Four reasons Ohio State doesn't look like a repeat national champ

COLUMBUS, Ohio — By the end of the first quarter of Ohio State’s first game, it seemed like this season was going to be little more than a four-month coronation for the Buckeyes.

They were coming off a national championship, they had almost everybody important back on both sides of the ball, Braxton Miller looked like he was going to transition seamlessly to wide receiver, and the skill positions were stocked with so many gifted players that the only real danger was boredom.

This time, though, Ohio State had a coach who had already been through the grinding pressure of a championship encore, who knew every possible pitfall and motivational tool, who had spent an entire offseason swearing that any sign of complacency would be met with a furious response.

And then, just like that, Ohio State went from a breathtaking 14-0 lead at Virginia Tech  on Sept. 7 to a 17-14 halftime deficit. The Buckeyes went on to win that night 42-24, but in retrospect it was a performance that ultimately foreshadowed the downfall of a team that came into the season as a heavy favorite to win the College Football Playoff again and deliver a fourth national title to coach Urban Meyer.

Now, barring almost unfathomable chaos over the next two weekends, Ohio State will not win its division, will not win the Big Ten and will not play for a national title.

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The end came Saturday in a 17-14 loss to Michigan State that was stunning for several reasons, including Ohio State’s offensive ineptitude (132 total yards), its unfathomably poor game plan (star running back Ezekiel Elliott carried  12 times for 33 yards) and the fact that Michigan State did not have  starting quarterback Connor Cook available because of a shoulder injury.

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“It’s kind of like a bad, bad dream,” Elliott said. “Offense had a rough day. I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed in the play-calling. I’m disappointed in the situation we were put in. I wish it all played out differently.”

Between the first quarter in Blacksburg and the 40-yard field goal that Michigan State’s Michael Geiger delivered with no time remaining on a wet and windy Saturday night, something went terribly wrong in Ohio State’s plans to repeat. Here are four thoughts about what happened:

1. 2015 Ohio State looks a lot like 2009 Florida

The parallels are stunning. Meyer and anyone else around the Florida program that season look back on that year as a joyless march to 12-0 with a team that kept winning but rarely played to the standard it set the year before in winning a national title. Everything looked good on paper with Tim Tebow back at quarterback and a roster full of future pros, but those Gators could never quite figure it out.

Ultimately, they ran into Alabama in the Southeastern Conference championship game and got exposed. Like that team, which lost offensive coordinator Dan Mullen to a head coaching job at Mississippi State and didn't look the same, this Ohio State team clearly misses former offensive coordinator Tom Herman, who is now at Houston.

The Buckeyes this season are averaging 6.32 yards per play. Last season, they averaged 7.0 yards per play. Though that is a narrow window to measure their regression, this team hasn’t been nearly as good up front, doesn’t have the deep-threat receivers they need and hasn’t gotten great quarterback play. Ohio State kept winning, but the Buckeyes were in dogfights against Northern Illinois, Indiana and Minnesota. They never quite looked like the team they were at the end of last season.

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Though Meyer said “the finger will be pointed right here” because he calls a lot of the plays, you have to expect the offensive coordinator combination of Ed Warinner (who was promoted from offensive line coach) and Tim Beck (hired off Nebraska’s former staff) will be reevaluated.

2. Meyer mishandled the quarterback situation

To most outsiders looking in, it was a big surprise that Cardale Jones was Ohio State’s starting quarterback to begin the season. Though Jones came up huge in the Big Ten championship and the two playoff games last season, J.T. Barrett was the heart and soul of last year's Buckeyes before he got injured.

Meyer was sensitive to upsetting the chemistry of that situation — maybe too sensitive. Jones was the biggest celebrity in college football coming off his run last season, but he wasn't the best fit for Ohio State's offense. Meyer’s stance was that Jones finished last season so he began 2015 as the incumbent, meaning Barrett would have to beat him out. He didn’t until the eighth game of the season, at which point Ohio State’s offense looked sort of lost in the wilderness.

It looks like the move came too late. Meyer was asked Saturday if Barrett, who only had  46 passing yards against the Spartans, was hurt from a developmental standpoint by not getting key repetitions early in the season. “It could have,” Meyer said. “I’m going to try and sit and evaluate everything. It could be a lot of reasons.”

3. Cracks in chemistry

When Ohio State got to the Playoff last season, it was a happy-go-lucky team with outsized personalities but a selfless culture that galvanized around being an underdog.

But sudden success is a strange thing.

Jones gained a Twitter following in the hundreds of thousands and hit the ESPYs. Four key Ohio State players, including defensive end Joey Bosa, were suspended for the season opener. There were transfer rumors involving Braxton Miller, who was playing quarterback at that point before his transition to receiver, and constant scrutiny on the quarterback battle all the way through camp. Some reporters spotted super-agent Drew Rosenhaus rubbing elbows with players’ families before the season opener in Blacksburg, indicative of the focus turning to NFL futures. Recently there was another disruption when Barrett was cited for operating a vehicle while intoxicated.

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Taken individually, none of these things necessarily spells trouble. But there was certainly more drama around the team than Meyer let on. That might have become manifest Saturday night when Elliott blasted the Buckeyes’ play-calling for not giving him enough carries. Though it would be hard to disagree with his comments, stepping out of line in that way is not the kind of thing Meyer's culture attempts to breed, which indicates that his message might have been going in one ear and out the other.

4. It's really, really hard to repeat

Since 1980, the only teams that have been able to win consecutive national championships are Nebraska in 1994-95 and Alabama in 2011-12. There's a good reason for that.

Regardless of talent, it's hard to maintain such a level of excellence and perfection or near-perfection for that long of a period. Stuff happens. Pressure builds. Opponents catch up. Luck finally turns. Ohio State had won 23 consecutive games, including a few they pulled out of the fire. And then they just got beat. Because everybody gets beat.

“I've been down this road before,” Meyer said. “I just love the group of guys down there. And we have to do better. Yeah, I do. I do. A lot of different perspective maybe had several years back, you lost a game, you're pissed off, you go do the best you can to go to work tomorrow.”

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