Ohio State’s road magic was bound to end. Nobody expected it to be in Happy Valley on Saturday however.
But that’s what happened.
Penn State’s Grant Haley returned a blocked field goal for a TD with 4:27 left to give the Nittany Lions a stunning 24-21 win over the No. 2 Buckeyes at Beaver Stadium.
Ohio State got the ball back with around four minutes left and moved to near midfield, but QB J.T. Barrett was sacked twice, including on fourth down and the Nittany Lions ran out the clock.
The road win over Oklahoma, the gutsy win at Wisconsin were negated with the loss Saturday, which will now put the Buckeyes in search and rescue mode.
They must search for the offensive and defensive magic they had earlier in order to rescue the season.
At the beginning of the year, OSU was a longshot to make the playoffs having so many players to replace. Saturday OSU showed that inexperience with receivers unable to gain separation against the secondary and the offensive line unable to protect Barrett.
And making it even more of a head-scratcher is that OSU let the game get away on special teams, which is normally a trademark of Meyer-coached teams.
All is not lost, however. OSU is tied for second in the B1G East with Penn State, both 3-1, a game behind Michigan,
An OSU win over Michigan in Columbus would force at least a two-way tie, assuming neither lose another game and OSU would win the tiebreaker with two or three teams.
And a one-loss OSU team that wins the B1G championship game should make the playoffs over an SEC non-champ.
But before we can get there, there are things to fix. False Starts. Missed passes. Shaky pass blocking.
There is still reason to think OSU can recover from this.
Despite the issues and some questionable play calling, the Buckeyes still managed more than 400 yards of offense. And we saw the return of the Buckeye offense’s big-play capability with Curtis Samuel’s 74-yard TD run early in the third quarter. QB J.T. Barrett completed 28 passes to seven players and he wasn’t OSU’s leading rusher.
Baby steps. Baby steps.
That’s actually what the OSU offense looked like early on. Actually it was more like crawl. Or maybe a doggiepaddle.
The Buckeyes managed 34 yard on their first three drives but took advantage of a turnover to take a 3-0 lead early in the second quarter on a Tyler Durbin field goal.
Barrett found tight end Marcus Baugh, who bounced off a few defenders to bulldoze his way into the end zone to gibe OSU a 9-0 lead after the PAT failed.
Durbin gave Ohio State a 12-0 lead with a 30-yard field goal late in the first half, but the Nittany Lions scored on a 20-yard pass from QB Trace McSorley to Chris Godwin with nine seconds left to cut it to 12-7 at halftime.
Samuel broke free for his TD run early in the third and then a safety gave OSU a 21-7 lead. But a McSorley 2-yard run made it a 21-14 game and then Tyler Davis hit 34-yard field goal to cut it to 21-17 with 9:33 left.
But then things went bad for the Buckeyes.
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