First Posted: 11/8/2014
EAST LANSING, Mich. — It was like Urban Meyer knew something and his reading of the situation was correct.
Five of the first six times No. 13 Ohio State snapped the football in its 49-37 win over No. 7 Michigan State on Saturday night in their showdown for Big Ten supremacy and national attention, quarterback J.T. Barrett threw the ball.
It was like Ohio State knew it could move the ball against Michigan State’s defense. It knew Barrett, a redshirt freshman, was ready for prime time, despite some struggles at Penn State. And it knew it could play defense just well enough itself to take down the Spartans.
Ohio State continued to put the offense in Barrett’s hands the rest of the night on its way to a win it had waited almost a year for since Michigan State frustrated their national championship plans with a 34-24 win in last season’s Big Ten championship game.
Barrett completed 16 of 26 passes for 300 yards and three touchdowns and ran 14 times for 86 yards and two more scores.
The Buckeyes rolled up 568 yards total offense against an MSU defense which had allowed more than 340 yards only once this season when Oregon gained 491 yards in a 46-27 win.
“A young team grew up tonight. I told them in there (in the locker room) the future is bright at Ohio State,” OSU coach Urban Meyer said. “We’ve got a bunch of young players out there playing like older players.”
The win was Meyer’s first over a top 10 team at Ohio State and the Buckeyes’ first regular season win over a top 10 team since the No. 1 against No. 2 game with Michigan in 2006.
With four teams ahead of the Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff rankings last week losing on Saturday, they will move up from No. 14 in those rankings.
“J.T, boy, is he playing well,” Meyer said. “Devin Smith, that’s the best game he has played in the last three years. He’s, if not the best, one of the best deep ball players we’ve had.”
He also called the play of the offensive line “terrific.”
Barrett was far from the only playmaker for OSU. Ezekiel Elliott rushed for 154 yards on 24 carries and scored two touchdowns. Devin Smith had 6 catches for 129 yards and a touchdown.
Elliott said,”We were underdogs. We had so much emotion. We just came out and played our best. I think we showed we can play on the big stage. We had something to prove this year after they took it away from us last year. We knew J.T. was a great leader, we knew he was a dude.”
Barrett said, “We didn’t want to come in here and be conservative. We wanted to go out swinging.
“Last year they got us. They got us in the Big Ten championship. That’s what we rallied around in the off season,” he said. “It’s another great win and gives us confidence going into the stretch. Now we’ll try to keep on rolling.”
Two of Smith’s catches were huge when Ohio State was battling both Michigan State and its own mistakes in the first half. One was a 44-yard touchdown catch to put Ohio State ahead to stay at 28-21 in the final minute of the first half. And the other kept a drive alive on a 3rd down and 23 play with Michigan State up 14-7 early in the second quarter.
OSU (8-1, 5-0 Big Ten) ended Michigan State’s Big Ten winning streak at 13 games and stretched its own conference regular-season winning streak to 21 games.
Michigan State (7-2, 4-1 Big Ten) did not go quietly but it was not the efficient offensive and defensive machine it was in the Big Ten championship game.
A year ago, Ohio State was 1 of 10 on third downs and 0 for 2 on fourth downs against the Spartans. This year it was 10 of 14 on third-down plays and 1 for 1 on fourth down.
Ohio State survived what seemed like two or three games worth of mistakes and misplays to take a 28-21 lead into the locker room at halftime.
The Buckeyes narrowly avoided falling behind 28-14 late in the second quarter when an apparent touchdown run by MSU’s Jeremy Langford was called back because of a holding penalty.
After the penalty, kicker Michael Geiger missed a 39-yard field goal. Then, on Ohio State’s next play, Barrett connected with Michael Thomas on a 79-yard touchdown run that tied the game at 21-21 with 3:19 to play in the second quarter.
OSU used the deep ball for its 28-21 halftime lead on its next possession when Barrett hit Smith with a 44-yard TD throw. It never lost the lead after that and was up by 18 points twice in the second half.
Michigan State had 536 yards total offense and its quarterback Connor Cook was 25 of 45 for 358 yards and Langford rushed for 137 yards on 18 carries.
Cook threw for more than 300 yards and Langford ran for more than 100 yards in the Big Ten championship game last year. But this time it wasn’t enough.
