Buckeyes are not out of it, but this is not 2014, either

Urban Meyer said last Monday he hoped his team’s close call at Wisconsin would help the Buckeyes in the long run.

It didn’t at Penn State.

The passing game was still inconsistent.

The penalties weren’t cleaned up.

The defense wasn’t back to the dominance it displayed early in the season.

More mistakes beset the special teams.

Simply put, Ohio State won’t win the Big Ten (cue Jim Mora on playoffs) the way the Buckeyes are playing now.

They might beat Nebraska, but they are setting up to face a terrible matchup with Michigan.

The Wolverines have the best pass defense in the country, a ferocious pass rush and a coach who knows how to coax more out of his offense than the personnel should probably allow.

The last point is the biggest issue for Meyer’s team right now.

He’s got a team full of playmakers but not enough ways to use them.

Well, not enough effective ways.

Two weeks ago, SBNation laid out prior to the Wisconsin game reasons for concern about Ohio State's offense long term, and they have been very apparent in the two games since.

The gist: A simplistic passing game isn’t hard to clamp down, and the intricacies of the running game probably prevent the time needed to make the passing game better from being spent there.

(The Air Raid offenses are proof simple passing games can be quite effective, but obviously those teams sacrifice a lot when it comes to running the ball.)

This is less an issue if the runners are dynamic (Braxton Miller, Carlos Hyde, Ezekiel Elliott), but Curtis Samuel (who spends most of his time at receiver) is the only one who fits that category.

The spread offense is really not designed to trick opponents. The idea is to create space for superior athletes to operate with big plays being the result.

Having a great offensive line like Ohio State did from 2012-14 is also a big bonus.

Even if a team has great receivers, a defense can minimize exposure to bad matchups with zone defense or safety help over the top for cornerbacks.

Then it’s up to Ohio State to take what’s there as far as short passes and runs, but most offensive coordinators hate that and inevitably try to push the issue eventually.

Coaches love to have a team that can win on every play, but that’s also really hard. This is a maxim that extends to other sports as well.

The key to victory is often just a matter of making enough explosive plays to cover up for the dozens that did little or nothing.

Points are points no matter how they come.

Penn State defensive end Evan Schwan made some headlines last week when he said Braxton Miller was a better quarterback than J.T. Barrett.

It was only a coincidence Schwan was in on the sack that ended the game, but the rest of it proved his point.

For all the positives Barrett brings, he’s still not the same big-play threat Miller was. His arm isn’t as strong as Miller’s, and the games in which he looks like no better a decision-maker and/or accurate as a passer are starting to pile up (Penn State ’14 and ’16, Michigan State ’15, Virginia Tech ’14, Michigan ’14). For both of them, the issues could be as much on the scheme and the execution by the receivers as it is their own passing acumen.

Is that a high standard? Yes, but those are also most of the most important games Ohio State has played in the last two-plus seasons, and college football is full of meaningless games in which players pad stats. (Miller also had his issues in some of Ohio State’s biggest games when he was the starter.)

Barrett’s lack of dynamism is a bigger issue without Ezekiel Elliott joining him in the backfield.

So far, Mike Weber looks like the running back version of Barrett: A productive runner who is hard to tackle but also isn’t much of a threat to go the distance.

So while it is relevant to note the Buckeyes are far from out of the Big Ten race, going so far as to expect something like Ohio State’s 2014 season to happen again is not realistic.

This is not 2014 for a few reasons.

1. The regular season schedule is tougher.

That means there’s not as much time to work things out on the field as there was between Ohio State’s loss to Virginia Tech and its domination of Michigan State two seasons ago.

2. The honeymoon ended for Barrett after he had amazing back to back games against the Spartans and then at Minnesota.

The rest of the team seemed to relax after those tough games, and he had a harder time doing it by himself against a very bad Indiana defense and then in the Michigan game before he got hurt.

3. The circumstances of the end of that season drastically altered that team.

The Buckeyes had to endure not just losing their leader (Barrett) on the field but a friend off it when Kosta Karageorge committed suicide. Many players raised their level of play significantly between the Michigan game and the Big Ten championship game against Wisconsin. Those two Ohio State squads barely resembled each other.

4. The offense changed around Cardale Jones.

We’ll never know if the formula Ohio State used to wipe out numerous terrible defenses then expose Michigan State with Barrett would have done the same thing to much better defenses from Wisconsin and Alabama, but it’s fairly obvious Jones benefitted from players like Devin Smith, Evan Spencer, Jalin Marshall and Michael Bennett raising their play against those teams.

As much as people pine for the return of Tom Herman, many of the same issues we’ve seen over the last two seasons existed while he was calling the plays for Ohio State — until he had to give the keys to Jones and made some championship-quality lemonade.

So…. is Ohio State’s season over?

Of course not.

Just as we say not to expect a repeat of 2014, it’s impossible to ignore 2014 happened.

A young team got over a loss, came together and played its best in the postseason.

No one expected that at the time, of course, and that’s the beauty of sports.

But a rocky road could be on the horizon, too.

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