Ohio State Vs Indiana: Question Marks, Problems, & Positives

The college football season is finally fully underway. We’ve now made our way through week one of the 2023 season and the much anticipated debut of this year’s Ohio State Buckeyes. They entered their game against Indiana with a highly hyped receiving corps, new quarterbacks, questions on the offensive line, and the unknown on the defensive side of the ball. Now we’ve seen a little bit after they defeated the Hoosiers 23-3 on the road in Bloomington.

The Buckeye defense had the biggest of positives to start the season allowing no touchdowns and just a single field goal. They only allowed a total of 153 total yards of offense by the Hoosiers. If that is a sneak peek of what to expect this year, OSU seems to have a hard noised defense back for the first time in a few years that they have so desperately wanted.

We saw both Kyle McCord and Devin Brown at QB, but not as much of Brown as McCord, and not the mix we thought we were going to see. McCord seemed to get into a better rhythm for the most part and maybe coach Ryan Day just wanted to stay with the hot hand on the road to ensure a week one victory. Maybe we will see more split time at the position in week two as the Buckeyes have their home opener against Youngstown State for a noon game. Kyle ended with a stat line of 20/33 for 239 yards, no touchdowns, and bad throw over the middle for an interception. This question still remains to a lot of people as neither one wowed us in anyway which Ohio State fans usually get by now.

The offensive line didn’t look good for most of the game, but to their credit, they did show improvement as the second half went along. Some of that could have been the Indiana defense wearing down in the heat where the on-field temperature at times was over 100 degrees. The running game looked very good at times despite this, showing that if the O-Line can bring it all together, the running game could be an ultimate weapon for a new QB controlling the clock and games as the season progresses. The one thing that was very noticeable was the lack of production at the WR position as they threw the ball 36 times to the most talented position room in the country. That probably had a lot more to do with the lack of experience at the QB position that anything else. I expect that to vastly change next week. Either way, the most important thing was accomplished; a victory, and one that was on the road in a Big Ten game.