COLUMBUS — Fans and analysts might have thought the Ohio State run game was broken, but the players certainly didn’t.
In OSU’s 36-31 win Saturday against Nebraska, the Buckeyes rushed for 229 yards, surpassing the century mark in rushing for the first time in three games.
For Mike Weber, fixing the ground attack wasn’t about doing anything new — rather, it was about doing what’s worked for the Buckeyes in the past.
“I think it's fixed, but I never really thought it was broken,” he said. “I mean it kind of was, but I just felt like we just had to push pause and [go] back to the old ways.”
The old ways for the Buckeyes meant fewer reads and run-pass options. Instead, they came into the game emphasizing run-first plays.
The result allowed Weber and J.K. Dobbins to make big plays and wrack up the yardage all while propelling the offense.
VIDEO: Ohio State’s Mike Weber and J.K. Dobbins
Weber finished with 91 yards on nine carries, while Dobbins had three touchdowns and 163 yards on 23 carries.
Dobbins also surpassed 2,000-yard mark in his career. He and Weber have now hit that milestone, and are the first running back tandem to do so in program history.
As Weber said postgame, the Buckeyes put more of an emphasis on downhill, direct runs to open things up.
“We did a lot of perimeter runs and tried to get cute with the run game and it didn't work for us in the past,” he said. “We came in this week trying to run the ball and we didn't care how many guys were in the box, that was the motto this week.”
In the previous four games, OSU was averaging just 110 rushing yards per game.
Things came to a head in the Buckeyes’ 49-20 loss to Purdue two weeks ago. They managed just 76 yards on the ground in that game, a season low, compared to the 470 passing yards that Dwayne Haskins put up.
For weeks now, coach Urban Meyer has outwardly lamented the lack of offensive diversity and stressed the need for running backs to create their own holes if necessary.
Dobbins said the running back group as a whole took that as a challenge.
“We put in a lot of work,” he said. “We had to do better. I feel like [Meyer] was telling the truth, we have to do better, we have to break more tackles and all that.”
Meyer thought Dobbins and Weber accepted that challenge of creating their own plays, particularly in the red zone.
“We worked ad nauseam at that,” Meyer said. “The amount of time that we spent at that was over the top, and I felt the line of scrimmage change. It’s difficult to run against that bear defense that Nebraska runs. And I thought the backs worked on pad level.”
But even with the improvement on the ground, the Buckeyes hardly played perfect.
On offense, Haskins struggled despite throwing for 252 yards and completing 18 of his 32 passes. OSU also turned the ball over three times, and the defense still is “stop-gapping” as Meyer said, because of injuries.
And although the Buckeyes ran more this week, and were looking to do so from their opening drive, Weber said he still thinks the Buckeyes haven’t reached their ceiling as far as putting together their run and pass games for one complete outing.
“If we do it, watch out to any defense,” he said.
First Published November 4, 2018, 12:48 a.m.
