cant control who is on their schedule. Not having IU or Oregon is just how megaconferences work out. The rest of the B1G is way way way way down this year.
IU and tOSU have clobbered just about everyone in their path. Both worthy playoff teams. tOSU looks better and should beat IU in the B1G champ game.
you can bet against them at your own peril. Considering what tOSU did in the playoffs last year, not reason to think they cant dominate again. IU looks better but not sure if they can make a run. Very much depends on who they play
They’re not remotely close to the same team as a year ago.
Anyway the schedule looked fine preseason. Texas turned out to be a worse team, QB significantly worse than expected and even the defense has gotten shredded nearly everyone except OSU and OU - though Mateer had a broken throwing hand.
Penn State is complete garbage and were the preseason favorite to win it all.
Illinois was a preseason playoff dark horse darling pick and they’re not even a top 10 team in the Big 10 at this point.
@UW is the best win this year for travel reasons alone.
They’ve stayed focused and taken care of what they’ve needed to so kudos to em for that.
Ohio state has the best WR in college. They for sure have the top two WR's paired in college with Tate and Smith. Both are first round draft picks. Even Innis as a third, who returns punts, will be playing in the NFL. OSU plays three TE's. All three will play in the NFL as well. At Qb, they lost a fifth-round draft to the NFL pick but replaced with a Heisman candidate. Obviously, losing Henderson and Judkins was huge and both are killing it in the NFL, but the freshman Bo Jackson has taken over the backfield, and he is going to be really good. Plus, they just got West back in the backfield. They love him and he has missed most of the year.
On defense, Ohio State boasts the best defensive player in the country in Downs. Add in future NFL draft corners Mathews, Igbinosin, and this is a very good secondary. Then when you look at LB you have Arvel Reese. He might be the number one player picked in the draft next year. He has had an amazing year and will be a lock for All-American. Add in Sonny Styles, another future first round draft pick, and you see studs running around all over the place.
Do they have a dominant offensive line? No, but they didn't last year either. Do they have big names at D line? No, but they are playing well and play a ton of dudes. It is Ohio State. No way they have players on the line that suck.
To say they are not the team of last year is true for any team. I think that it is the best defense in football, and it is probably the best passing game in football. Those combinations make them deadly.
As for scheduling, Ohio State played very close to the vest in game one to beat Texas. They still weren't convinced Sayin was going to be who he is now. The battle for starting QB went all through the summer. Ohio State also has a really good back up. Who would have predicted that Penn State was going to fall apart? They were supposed to be number two in the country. People also do not realize that Washington is a beast at home. I believe that they have one loss at home in the past 4 or 5 seasons! They are like 23-1 at home in this span. Guess who their one loss was to? Ohio State this year by 18. Watch what happens to Oregon in two weeks when they head to Washington.
OSU steamed rolled in the playoffs last year. I still believe that the Michigan game in two weeks, at Michigan, is a big problem. I could see OSU losing to Michigan on the road more than losing to Indiana in the Conference championship. No one in Columbus fears Indiana, and yet people can't even say the word Michigan without speaking in tongues.
Go ahead and doubt. Go ahead and bitch about their schedule. All I know is that this is a very good team with minimal weaknesses. It will take someone like Georgia or Notre Dame, that plays a Michigan style type of offense, that can play keep away by grinding the football. Even then that might not work either.
Crying about the schedules isn't anything. The schedules are made up years in advance, you seem to think these schedules are made up from year to year, no,they are not, and pretty stupid to think they are. You need to win all the games you are supposed to win. All your so called arguments happened to Ohio St last year, but guess what? Ohio St won the games they were supposed to win and became National Champs. I think the will go back to back this year, so put that in your wound.
@bshoe43
Lol. A cupcake end of the year schedule...one game...after 8 grueling weeks of beating each other senseless. Lets just take Georgia for example that played 4 maybe 5 ranked teams within that 8-9 game span, and Ohio State plays 2 ranked teams all season. Ohio State played Grambling, in that same week Georgia played Austin Peay. Both chump teams. This week they both once again play chump teams and end the season against a ranked rival. BIG10 teams in the top 25, 9 SEC teams in the top 25. The only comparison of the 2 teams is the mutual Matchup against Texas in which Georgia completely decimated them. The entire conversation about this conference sukcs and this conference is the best or this one plays straight weak teams all season is plain stupid. Michigan was supposed to completely destroy Georgia a few years back in the playoffs and got completely embarrassed by them. Skip to the following year and Georgia only beat OSU because of an Ace Ventura type shank to end the game. Its the same logic when comparing conferences and the games they play every single season. OSU beat down BAMA a year they looked unstoppable then turns around and loses to a nobody Michigan during Rival week. Its College Football, with nothing less than Testosterone filled brutes looking to bash each other week after week. The worst team in every conference sure does seem to put up quite the fight when it comes to a big game on the schedule. If the SEC is weak and has a cake schedule every year then we might as well go ahead and chalk D1 College Ball up to being nothing more than glorified cheerleading. In the last 25 years alone the BIG10 has 4 NC and in that same 25 years the SEC has 15 NC if you include the 2 from Oklahoma. Most certainly got there with cake.
Martel I thought about this recently too!! Seems they rarely play anyone good, while the SEC schedule is tough almost every week for the top teams!!! It's not the schedule it's 3/4 of the big 10 blows!!! I know Ohio state is really good and Indiana who I'm rooting for in big 10 but I don't want to hear about big 10 being better than SEC despite Michigan and Ohio State winning recently!
Have a spreadsheet model I've used and tweaked for a long time. I use it for spotting teams that diverge from their previous performances in a recent time frame. It makes adjustments for the level of competition. It has this Ohio State team almost equal to last year, but the offense is down and the defense is better. It has kicked out numbers on Ohio State defense that are extremely impressive against a body of offensive competition that averages out to almost exactly the national average of all Div I teams. I would argue that this Ohio State defense looks to be so good that it makes this team just as good as last year overall.
osu has the best d in cfb, and a better than average o imo. we will find out a lot about them vs mich and indi. just as talented as anybody tho overall. the sec teams will have the advantage of having played tough games all season. can't really argue that. in the end, we really won't know until they are on the field squared up with an sec team in the playoff. just happy we get to see that every season now. ppl can argue about who should have or shouldn't have slipped into the playoff. but it really doesn't matter much. the legit contenders will all be in there no matter what. i honestly think it could be any of 6-8 teams this season. not really one team that is head and shoulders above everyone else.
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