COLUMBUS, Ohio — Curt Cignetti put his arm around Nico Radicic, with a resigned look on his face.
Indiana football, ranked No. 5 in the country, had just scored a touchdown to bring its deficit against No. 2 Ohio State down to two scores with less than two minutes remaining in Saturday’s game. Radicic didn’t execute the ensuing onside kick properly and left it short of the 10 yards needed to avoid a penalty. Cignetti calmly explained the mistake to his kicker, understanding his team had most likely lost this showdown.
The Hoosiers did suffer their first defeat of the season, 38-15 to the Buckeyes. And Radicic wasn’t a culprit, by any means. But that moment embodied the entirety of Saturday’s game at Ohio Stadium. IU just made too many critical mistakes in its toughest game of the year.
“You’ve got to be close to perfect in order to beat a team like this, and we’re going to have a chance to play a lot of similar teams like this,” quarterback Kurtis Rourke said after the game. “And so, knowing that, we can’t have these mistakes, and we’ve got to be on our game for the whole game.”
It’s no certainty that the Hoosiers (10-1, 7-1 Big Ten) will get another opportunity against a team of Ohio State’s caliber. Its postseason fate is in the hands of the College Football Playoff Selection Committee after this loss.
The Buckeyes (10-1, 7-1) overpowered Indiana in a lot of ways. Their dominance against IU’s typically strong passing game was the most glaring example of that mismatch. The Hoosiers had no answers for OSU’s elite pass rush, and Rourke spent most of the afternoon under constant duress.
Ohio State racked up five sacks, on top of one QB hurry and eight tackles for loss. The Hoosiers weren’t surprised by any pass-rush looks OSU threw at them, but they just couldn’t stop the bleeding. IU’s offense had to utilize a silent snap count with all the noise at The Horseshoe, and that caused some problems.
“Nothing we hadn’t seen on tape and practiced all week long. I think you couple it with the noise and having to go to a silent count. The center couldn’t hear. Then the speed at which they do it at, compared to our scout team and the pressure of the moment. Our guys just didn’t respond very well. Simple,” Cignetti said after the game. “Sometimes we had missed assignments. Sometimes we had communication errors. Sometimes we got physically beat. But it wasn’t very pretty.”
But even with Ohio State’s stout defensive performance up front, Indiana has itself to blame for so many other reasons why this game wasn’t closer. IU wasted opportunities to swing the pendulum its way when the score was closer, and it committed too many uncharacteristic mistakes to make things easy for the Buckeyes.
OSU finished with 316 yards of total offense, its second-lowest mark of the season. The Hoosiers’ defensive performance was far from perfect, though. Not all their miscues ultimately hurt them on the scoreboard, but they still add up in the end.
IU had Ohio State backed up to third and 35 during their second possession, but still gave up a first down two plays later. Even though the Hoosiers came up with a fourth-down stop a few plays later, they missed a chance at better field position and an even more deflated opponent.
But the biggest gaffes came on special teams, where Indiana had largely avoided problems all season until Saturday.
Punter James Evans simply dropped the snap as he was about to kick it back to the Buckeyes late in the second quarter. Had he fielded the snap cleanly and gotten the punt off, and if the coverage team did its job, Ryan Day’s team would’ve had around 1:40 left with one timeout — and given Evans’ 43.8 average entering the game, there would’ve been much more ground to cover to reach the end zone before halftime. Instead, the Buckeyes took over inside the IU 10 yard line, and they scored the go-ahead touchdown in just three plays.
The Hoosiers opened the third quarter with a three-and-out, and then Ohio State standout Caleb Downs fielded the ensuing punt off a bounce and burst ahead for a 79-yard touchdown return.
“We went into the game plus-10 in the turnover ratio, and those are like turnovers, right? Ohio State was plus four coming in. The dropped punt is definitely like a touchdown. And the punt return, there may have been a couple nicks in the back that weren’t called, but that’s the deal,” Cignetti said. “It’s not good football.”
IU couldn’t generate enough offense to account for those big point swings, and that’s largely because of the strong OSU defensive front. But Rourke misfired on some throws he did get off, and IU’s receivers rarely got enough separation to make plays.
This was Indiana’s first top-five matchup since 1968. These sorts of games require a high level of execution to stand a real chance at prevailing.
And in too many ways, the Hoosiers weren’t good enough on Saturday.
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