Displaced Cleveland Fan

After last week’s tough loss to USC, the Buckeyes traveled north this week to take on the Toledo Rockets at Cleveland Browns Stadium. If there was any wonder whether this team would be able to move on after last week, that was settled early on in this game. After scoring two first quarter touchdowns and building a 24-point halftime lead, the Buckeyes never looked back.

This was not necessarily going to be an easy win for Ohio State. Sure, they were playing an over-matched in-state school. But this team beat Michigan last year. And Toledo quarterback Aaron Opelt came into this game leading the nation in total offense (437 yards/game). But the Buckeyes defense completely shut down the Rockets offense. The closest Toledo came to scoring was in the fourth quarter when wide receiver Eric Page had the ball stripped at the goal line. Ohio State recovered the ball in the endzone for a touchback. The Buckeyes then marched down the field for a touchdown to go up 38-0.

Terrelle Pryor had a solid day throwing (262 yards, 3 TDs) and running the ball (110 yards, 1 TD). He finished the game with 372 yards of total offense and scored 4 touchdowns. He did have a couple bad throws that were picked off. But overall, very good game for Pryor.

One thing that has worried me about this year’s team is the lack of a big runner like Chris Wells. But the Buckeyes put up 247 rushing yards as a team in this game. Of course, Pryor rushed for a lot of those yards (110). But there were some good numbers from a trio of running backs that helped bolster the run game - Brandon Saine (45 yards), Dan Herron (42 yards, TD), and freshman Jordan Hall (44 yards). The running game has to be good to open things up for Pryor to throw the ball. So this game was encouraging.

Barring an upset in one of the later games today, it looks like the Buckeyes, even with this win, will be stuck at #11 next week.

Tags: Aaron Opelt, Brandon Saine, Dan Herron, Jordan Hall, Ohio State Buckeyes, scores, Terrelle Pryor, Toledo Rockets

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 19th, 2009 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Ohio State Buckeyes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.