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You don’t have to be good. You just have to be good enough.
In that vein, the overall narrative of Ohio State tomorrow morning is that they’re still unbeaten and it’s damn hard to be unbeaten. Truthfully, that’s all you need. Ohio State wins over Indiana, 34-27. That’s all they came in seeking.
People might not want to buy this line of thinking, but winning is very, very hard, especially in conference where everyone’s been in your underwear drawer and has looked through your diary. They know where you hide the pictures you don’t want folks to see.
Ohio State basically was good enough, often in spite of themselves. I mean, they consistently took a 12-gauge shotgun and stuck it betwixt their toes to the point where by the end of the first half, there was nothing but hips left of their lower body.
One sequence in the late first half typified the OSU 2015 season thus far. Cardale Jones saw a hard rush from Indiana and eluded trouble to the left sideline to find Jalin Marshall wide stinking open. Marshall would shoot down inside the IU 10-yard-line before coughing up the ball, recovery, IU.
The Hoosiers would go three and out, and in a head-scratching measure, try a fake punt that landed somewhere short of the line of scrimmage. Advantage, OSU.
The Buckeyes would then tinkle down their leg for three plays and kick a field goal to make it, at the time, 10-6 IU. “Just enough” seems to be the moniker for OSU’s season thus far.
A lot of folks will start comparing the complacency of Florida State as a defending champ in 2014 to this OSU team. Some of that is right. Some of it isn’t.
We’ve already gone over the difficulty of fighting off complacency on this site. It’s the devil every coach fights against. That part is like Florida State. What isn’t like FSU is that even though these Buckeyes lost some talent, the lion’s share of their game breakers on both sides of the ball are still in uniform.
This isn’t about bringing back a quarterback (Jameis Winston) and everyone assuming everything else was the same too, thus there should be no struggles. This is pure difficulty in getting up for every moment after winning a title, and learning how to deal with getting everyone’s best shot plus one, because OSU gets everyone’s best shot every year.
Also, let’s be clear … Indiana has randomly given Ohio State fits in the recent past in spite of losing 20 straight. Other than in 2013 when the Buckeyes boat raced the Hoosiers, 2011, 2012, and 2014 featured gamely efforts from those Hoosier squads.
Suffice to say, IU coach Kevin Wilson understands his methods against the Buckeyes and how to attack them.
For the Bucks, the complacency will be there all year long. Right now, it’s just in this team’s DNA. Unfortunately, the only vaccination sure to work is a loss, and that sort of thing won’t fly in college football. It is important, however, to remember that OSU was off the radar for the most part from a national perspective until they went into East Lansing an dealt a blow to Michigan State.
The point there is that opinions are still open to be shaped. The downside, though, is that the Bucks don’t seem to play with the same chip on their shoulders.
Winning is hard, but sometimes the getting there portion of it isn’t. So basically, what I’m saying here is: if Ezekiel Elliott is upright and 98 degrees, you give him the ball, and then you give him the ball again. OSU boasts one of the best offensive lines in college football and a truly electric back the likes of which might be more versatile than any in the country in terms of his running style.
Every time OSU doesn’t win by what you want them to win by, though, don’t look for the sky to be chipping away and falling in pieces. Yes, there are major concerns, almost all of them above the neck.
For today, however, this is an OSU team that’s recently struggled with an IU football team that was jacked up beyond what we’ve seen from that program recently, doing what they do, pushing a top shelf team … but not sealing the deal in the end.
Winning is hard. “Good enough” is great for another week.
