Hey, hey, where you've been,

Buckeye talk is about to begin.

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stephen christnik we're coming to you from the press box inside the memorial Stadium after Ohio State's 34 to 16 win over Illinois. We're watching this game while also – we're not watching this game. We're talking about this game while watching Oregon and Indiana play as well because it does feel like the winner of that game has a good chance of also getting to Indianapolis for the Big Ten championship game, potentially playing Ohio State, especially the way it's playing as a six and a zero team

in three and O in the Big Ten.

Stefan, if you had to pick one word to describe Ohio State's performance against Illinois,

what would it be?

Weird, probably the best way I would describe it because it's a mixture of, I thought Ohio State played pretty well.

I thought Ohio State dominated the game for the most part.

I know Ryan Day was saying that it felt like there was times where they let the foot off the pedal,

but this game was never really in question.

Frankly, when Ohio State went up 10-0 and never even after that at any at any point did it feel, you know, kind of hotter, like, that game could get, get, you know, tighter than it needs to be. But it was weird in the sense of, it felt like, yet again, Ohio State didn't necessarily play its best game. It didn't play to the best of its abilities and kind of lean into its strengths. but at the same time, they dominated. And they got a top 20 road win. And I think what maybe validates a little bit of how I feel is that, you know, Ryan A talked about post came out. They kind of had to remind the players that, hey, this is a top 20 road win. Like, this is a great win. And even though they didn't feel like they necessarily played that best, so that means, like, you know, the team and the players are understanding that, that they could be better and they could play a cleaner game. But I think at the end of the day, it just felt like Ohio State could have looked a lot better than it did and had chances to really kind of do a lot of things that we expected them to do, right? Like unleash Julianne, say, and really put this offense out there, really make a statement on the road and not just win, but win kind of in style. And that just, it doesn't seem to be the style points don't really matter a ton of Ryan Day. And they kind of did what they needed to do. And you walk away being like, this team is still the best team in the country, but you're halfway through the regular season. And it feels like they haven't really played their game yet against one of the better opponents. As we were on the field after the game and watching a bunch of people carry around a wooden turtle, I overheard a conversation between Charlie Dickie, who's one of the offensive analysts with the offensive line room, and they got the three guys in there working with Tyler Bowman. But what it's him, Charlie Dickie and then Marcus Johnson all working together now, which I think has worked

out very well, having multiple different voices, multiple different perspectives in there. And he was

talking to Carson Hinsman as they're walking off. He said, we left a lot of meat on that bone

after this game. My word is uninspiring. I think it is what it is. I feel like I'm

saying the same thing we said after a 24 to 6 went off over Washington a couple of weeks ago,

where we spent the entire first half kind of banging our heads up against the wall going,

why are you playing football like this? And then you look up and it's like, oh, you're about three

scores. What am I complaining about? Right. It was 20 to 3 at halftime. And I felt like, why are you not up by more points? And there's the red, the red zone is the red zone issues. And of course, we'll continue to get into that because it feels like last week they fixed the red zone because they played a team who gives up touchdowns to everybody in the red zone. And then those issues went right back to being issues against Illinois this week. So maybe it wasn't fixed. You just played a team who couldn't necessarily test you. They were six for six in scoring in the red zone. But only four of them were, excuse me, only two of them, I think, were touchdowns and the rest of them were field goals. If I have that math, correct, you know, obviously we'll rewatch the game on Monday and go into this more deep. But I feel like every single game this year, Ohio State, every game of, like, it's a decent opponent. So we're talking Texas, we're talking Washington now. We're talking Illinois. And those three games, we've left those games feeling like Ohio State didn't finish its meal. And I don't know whether it should be something that is alarming or should just be something of, okay, that's good. That means there's more for them to work on because Ryan David said it, the receivers, everybody wants every game to look like the Minnesota game where they came out early and they were aggressive and they went 42 to 3, but they controlled that game all the way through and it showed up on the scoreboard. But in the other three games, they've played against

decent opponents, meaning Texas and the other two Big Ten games, they've dominated and controlled

those games the exact same way. It just isn't showing up on the scoreboard, but does it matter?

I think that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out right now is it feels like we're

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