Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer didn’t plan any major overhauls when he announced he would become more involved in the defense this week. But he wanted to make sure the players knew the status quo was unacceptable, and that message was conveyed just by his presence at defensive meetings Sunday.

“It was just shocking because everybody knows what we are capable of doing. And him just coming in there showed that we didn’t do so great on Saturday,” said cornerback Travis Howard, referring to the fingernail-gnawing 52-49 win at Indiana.

“After we had our meeting, he came in and talked to us, and once we saw him, we knew it was a big deal.”

Meyer has expressed confidence in his coaches, but he’s turned the offense into a highly functioning unit, and he likely has trouble understanding why the same impact isn’t being made on the defense.

The 49 points were the most the Buckeyes have surrendered to the Hoosiers since the series began in 1901 and the most points allowed by OSU overall since a 63-14 thrashing at Penn State in 1994.

“It was really painful to watch. You felt like you couldn’t stop it,” Meyer said of the IU game, which ended with the Hoosiers scoring 15 points in the final 1:40. “When we recovered the final onside kick, it was more, instead of the joy of victory, it was just relief that the darn thing was over.”

The Buckeyes are eighth in the Big Ten in points allowed (24.6), 10th in total defense (400.0 yards per game) and 12th in pass defense (277.7) — easily their worst showings in those categories in the last 10 years.

“Ultimately it’s my job to prepare a team. No way am I going to go in there and change what we do. What I’m going to do is emphasize fundamentals I do understand,” Meyer said.

“We did thorough research, and it comes down to three things: No. 1 was just four to six seconds, and that’s just the term we use around here to finish a play. … The other is leveraging the ball. Whenever you see a player cut back for a big play, that means we’re not taking proper pursuit angles. And the last one is glaring and that’s missed tackles, which showed up again.”

The Buckeyes have been so desperate for help at linebacker that they moved fullback Zach Boren to the position last week. He had a team-high eight tackles against IU and will start against Purdue on Saturday.

Boren said Meyer has gotten his point across, but the players already knew what they were doing wrong.

“He’s being around more. He’s interacting with us a little bit and making sure we’re over there doing the right things, running to the football ands stuff,” Boren said. “But we took it upon ourselves as a defense to go back to our fundamentals this week and swarm to the ball and make sure we were ‘thudding up’ and making every tackle.”