Welcome back, Buckeyes.<\/p>\n
After a brief haitus, the real Ohio State team returned to action Saturday night at Ohio Stadium.<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes scored on both sides of the ball (twice on defense) and had great special teams play in a\u00a062-3 win over Nebraska in a nationally televised game that is sure to impress the College Football Playoff committee.<\/p>\n
Ohio State set the tone early with a 36-yard pick-six by Damon Webb on the game’s third play and cruised to a 31-3\u00a0halftime lead. The Buckeyes scored on every first-half possession, and put the exclamation point on a near-perfect half with\u00a0a 1-yard jump pass from QB J.T. Barrett to Curtis Samuel with just three seconds left.<\/p>\n
Barrett completed 26 of 38 passes for 290 yards and four touchdowns in about three quarters of action. Samuel ended with eight catches for 137 yards and a pair of scores and\u00a0five rushes for 41 yards. K.J. Hill was the second-leading receiver with five catches for 66 yards.<\/p>\n
Running back Mike Weber added 11 carries for 72 yards and a score. Demario McCall took advantage of some late playing time and led OSU with 73 yards on 16 carries.<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes kept Nebraska in guessing mode all night. Ohio State stretched the Cornhusker defense deep, dinked the ‘Huskers with short passes and bulldozed over and through\u00a0the defensive line.<\/p>\n
Kicker Tyler Durbin even joined the party, tackling the Nebraska returner on the kickoff following a 29-yard field goal that extended the lead to 24-3 midway through the second.<\/p>\n
In all, the Buckeyes (8-1, 5-1 Big Ten East) had\u00a0590 total yards, compared to\u00a0204\u00a0for the 7-2 Cornhuskers, who dropped to 4-2 in the Big Ten West. OSU had 352 yards passing and 238 rushing.<\/p>\n
About the only thing that went wrong was Dontre Wilson’s fumble on a punt with 7:23 left in the first half. That led to a scary moment a few minutes later when QB Tommy Armstrong was tackled\u00a0on the OSU sideline and appeared to hit his head and\/or land on the ball. He was motionless for a while and eventually was taken off on a stretcher and into an ambulance.<\/p>\n
The ‘Huskers moved to the OSU 15 but couldn’t convert a fourth-and-one. OSU took over with less than four minutes left and drove down the field to set up the jump pass.<\/p>\n
Armstrong returned later in the game but Nebraska never did.<\/p>\n
Following the early pick-six, the Cornhuskers cut the score to 7-3 on a\u00a0Drew Brown 20-yard field. But OSU answered with a 7-yard TD pass to Terry McLaurin to lead 14-3 after the first quarter, and then had a 23-yard TD run from Weber before Durbin’s field goal and the last-second TD pass.<\/p>\n
Just in case fans still had their doubts, Coach Urban Meyer unleashed Samuel on the first drive on the second half and he caught a 75-yard TD pass. He beat the defender then broke the tackle attempt on the 35 and jogged the final\u00a025 yards\u00a0into the end zone.<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes added another score on a 6-yard TD pass to\u00a0Noah Brown\u00a0to cap an 87-yard drive, just seconds before Armstrong\u00a0jogged back to the sideline.<\/p>\n
OSU had another 29-yard FG from Durbin and then Malik Hooker notched a 48-yard interception return for a touchdown off a pass tipped by a teammate.<\/p>\n
Joe Burrow added a late score, running for a 12-yard TD with 7:19 left to make it 62-3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome back, Buckeyes. After a brief haitus, the real Ohio State team returned to action Saturday night at Ohio Stadium….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[78784788],"tags":[485337081,59751432,154124703,74306111,4710485,299335],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n