How Ohio State can win a beauty contest and make College Football Playoff

COLUMBUS, Ohio – This Ohio State season has been defined by unexpected plot twists. There have been suspensions, investigations and lengthy bouts of struggle, including a blowout loss to 6-6 Purdue. A season filled with surprise turns ended fittingly with one final stunning reveal – a wire-to-wire flogging of No. 4 Michigan.

As the college football season roars into its championship weekend, a Buckeye season defined by consistent inconsistency achieved its high-mark with a 62-point outburst against the Wolverines. Urban Meyer’s Buckeyes are strutting, not sputtering, to the Big Ten championship game against Northwestern. A 2018 season that’s felt – and occasionally looked – like a nosedive from the highest echelons of college football has somehow ended with an 11-1 record.

Putting a coda on a season defined by ugly patches on and off the field is Ohio State finding itself in a beauty contest this weekend. The Buckeyes are No. 6 in the latest College Football Playoff rankings, and what seemed impossible a week ago sitting at No. 10 now feels tangible. How can Ohio State crash the party and slip into the No. 4 spot? There’s certainly a roadmap, as the Buckeyes leapt into the No. 4 spot unexpectedly in 2014 from the No. 5 hole, passing over No. 3 TCU and boxing out Baylor in the Big 12’s One True Debacle.

In the macro, Ohio State needs some help from a few familiar faces – Alabama’s Nick Saban and Texas coach Tom Herman in the SEC and Big 12 championships. In the micro, they need to channel the energy, crispness and defensive mojo that appeared in the Michigan game. Ohio State needs to put forth an effort against a gutsy Northwestern team that’s an aesthetic equal to their 59-0 beatdown of Wisconsin in the 2014 Big Ten title game. A season defined by doubt over Ohio State’s erraticism needs a victory over Northwestern that leaves no doubt. They need to win running away, and get a little help from their frenemies in Tuscaloosa and Austin.

In his office this week, Meyer quickly pancake-blocked any talk about style points. “There’s zero conversation,” he told Yahoo Sports. “None. We know who we’re playing and we have tremendous respect for who we’re playing. You watch them on field, they’re very good and playing their best football.”

He added: “We’ve been in the conversation since the CFP started. You wake up some days and you get a good flip of the coin. And on the other ones you didn’t.”

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The other side of the coin in the Ohio State debate is No. 5 Oklahoma, as the wide assumption is that No. 1 Alabama will beat No. 4 Georgia in the SEC championship. The Sooners are a team with florescent flaws, much like the Buckeyes, but have been better at obscuring them. CFP chair Rob Mullens, the athletic director at Oregon, summed up Oklahoma’s obvious defensive issues – a defense ranked No. 100 in scoring, so bad that they fired their coordinator after their loss to Texas in October.

“Oklahoma’s body of work is still impressive,” Mullens said. “I understand the defensive deficiencies are there, and we talk about them, but they really have had a historic offensive season.” He capped his statement with a simple summation: “It’s about results.”

If the results go the way the oddsmakers believe, both Ohio State and Oklahoma could end up as 12-1 champions. Ohio State’s loss came at unranked Purdue. While Oklahoma has struggled defensively, the Sooners lead the nation in offense at 50.3 points per game and have been spectacularly consistent on that side of the ball.

Their only loss came to Texas on a last-second field goal on a neutral site earlier this season. Can the No. 14 Longhorns do it again? That brings up another quirky twist in this bizarre Ohio State season. Buckeye fans will be rooting for their former offensive coordinator, Herman, like he’s back calling plays for Braxton Miller back in 2014.

Ohio State campus officials unnecessarily tossed Herman under the bus this summer amid their own internal investigation, a lame distraction attempt from Ohio State’s own issues. Now they’ll be rooting for him Saturday. Life is funny, sometimes.

Ohio State’s defense showed well against Michigan, limiting big plays, forcing two turnovers and giving the offense enough space to run away. Meyer said he needs to see more out of that group, especially after it was gashed by Maryland in an overtime Buckeye victory the previous week.

“The pass defense was still bad,” Meyer said of the Michigan game. “It was bad. They didn’t get a lot of yards, but they went down the field on us. The rush defense was better. I felt like we controlled the line of scrimmage and our linebackers played their best game as a group.”

The best sign for Ohio State’s hope in winning a beauty contest came from star quarterback Dwayne Haskins leading the 62-point explosion. His brilliance transcended the 396 yards and six touchdowns, as he successfully orchestrated proper blitz pickups on a day when Michigan blitzed nearly 75 percent of the snaps. Ohio State’s offensive line deserves credit for him not being sacked. But it also showed the intellectual maturation of Haskins under offensive coordinator Ryan Day, as Haskins didn’t whiff on a single pre-snap call identifying Michigan’s multiple exotic looks.

“It’s pretty funny,” Haskins told Yahoo Sports this week. “At first as a freshman, you think you know protections, but you don’t know. I thought I had an idea before Coach Day came in, but I had no idea. Now it’s fun for me. When you know what you’re doing at quarterback, you can see the coverages and the pressures, it makes the game so much easier.”

Haskins has dove into prep for Northwestern. He said he’ll text assistant QB coach Corey Dennis for Northwestern’s tendencies, call Day and ask what the Wildcats do on third downs and sneak in 15 minutes of film watching between classes. He’s taken the advice seriously of Deshaun Watson, who has become a mentor through their shared quarterback coach, Quincy Avery. Haskins has become the Big Ten’s all-time single-season leader in touchdowns and yards by clinging to what Watson has told him: “You have to make the time in order to be elite.”

Time is running out on the Buckeyes to show they are consistently elite. Their final trip down the catwalk will come on Saturday night. Could a season defined by plot twists end with another stunner?

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