College Football has a funny way of making recent history become ancient, rather quickly. The Big Ten became the Big 14 back in 2014, the year the conference added Maryland and Rutgers to its membership, which expanded to 14 schools.
Ohio State football has served as the Big Ten’s aristocrat, and it has treated the plebs harshly over the past seven seasons:
If you’re adding that up, it’s an average margin of victory over those two programs of 40.5 points per game. The seven wins over Rutgers are by an average of43 points per contest.
You’ll notice the 2018 outlier against Maryland. We’ll get more into that next week when the Buckeyes host the Terrapins on homecoming.
While no one is predicting a “Conflict of the Orders” to happen just yet, OSU can’t simply show up and expect to blow either out like we’ve seen in the past. Rutgers and Maryland enter play this weekend with a combined 7-1 record.
Given how Ohio State has struggled at times this year, especially on defense, it will need to continue to show improvement to avoid being in a game like it found itself in two weeks ago against Tulsa, or worse yet, losing altogether.
Greg Schiano, the former OSU defensive coordinator, is back for his second stint as Rutgers head coach. The Scarlet Knights are 3-1, with wins over Temple, Syracuse and Delaware, before a 20-13 loss at Michigan last week.
Rutgers is off to strong statistical start defensively, as it’s in the top 15 nationally in six defensive categories:
While Michigan is the Scarlet Knights’ only opponent you’d want to take anything significant away from, it should be interesting to watch against the Buckeyes' high-powered offense that is second in the country in total offense (559.2 YPG) and seventh in scoring offense (43.2 PPG).
It’s when Rutgers has the ball that the real intrigue begins, as the offense hasn’t been especially overwhelming this year, and is only ranked 99th in total offense (351.2 YPG) and passing offense (194 YPG). Can the Buckeyes build off last week’s performance on defense against an overmatched Akron squad?
In the last two years, The Scarlet Knights have outscored the Scarlet & Gray 38-35, in the second halves. Of course, OSU had a 67-10 advantage in the first halves, and it was mostly second-teamers on defense after halftime. Rutgers also went deep into a bag of trick plays in 2020, and with the Buckeyes still seemingly settling in on defense, they could be susceptible to that again.
To see what gets entered into the history books for 2021, join Andy Baskin and former OSU offensive lineman Bryant Browning on The Postgame Show, immediately following the game on Spectrum News 1. They’ll break things down, and take you to New Jersey for Ryan Day’s postgame comments.