Ohio State Buckeyes Over The Toledo Rockets 38-0

In a nice ‘get healthy’ and ‘feel good about yourselves again’ kind of game, Ohio State regained their swagger after a loss to Southern California with a fairly dominate win over a MAC team from Toledo. The defense continued to completely shut down their opponent similar to the way they stopped the top ranked Trojans one week ago.

By Steve Patterson

The only things that could draw a shadow over the nice win is the loss of Jim Cordle during the week of practice and Washington beating USC. But the play of the running backs, the wide receivers, and the whole defense for the Buckeyes makes all of Ohio feel good once again about their team. Brandon Saine (45 yards on 9 carries), Dan Herron (42 yards on 15 carries and a touchdown), and Jordan Hall (44 yards on 7 carries) all saw action at the tailback position and looked solid independently.

Just how bad is Colorado to lose to a Rocket team that couldn’t do a thing all day against the stingy Ohio State squad. Ohio State held Toledo to only 9 first downs, converting 3-15 on third down, for a total 210 yards on the day. This is in comparison to Ohio State’s 23 first downs, 11-17 on third down, and 522 net yards. That is about as lopsided a game as they come. Ohio State had the ball 14 more minutes than the Rockets to boot.

Terrelle Pryor looked great at times completing touchdown passes to Dane Sanzenbacher twice and once to DeVier Posey. He finished with 262 yards through the air with the three touchdowns but threw away two pass to the defense. When the pocket wasn’t stable for the Buckeyes is when Pryor improvised. If he ran forward you could expect really good results. As he finished with the most rushing yards on the day at 110 yards and one touchdown. But when he scrambled to pass is when things went bad.

The kicking game was also slightly a miss for the Buckeyes on a day that otherwise was excellent in all possible ways. Starting punter and holder Jon Thoma was unable to play with a reported illness. This led to Sanzenbacher holding for both field goal attempts with kicker Aaron Pettrey missing a chip shot from near 25 yards away. And Ben Buchanan got to make all punts on the day averaging 42.8 yards a punt with none inside the 20. Good experience for the backups at these positions.