The dream is over.
After months of speculating whether or not No. 12 MSU (7-2 overall, 4-1 Big Ten) would have enough quality wins to make it into the inaugural College Football Playoff, Saturday night all but eliminated those hopes.
No. 8 Ohio State (8-1 overall, 5-0 Big Ten) racked up 568 yards of total offense on their way to a 49-37 win in East Lansing , likely eliminating MSU from the playoff conversation and certainly making a trip to the Big Ten Championship Game in Indianapolis a lot harder.
“They came in for revenge and got it,” defensive coordinator Pat Narduzzi said. “We didn’t step up and meet the challenge.”
Uncharacteristic defense
For years under head coach Mark Dantonio , the identity of the Spartan program has been relentless defense that doesn’t give up many big plays.
Saturday night was not one of those games. OSU seemed to do whatever they wanted against the Spartan defense.
Freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett passed for 300 yards and three touchdowns while adding 86 more yards on the ground and two additional scores.
“The bottom line was we couldn’t stop them,” Dantonio said. “You have to evaluate that ... we have to play better in that area.”
Narduzzi said OSU didn’t throw any different looks at the Spartans that they weren’t prepared for, they just didn’t make all the plays.
“They had a couple different plays, a couple of different routes, but nothing we weren’t able to adjust to early,” he said. “Just didn’t make plays. That’s what it comes down to.”
The secondary, in particular, was burned for more than one big play. Senior Kurtis Drummond said Barrett deserves a lot of the credit for the Buckeye win.
“J.T. had a great game,” he said. “He executed the game plan, guys around him stepped their game up as well, and they played a good game.”
Drummond said he has confidence in the defense and their ability to bounce back after a loss.
“This isn’t typical of our defense,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll watch film and take a lot away from this one, a lot of things to correct. We just have to move forward.”
Lack of pressure from the defensive line also put the secondary in a hard situation at times. Narduzzi said OSU did a good job of getting the ball out quickly to combat MSU’s pressure.
“They got it out quickly so it just wasn’t enough,” he said. “We applied pressure, but we just didn’t make plays and they got the ball out quick.”
A 14-point swing
The game started as a dead heat with both MSU and OSU exchanging punches in a heavy-weight fight. It looked like a shootout that might come down to who had the ball last.
That was before what might have been the momentum swing of the game.
Late in the second quarter, MSU marched down the field to score on a Jeremy Langford touchdown run. The score put MSU up 21-14.
On the ensuing kickoff, OSU fumbled, and MSU looked to be in business for another touchdown as they started from inside the OSU 20 yard line.
MSU would score a touchdown, but get the touchdown called back on a holding penalty. After the drive stalled, an all-too-familiar sight for MSU fans happened right in front of their eyes. Sophomore kicker Michael Geiger missed his sixth field goal of the season to give OSU the ball back with the score still 21-14.
What happened on the next play seemed to signal the theme of the game: don’t give OSU extra chances, because they will make use of them.
Barrett found sophomore wide receiver Michael Thomas for a 79-yard touchdown pass. What could have been a 28-14 MSU lead was now a tied game, with the momentum heavily favoring OSU.
“So it goes from 28-14 to 21-21, and all of a sudden the momentum just flipped,” Dantonio said. “Up to that point I thought it was pretty even back and forth.”
After the holding call, TV cameras caught Dantonio shaking his head. He said he couldn’t tell where the hold occurred on the touchdown.
“Things are happening very fast out there,” he said. “I didn’t see the replay of the hold itself, but the bottom line is they called the hold and we didn’t get seven, it backed us up, and we didn’t overcome that and missed the field goal on the next play.”
Dantonio pointed out other plays in the game where he could see the momentum shift in favor of the Buckeyes.
“A 13-play drive, in the third quarter, where they hit it and it was third and 23 and they hit the fade,” he said. “I think Hicks had him covered, had him cut off, ball was thrown over the back shoulder there. Great catch by Smith and great throw by Barrett.”
Sophomore cornerback Darian Hicks said he thought he had played well.
“I thought I had great coverage on it,” he said. “J.T. Barrett made a great throw to Devin Smith.”
What next?
For MSU, the goal that was talked about all summer appears to be out of reach, but there are still three regular season games and a bowl left for the Spartans.
For players and coaches, the goals are to finish the season out and continue to get better.
“It’s a disappointment in your life,” Dantonio said. “We’re going to have a lot of disappointments in our lives. That’s what we talk about all the time. It’s going to be how you respond to those disappointments.”
Dantonio said he didn’t think the outside hype of playing for a spot in the playoff trickled into the locker room and affected the players.
“We focused on this game,” he said. “We had Ohio State coming in here. We understood the ramifications of everything. They have a good football team and I knew there would be push-back from them.”
Senior offensive lineman Travis Jackson said adjusted goals can’t be the focus of the team moving forward.
“You really don’t focus on that stuff,” he said. “You focus on what you can and can’t control.”
Drummond said it’s hard to rank this loss on his career list, but said losses for a senior are especially hard to get over.
“You want to win every game, so every loss hurts,” he said. “When it’s your last time having a shot at teams, it hurts. You can learn from losses.”
Drummond said the goal for the team now is to finish the season on a high note.
“This is a great group of guys so I know we’ll bounce back,” he said. “The rest of the season is about playing hard and finishing the rest of our schedule out strong.”
