Murco, who had himself a fantastic day at punting the ball.
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  That's good and bad in some ways because he had plenty of time and
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  plenty of attempts because the High State offense was so bit in the game that
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  he was able to punt the ball all blank Ton. So, I you
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  know, I'm just I'm flabbergasted that it had gotten to that point. We
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  were through signing day. Things need to be addressed. Yeah, And I
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  Ryan Day during the postgame was asked, you know, not directly, so
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  you're gonna fire some of the people on your staff, but sort of asked,
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  you know, maybe you're gonna fire some of the people on your staff
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  essentially. Yeah, the subtext was pretty clear there, and you know said
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  I'm gonna basically evaluate everything. Everything is gonna be looked at, and so
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  I think it's gonna be telling to see what gets changed, how much gets
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  changed. Is it little changes? Does it feel like it needs to be
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  little tweaks or do you need maybe you need to make some big sweeping changes.
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  That's gonna be one of the things that we're gonna be keeping an eye
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  on over the next month or so, probably talking about a little bit over
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  the next month or so at buckeyehuddle dot Com. Also probably gonna be talking
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  quite a bit about Ohio State players headed to the NFL. Maybe not headed
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  to the NFL. Marvin Harrison didn't play in the Cotton Bowl. Obviously he
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  is headed off to the NFL. He wouldn't have helped. Yeah, I
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  think that I think I think that might have been might have might have helped
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  a little bit. But he Kenny play guard. Well, he can't solve
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  all their problems. He might have solved some of their problems, but you've
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  got no mar Marvin Harrison next year. Jack Sawyer was asked in his postgame
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  interview, and boy, sort of you can you can go back and watch
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  the show or the the full interview. The postgame press Conferce Center YouTube channel
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  and you can draw your own conclusions there, but safe to say it sounds
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  like a number of Ohio State players on the defense are thinking strongly about coming
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  back. So we'll see, we'll see what that how that all shakes out,
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  We'll see how the transfer portal potential transfer portal news coming soon might shake
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  out for Ohio State. A whole bunch more stuff. It's going to be
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  a very busy month or so, as the transfer window no longer just for
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  international soccer now in college football. Going to be a fascinating time at Bucke
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  Huddle as we try to sort all that stuff out and Ohio State heads into
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  what is going to be the first year of the brand new college football in
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  twenty twenty four. There is a lot of change coming. Tomorrow's morning show
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  recorded that early because we're gonna be traveling. You're gonna hear some really really
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  interesting stuff from Eli Drink What's and Brian Day from the press conference before the
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  game. They had really really interesting answers. One of them is about should
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  write you know, Eli Drink, What's talking about all the reasons it's great
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  to give up play calling, that's gonna be another story we're gonna be talking
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  about quite a bit at bucke huddle dot com over the next step month or
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  so, but also some big picture stuff in terms of the transfer portal and
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  the future of the sport and all that kind of stuff. It is going
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  to be a very big and very different year in college football in twenty twenty
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  four. We can't wait to share it with you at bucke huddle dot com,
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  at YouTube dot com slash Buckeye Huddle. That will do it for today.
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  Thank you guys all for joining us. Have a great day. We
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  will talk to you tomorrow.