EUGENE, Ore. — Will Howard couldn’t believe it.
As he slid, setting up what he thought would be a game-winning field goal try for Jayden Fielding, Howard heard the whistle. He looked up at the clock and saw that time had expired. He threw the ball down and put his head in his hands as Oregon fans stormed the field all around him.
The game was over. Fielding didn’t get a chance to kick, and the Buckeyes went home after losing the classic top-three matchup 32-31 on Saturday.
Sitting on the ground, Howard was still in disbelief because he thought he had gone down in time.
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“I guess I didn’t,” he said. “I was focused on getting us into field goal range. … I got to get down, I guess.”
That play will leave a bad taste in his mouth after an otherwise stellar game. Ohio State and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly put the game in his hands, and he delivered, completing 28-of-35 passes for 326 yards and two touchdowns.
“It sucks,” Howard said. “A play like that, you don’t want to lose a game like that.”
While Howard will be hard on himself, the loss is hardly all on his shoulders. In front of an Autzen Stadium record crowd of 60,129, the Buckeyes faltered in the biggest moments and to the nearly deafening noise in the stadium.
IT’S OVER. 🦆
NO. 3 OREGON TOPPLES NO. 2 OHIO STATE IN EUGENE. WHAT A GAME. pic.twitter.com/pzrROxapap
— NBC Sports (@NBCSports) October 13, 2024
The last play was a microcosm of larger mistakes like penalties, missed assignments, a defense that was supposed to be the best in the country and blown coverages all over the field, along with plenty of mental errors. For a team as experienced as Ohio State, that’s a problem. Those are mistakes that can’t be made in big-time matchups, especially on the road.
Despite the loss, the season is far from over. All the goals the Buckeyes had in the preseason are still there due to the expanded College Football Playoff. But if Ohio State wants to reach them, the margin of error has shrunk, and the issues that plagued the Buckeyes at Oregon have to be fixed.
Howard knew how much time was on the clock and how many yards Ohio State wanted to get on its final play. It wanted 15 yards, so it called a flood concept to the boundary with freshman Jeremiah Smith running a dig route on the backside.
With just six seconds on the clock, Howard didn’t have a lot of time for the pattern to develop, and when a defensive lineman flashed in his face when he wanted to throw, he decided to scramble. It was his best option, but it shouldn’t have come down to that play.
Ryan Day has spent the entire offseason saying that Ohio State needs to “leave no doubt” in these matchup games, but it didn’t do that, whatsoever. Instead, Ohio State left things up to a questionable offensive pass interference call on Jeremiah Smith with 26 seconds left in the game.
“It shouldn’t come down to one play,” Day said. “We want to leave no doubt. I felt like we should’ve done that today, and we did not. You put it in the hands of a call, and you don’t get it, then that’s on us.”
The sentiment from the program is that it cost itself a chance at a major win.
“I don’t think they necessarily beat us; I think we beat ourselves a little bit,” Howard said. “We left some stuff out there that we have to learn from and get better because of it.”
He’s right. The talent differential wasn’t glaring, but Ohio State definitely made more mistakes. Every chance it had a chance to take control of the game, something happened to give Oregon a chance to reclaim momentum.
It started right away. Ohio State opened the game with a 10-play, 75-yard scoring drive and then got a stop on defense. With a chance to go up two scores, star running back Quinshon Judkins fumbled, and Oregon scored two plays later.
“We talk about taking care of the football. To turn the ball over there and give it to them in plus territory was a huge play in the game,” Day said.
It was that type of day for Ohio State, which punted just once in the second half. That came after Howard dropped an accurate snap from center Seth McLaughlin and pushed Ohio State from third-and-3 to fourth-and-13. But that wasn’t the only mistake of the second half.
Trailing by one with eight minutes to play, right guard Tegra Tshabola was called for a false start that backed Ohio State up, and it had to settle for a field goal three plays later.
Those won’t seem like big plays, but they were small mistakes that added up. Ohio State finished with eight penalties: six on offense, two on defense. The six penalties came on three separate offensive drives, and Ohio State scored three points combined on them.
“Penalties is a discipline thing, and when you play in an environment like this you can’t be overcome by events,” Howard said. “There were too many penalties today, we’ll have to go back and look at the film and correct it.”
These were all mistakes Ohio State couldn’t afford, especially when it lost the turnover battle and gave up 496 yards of total offense.
The defense is a different story. A group that is supposed to be one of the best in the country gave up eight plays longer than 25 yards and couldn’t find a way to get pressure on quarterback Dillon Gabriel.
Saturday’s game was the most anticipated game on the Big Ten schedule. It felt like Ohio State’s chance to solidify itself as a national contender and to nullify all the concerns about losing big games under Day.
Instead, it’s going into its bye week, searching for answers that have plagued the program. Why can’t it make the right play in the biggest moments?
Ohio State is too talented to miss the Playoff and still has a chance to run the table and get a rematch with Oregon in the Big Ten title game. But it won’t win the national championship until it is the most disciplined team on the field, not just the most talented one.
“The message has to be we have to grow from this and learn from this,” Howard said. “This isn’t how you want to do it, but you can’t let it beat you twice.”
(Top photo: Adam Cairns / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)
