Ohio State didn’t cover against Rutgers…and that’s OK

A win is always a win, but in college football, style points are important as well, especially when discussing the top teams in the country and which four teams will make the College Football Playoff. A dominant win can help a team the same way a close win against a bad opponent can hurt a team. That’s when a game against Rutgers kind of matters for the Ohio State Buckeyes. Wins obviously matter, but style points count for something as well.

Saturday’s game in Piscataway, New Jersey wasn’t supposed to be close. The Buckeyes were supposed to easily beat the Rutgers. In fact, Ohio State closed as 53-point favorites over the Scarlet Knights at most sportsbooks. Scoring 50-plus points in a football game is tough enough; beating an opponent by that much is quite tough, no matter what the talent gap is between the two opponents. Saturday afternoon’s game was weird if you only looked at the final score. The scarlet and gray won the game, 56-21, but it was an even bigger blowout than the actual 35-point difference seems to have shown.

Even though Ohio State chose to defer and kicked off to start the game, they held a 14-0 lead just over three-and-a-half minutes into the game. It was due to Rutgers having two turnovers on their first four plays of the game. With that early lead, it was clear that the game was essentially already over even if there were still nearly 57 minutes remaining in the contest.

Then, when they held a 35-7 lead at halftime and 42-7 lead a minute-and-a-half into the third quarter, that became even more clear. So clear that head coach Ryan Day decided to pull the starters. With the second-, third-, and even fourth-stringers in the rest of the game, they ended up only winning the game by that 56-21 score that was mentioned previously. They didn’t cover the 31-point first-half spread or the 53-point game spread, but it wasn’t because they didn’t dominate or make it look easy against such an inferior opponent. The starters did, but when the backups came in, things got a little sloppy. Keep in mind, there were some Ohio State players that will likely never see the field all season except for this past Saturday against Rutgers. It was quite a moment for each of them, respectively, but also proved that the final score of the game isn’t exactly the whole story either.

The craziest stat from the game was that through two games, Florida Atlantic and Rutgers are not only the only two teams to cover the spread against the Buckeyes, but are the only two teams to score 21 points against Ohio State as well. That not only shows just how dominant the scarlet and gray and the Silver Bullets have been all season but is also incredible that those two teams were the only two that notched more than 14 points against the Buckeyes as well.

While some people on social media somehow made fun of Ohio State for only beating the Scarlet Knights by 35, it’s clear that those people truly have no idea what they are talking about. If the starters played the entire game, imagine what the final score would have been. Day did the right thing. Not only did he give his backups plenty of playing time, adding depth to such a great team, but the head coach also ensured that his starters remain healthy for the biggest stretch of the season that lies ahead.

It continues to be clear that Ohio State is one of the top-2 teams in the country, along with the LSU Tigers. Even though the final score said otherwise, Ohio State dominated on Saturday, something that the College Football Playoff committee will likely notice again Tuesday night, when the newest set of rankings are released.

The Buckeyes just need to continue to take care of business. Everything else will work itself out as long as they continue to do that. That is what’s most important.