Written by Jesse Lamovsky

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For the first 35 minutes, Ohio State’s Big Ten road opener at Nebraska went wonderfully- better, in fact, than even could have been hoped. With Braxton Miller making dynamic plays and the defense shutting down the occasionally explosive Cornhusker offense, the Buckeyes rolled toward the midway point of the fourth quarter with a three-touchdown lead that was looking more and more insurmountable by the minute.

Then, with shocking swiftness, it all fell apart. Offensively, defensively, the collapse was total and comprehensive. When the dust from the wreckage cleared Ohio State had suffered its second consecutive defeat, 34-27. It took about a quarter’s worth of football to turn a season-turning win into the biggest comeback in Nebraska football history, the first Big Ten win in Nebraska football history and a game probably seen by Cornhusker faithful as an all-timer. Good for them- bad for Ohio State.

And all it took was one play to set the entire disaster in motion.

One Play Changes Everything: Ohio State had this game almost won until Lavonte David ripped the ball away from Braxton Miller at the Buckeye 23 with 7:54 left in the third quarter. The Buckeyes led 27-6 with a quarter and a half- remaining. They had a first down on Braxton’s keeper- improved field position and the football with time running and a big lead. Even three more plays and a punt from there would have run a couple of more minutes off the clock and forced Nebraska to drive the field- something the Huskers had been unable to do to that point.

Nebraska almost instantly converted the gift into a touchdown. Thirty seconds after the fumble Taylor Martinez bamboozled the Buckeye defense on a read-option and raced in almost untouched from 18 yards out. It was a completely. The game changed completely in that sequence. Combined with Miller’s ankle injury and the return to the fray of the unfortunate Joe Bauserman, it became Nebraska’s game. Everything came apart after that play.

One play in a football game can make that big of a difference.

Braxton Breakout: It’s unfortunate that the play was incurred by Braxton Miller- because he was the biggest reason Ohio State was in a position to win. Playing against a Nebraska defense that admittedly has not been impressive, Miller compiled 186 total yards in two-and-a-half quarters, 95 through the air and 91 on the ground. His running ability was the biggest factor. Braxton repeatedly made big plays with his legs- three third-down runs to extend scoring drives in the first half and a dazzling 29-yard gain to set up the field goal that made it 20-6 Scarlet & Gray over the Big Red of the North at halftime.

Injury to Insult: Miller’s fumble was obviously a turning point. But it’s one Ohio State may yet have survived. Nebraska still trailed by two touchdowns and still hadn’t driven the field on Ohio State’s defense. The turnabout became complete when Miller came up lame on a scramble with 4:21 left in the third. That brought Joe Bauserman into the football game, which insured the offense would do nothing- worse than nothing- the rest of the night. Everything went from there.

Poor Old Joe: I have no idea why Jim Tressel settled on Joe Bauserman as Terrelle Pryor’s backup. Bauserman cannot play at this level- he just can’t. He doesn’t have the game. He could be legitimate at the Mount Union level, and I really don’t think that’s an outlandish assessment of his talent. Yet of all the guys he could have had as Pryor’s understudy- and I understand the best and brightest wouldn’t want to cling to Pryor’s ermine robes for multiple seasons, but still- the Vest settled on Joe Bauserman. Maybe it was another aspect of Tressel’s weirdly dysfunctional relationship with Pryor, I don’t know.

Whatever it was, Bauserman was a disaster on Saturday night. The aging senior completed 1-of-10 for 13 yards and was intercepted once, setting up Nebraska’s go-ahead touchdown. In Ohio State’s two road games, both losses, Bauserman is 3-of-24 passing for 26 yards.

It’s clear at this point that, regardless of what happens with Miller and the rest of the quarterbacks, Joe Bauserman should not see the field again. He brings nothing, he adds nothing, the team has no confidence in him- the man is just a train wreck out there. Give Kenny Guiton the opportunity to back up Braxton Miller and put Bauserman out to pasture. It isn’t fair to the team or to him to keep sending him out there to fail game after game.

Carlos Hide: Aside from Braxton Miller, Ohio State’s other offensive standout was Carlos Hyde. The big Floridian broke things open early with a 63-yard second-quarter touchdown run, taking a counter and simply running away from the Nebraska defense to make it 17-3. Hyde rumbled for 104 yards and two touchdowns- but for whatever reason he only got 13 carries. Jordan Hall, who was ineffective with 49 rushing yards, carried it 17 times. Joe Bauserman, meanwhile, threw ten passes while playing much of that span with a lead.     

