My Thoughts.....Indiana

                        The Ohio State Buckeyes only led Indiana by one at halftime, and trailed by six early in the third quarter, but thanks to Jalin Marshall, they avoided a major disaster and won 42-27, ensuring the Buckeyes a third-straight division title and a second-straight trip to the Big Ten championship game.  

 J.T. Barrett broke a couple of records. With four touchdown passes, the redshirt freshman broke the school's single-season mark of 30 set by Heisman winner Troy Smith. Barrett now has 33 and Ohio State's season is far from over.  With 380 yards of total offense against the Hoosiers, Barrett also set the school mark for total offense at 3,310 yards, breaking Braxton Miller's old record. Finally, Barrett tied Drew Brees' league record for touchdowns responsible for with 42. Despite that, Barrett also had two picks. One of those was particularly bad as he overthrew Devin Smith on an ill-advised toss while the other was, at minimum, shared responsibility as he received no help from Evan Spencer on a pass near the goal line. It honestly felt like Barrett left a lot of passing yards on the table as he missed a couple wide open receivers for sizable chunks. That said, he still completed 25/35 passes for 302 yards and ran 20 times for another 78 yards.  It really was great to see Jalin Marshall come back from his case of butterfingers the week before with his best game to date.  His four touchdowns, all in the second half, provided the spark Ohio State’s offense had to have to wake up and finally polish off a game Indiana squad.  His punt return for a score was a thing of beauty and was the turning point of the game.  Hardly noticed, but almost as valuable, was the solid day turned in by Ezekiel Elliott.  Needing just 46 yards to become Urban Meyer's second back to reach 1,000 rushing yards in a season, Ezekiel Elliott got that out of the way early as he took his first carry 65 yards to paydirt.  Elliott has emerged as one of the best pass and run blockers the school has produced, as he completely sells out in an effort to help a teammate gain a few extra yards or provide Barrett another half-second to find a receiver with his stellar blitz pick-ups. Through the air, Elliott has become a factor in the swing / short passing game. Yesterday, he had seven grabs for 39 yards giving him 25 catches for 201 yards on the season which ties him for 2nd on the team in receptions and 5th in yardage.

After MSU’s Jeremy Langford and Minnesota’s David Cobb racked up solid rushing yardage in back-to-back weeks, all eyes were on how the defense would perform against Tevin Coleman and when the clock struck zeroes, Coleman had run for 228 yards on 27 carries with three touchdowns.  Tevin Coleman is the real deal and no doubt will go high in the NFL draft when he comes out.  It should be noted that 142 yards were on a 90-yard run and a 52-yard run.  On the other 25 carries, Coleman ran for just 86 yards and the rest of the Indiana offense didn’t do very much.  In between Coleman's long runs the defense did tighten in the 2nd half as they forced five 3-and-outs and an interception during one six-series stretch.  But, with the defense possibly going up against Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon in the conference championship game, the once solid run defense has now become a concern.  Also becoming a major concern has been the sudden spate of turnovers in the last three games that have allowed MSU, Minnesota, and Indiana to keep the games closer than they should have been.  Although Joshua Perry had a solid game and Tyvis Powell had an interception, the defensive side of the ball has its work cut out for them between now and Indianapolis for the conference championship game.
The Buckeyes now look forward to the 111^th rendition of The Game verses Michigan and even though the Michigan football program is a mess, the Buckeyes cannot afford to have the turnovers and defensive lapses they’ve had as of late.