First Posted: 12/2/2014
COLUMBUS — The evidence of what happens to teams which fail to contain Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon in a Big Ten football championship game can be easily found.
Two years ago, Gordon exploded for 216 yards rushing when Wisconsin dominated Nebraska 70-31 to win the Big Ten championship.
His first carry went for a 56-yard touchdown and he needed only nine carries to get to 216 yards, which is still a Big Ten championship game record.
Saturday night he will be Ohio State’s problem in this year’s Big Ten Championship game. And stopping opposing running backs has been difficult at times for OSU’s defense.
Michigan State’s Jeremy Langford ran for 137 yards, Minnesota’s David Cobb got 145 yards, Indiana’s Tevin Coleman rushed for 228 yards and Michigan’s Drake Johnson had 74 yards when he went out of the game early in the third quarter with a knee injury.
Gordon might be better than any of them. He leads the country in rushing with 2,260 yards and had 408 yards rushing in a win over Nebraska.
Gordon has gained more than 200 yards in five games this season and has gone over 100 yards in 11 straight games.
Ohio State limited him to 74 yards on 15 carries last season in a 31-24 win at Ohio Stadium.
“You stop Melvin Gordon, I think we’ve got a great chance,” Ohio State middle linebacker Curtis Grant said. “I think the offense is built around him. Basically the offense is him.
“He’s a special back. He has great vision, you have to wrap him up like any other back. We have to get to him quick before he gets started,” he said.
Another OSU linebacker, Joshua Perry, said Wisconsin’s offense is more than a one-man show.
“You can never say if you just stop one guy you’ll win a game. If we’re able to stifle Gordon a little bit we’ll have a better chance of being successful. But, obviously, he’s not the only person who plays for them on offense. We’ll have to be ready for whatever they throw at us,” Perry said.
“You’ve got to get guys swarming to the ball and when you hit him you have to make sure he feels it a little bit,” he said.
At 6-feet, 1-inch, 213 pounds, Gordon combines speed and power. He got a good education in both those styles of running at an early age when his dad showed him tapes of Walter Payton and Barry Sanders.
“My dad was a big (Chicago) Bears fan. The first two guys I started watching were Barry Sanders and Walter Payton,” Gordon said on a Big Ten teleconference on Monday.
“At the end of the day, you can’t run like those two guys because they’re the greatest of all time, but you can take things from both of them — Walter Payton fighting for every yard and Barry Sanders’ elusiveness was just crazy,” he said.
OSU co-defensive coordinator Luke Fickell said the Buckeyes will try to repeat the success they have had against Wisconsin’s running game the last two years. The Badgers ran for only 123 yards last season and had 206 yards in 2012.
One thing he knows he doesn’t want to see is anything similar to the 408-yard game Gordon had against Nebraska.
“I’ve been part of one like that and I don’t ever want to re-live it,” Fickell said, with a laugh, referring to the 313 yards Michigan’s Tshimanga Biakabutuka put on Ohio State in 1995 when Fickell was an OSU defensive lineman.