Tale of Two Defenses: Considering how many times Ohio State has either wittingly or unwillingly shut it down offensively late in games over the last decade, Saturday’s effort on that side of the ball shouldn’t be too much of a shock. What is shocking is what happened to Jim Heacock’s defense. Ohio State swarmed Nebraska’s offense in the first half, shutting off the running lanes for Taylor Martinez and Rex Burkhead and, led by Jonathan Hankins, whipping the Huskers up front. Midway through the third quarter, with the Buckeyes leading 27-6, Nebraska had barely a hundred yards of total offense, with the two big guns sporting a combined fifty yards on the ground.

In the quarter-and-a-half that followed Braxton’s fumble, Nebraska gained 322 yards of total offense. Its four touchdowns came in a span of seventeen minutes. Martinez and Burkhead combined for 171 rushing yards, a cool 7.4 yards per clip and passed or ran for all of the Cornhusker touchdowns- including the thirty-yard connection that tied the game midway through the fourth. Martinez’s other touchdown toss, the 36-yard strike off play-action, made it 27-20 late in the third; Burkhead’s 18-yard rumble put the Huskers ahead for good with 5:10 left.

For the most part Nebraska ran variations on two plays: Martinez keeping off the read-option or Burkhead on the toss sweep. Ohio State never found answers to these two plays. Gap responsibilities vanished. So did the good tackling that is the hallmark of Jim Heacock defenses. The biggest miss, Christian Bryant’s failure to bring down Rex Burkhead in the open field, led directly to Nebraska’s tying touchdown. Bryant complained about the offense last week but found comeuppance in Lincoln- he was also burned on the Martinez-to-Quincy Enunwa bomb that made it a seven-point game.

Some people think Ohio State’s defense was “tired.” Why? It’s not as if Nebraska took much time on its scoring drives. When your opponent scores four touchdowns in seventeen minutes- three on drives of 72 yards or longer- you aren’t exactly making them work hard for it. It wasn’t fatigue, it was bad football. It was missed tackles and blown gap assignments.

Maybe they panicked after Braxton Miller left the game and Nebraska started making some plays. Maybe they pressed, knowing they wouldn’t get any help from the offense. Who cares? Ohio State’s defense has put in far more harrowing positions and come through. This defense fell apart.

At some point: This team is going to get body-slammed on both sides of the ball. Think 35-0, 42-10, scores like those. It’s going in that direction, it really is. Wisconsin is a likely candidate to do the honors when the Badgers come to Columbus three weekends from now.  

 

Around the Nation

Game of the Week- Virginia Tech/Miami: The old Big East rivals staged a good old-fashioned thriller in Blacksburg, with three quarters of Hokie domination turning into a fourth-quarter shootout that Frank Beamer’s team had to scramble to survive. Va Tech led 24-14 going into the final fifteen minutes until the Hurricanes unloaded, scoring three touchdowns in ten minutes and taking their first lead at 38-35 on Lamar Miller’s 30-yard burst with 2:51 to play. Miller rolled up 166 yards on the ground while the much-maligned Jacory Harris burned the Hokies for 267 passing yards, three touchdowns and- get this- no interceptions. Miami picked up 309 of its 519 total yards in the second half. But in the end it wasn’t enough. Miller’s go-ahead score left Virginia Tech way too much time. It took the Hokies less than two minutes to go 77 yards, Logan Thomas capping off a brilliant afternoon on a 19-yard fourth-down keeper with 47 seconds left.  

Player of the Week- Logan Thomas, Virginia Tech: The Hokie quarterback was all but flawless on Saturday, completing 23-of-25 for 310 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions and running for two more scores in the victory over Miami. Between his arm and his legs, Thomas accounted for all five of his team’s touchdowns in a game in which they needed every one of them.

It’s Alive… It’s Alive! And here I thought the Big 12 was ready for the blindfold and last cigarette. With one stroke the conference gave itself a charge with the proffered and accepted invite to the old Southwest Conference lodge brother Texas Christian. It’s a perfect fit-a BCS-worthy program with a deep and rich past association with many of the Big 12’s present members. And it suddenly revitalizes a conference that looked dead in the water a few weeks ago, with Texas A&M leaving and rumors flying about the rest of the membership’s future ambitions.

TCU means that, even with future defections from the likes of Missouri, the Big 12 has a future- and its future may lie in the past. The Frogs are the most successful of the old Southwest Conference refugees, but not the only success by any means. Houston and Southern Methodist are a combined 10-1 this season; both have impressive presents and bright futures and both might be worthy candidates if and when the conference expands again.

