Star running back Ezekiel Elliott has apparently played his final home game for No. 3 Ohio State. Carrying the ball 12 times during a wet and windy last-second loss was not how he planned to go out.
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No wonder Elliott said, “How we lost, I just feel like we weren’t put in the right opportunity to win this game, we weren’t put in the right situations to win this game”.
Elliott, a junior said it was his last game in Ohio Stadium and that he will turn pro after the season. I don’t know what was going on or what they were seeing.
Ohio State finished with just 132 total yards and five first downs. So the finger will be pointed right here. Especially if you’re sort of on a run a little bit and then you lose and the way it went down we felt like we could control something at least in that outcome, because it was so close. If Penn State beats Sparty, and MI beats Ohio State, barring extreme chaos elsewhere in the country, it’s pretty likely that the Big Ten would be left out of the playoff.
Thomas will be lining up against fantastic cornerback Jourdan Lewis for most of the afternoon, so he’ll need to have a huge bounce-back performance for Ohio State to win. Meyer was disappointed, but he said “we squashed it as a team”.
“We’ve just been hit right in the gut, and Zeke actually said a few words down there, and I love these guys and we’ll come back and do the best we can next week”. I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed in the play calling and the situation we were put in.
QB Connor Cook missed the game for the Spartans with a shoulder injury. OSU hasn’t lost consecutive games since 2013 with defeats to Michigan State in the Big Ten championship game and Clemson in the Orange Bowl.
Meyer, who has led the Buckeyes since 2012, said the play calling was not very good on Saturday and he regretted not giving Elliott the ball more. In Ohio State’s previous 17 games, he’d rushed for 100 yards or more in all but one of them.
There have also been suggestions that Elliott, although he posted an apology on his official Twitter account on Monday, could be benched by coach Urban Meyer for this game to send a strong statement to the rest of his teammates about keeping certain things in house.
The Buckeyes never had an answer against Michigan State. Speaking of Barrett, he had more carries on Saturday than Elliott did. Ultimately, it was a big part of them falling short of their lofty expectations for this season.
It appeared Ohio State with their spread offense was simply not prepared to play this type of game.
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MSU responded with a 9-play, 75-yard drive to tie the game 7-7 on a 12-yard touchdown pass from O’Connor to Trevon Pendleton.