A core lineup of Texas, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Baylor, Texas Christian, Southern Methodist and Houston would more than offset the defections of Missouri and its fellow disaffected Northerners. Granted it’s only an eight-team league, so it won’t have a conference championship game, but it’s still a league with undeniable cache and real BCS credibility. If the Northerners- or most of the Northerners- stay in the fold it would make a neat, compact South division, provided the conference can add members (Boise? BYU?) to the North. Either way the Big 12’s lungs are filled with new air. The Big East, on the other hand…

Future of the Big East: Now here’s a conference in real trouble. Matter of fact, TCU’s snub should be considered the semi-official end to the charade of the Big East as a BCS-level conference. The heart of the football conference, from the beginning, was Miami, Virginia Tech, Pitt, Syracuse and West Virginia. That heart has been largely cut out, replaced by the likes of Connecticut, Cincinnati, Louisville and South Florida. That isn’t big-time by any stretch of the imagination.

Plans for expansion are, to be expected, long shots.

          

Winners of the Week

Oklahoma: After losing their number-one ranking in the polls due to nothing they did wrong, the Sooners went out and did everything right in the 55-17 evisceration of Texas at the State Fairgrounds. But there are more challenges down the road, with road games at ranked opponents Kansas State, Baylor and Oklahoma State in a potentially gargantuan Bedlam Game on December 3.

Kansas State: The Wildcats are 5-0 for the first time since 2000 and they’ve gotten there in style with signature wins over Miami, Baylor and now Missouri, which fell 24-17 in Manhattan on Saturday. The schedule is back-loaded with consecutive games against Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M and Texas, but you can’t count out wily old Bill Snyder and his band of overachievers, who are simply finding ways to win.

Rutgers: Last season the Scarlet Knights won four games, total. This season they’re 4-1 and, more importantly, 2-0 in the Big East after thrashing Pitt 34-10 on Saturday. The upcoming schedule is favorable, with the only road games left at beatable Louisville and Connecticut teams. If the Knights can beat West Virginia in Piscataway on October 29- they’ve lost sixteen straight to the Mountaineers- they’ll control their own destiny in the Big East race.

Houston: The Cougars are 6-0 after wasting East Carolina 56-3 on Saturday, their best start since the David Klinger-fueled 1990 season. With Case Keenum tearing it up- 2,309 yards, 17 touchdown passes, two interceptions- they’re also tops in the nation in passing offense. The defense looks a little suspect to get through the rest of the season unscathed, but they’ll be favored in every game from here on out, including the November 19 showdown with SMU at Robertson Stadium.  

Wake Forest: In 2010 the Deacons went 3-9, the worst record of Jim Grobe’s nine-year tenure. But in 2011 they’ve flashed the form that won them a surprise ACC Championship in 2006. Wake is 3-0 in the ACC for the first time ever after its 35-30 upset of wounded Florida State in Winston-Salem Saturday and they’re doing it in the usual opportunistic way with solid kicking, few turnovers and a soft opening schedule. We’ll see how good the Deacons are when Virginia Tech comes to town this Saturday.

Losers of the Week

Texas: The young Longhorns were ruthlessly exposed Saturday at the Cotton Bowl, giving up three defensive touchdowns and falling behind 34-10 at halftime. If they’re not careful this Saturday against Oklahoma State it could get out of hand, even at DKR.

Florida: The two-week meat-grinder against the best of God’s Conference West didn’t start or end well. LSU walloped the Gators in Baton Rouge 41-11, bringing the combined margin of defeat to the Tigers and Tide a numbing 79-21. Everyone else in the SEC East should be excited- especially South Carolina, which is 3-1 in-conference, owns the tiebreaker on Georgia and gets Florida at Columbia on November 12.      

Sunshine State Football: When the in-state schools best maximizing their potential are Central Florida and Florida International it’s a bad time for college football in what is allegedly a football hotbed. Florida, Florida State and Miami are a combined 8-8, a sickly 2-6 in-conference. None are ranked, needless to say, and right now the three powers are on a collective six-game losing streak.

Arizona: Mike Stoops finally came to the end of the line in Tucson after the latest embarrassment, a 37-27 loss to a terrible Oregon State team. The 2011 Wildcats are 1-5, bringing Stoops’s head coaching record to 41-50. Assistant Tim Kish will take over in interim for a program that seems to forever struggle to find a place in the Pac Ten-Turned-Twelve.  

Fresno State: Playing in front of a home crowd, Fresno was torn apart every way possible in a 57-7 loss to Boise State. For the 2-4 Bulldogs that old WAC rivalry can’t be terminated soon enough: the Broncos have beaten Fresno six straight times by an average score of 50-16. Included in that streak are beat-downs by scores of 61-10, 51-0 and now 57-7.   

 

Next: At undefeated Illinois, Saturday, 3:30. I actually think Ohio State can win this game if Braxton Miller is anywhere near 100 percent. When was the last time “hoping” for a win at Illinois qualified as optimism?