I know osu fans won’t want to hear this, but there was two blatantly awful calls that shortly after resulted in two osu touchdowns. The fact that interception wasn’t reviewed is crazy and just about all of society outside of Ohio agrees it should have been an interception. Secondly, Oregon was driving, had a 3rd down in OSU territory and there was a blatantly defensive holding which then had a pass interference on the pass. 2-3 plays later after it resulted in osu ball, Henderson ripped that massive 50+ yard run which then lead to a td. Can’t take away his runs, but ball shouldn’t have been in his hands yet. Yes, bad calls always happen, but these were blatantly terrible and lead to 14 of the 31 points almost immediately after.
It is funny, we've always talked about hypotheticals and "if they played again" but in the past it was mostly all hypothetical. Now things are different. What we saw last weekend might be the end of tOSU/Oregon for this year but it also might just have been the first of as many as three installments (regular season, B1GCG, CFP). Consequently, these "if they played again" hypotheticals aren't entirely hypothetical. It really could happen and it could actually even happen twice more.
From that perspective rather than arguing bad calls and odd loopholes
that have now been closed, the thing that I would point out is that there was no point in the game when it felt like it was getting away from Ohio State. Here were the leads and snaps by the team in the lead:
- 7-0 tOSU, 4 snaps.
- 7-6 tOSU, 7 plays for a TD.
- 14-6 tOSU, 0 snaps.
- 14-12 tOSU, 0 snaps.
- 15-14 ORE, 0 snaps.
- 21-15 tOSU, 0 snaps.
- 22-21 ORE, 9 snaps but 3 of them were at the very end of the half without enough time to do anything).
- 28-22 tOSU, 5 snaps
- 29-28 ORE, 0 snaps.
- 31-29 tOSU, 0 snaps.
- 32-31 ORE, 0 snaps.
Two things:
- Oregon never led by more than one point. Their leads were 15-14, 22-21, 29-28, and 32-31.
- Oregon only had both the lead and the ball right before and right after halftime. Before halftime they went 3-and-out and after halftime they gained 19 yards on 6 plays before punting.
When Ohio State was up 14-6 it "felt like" they were in position to run away with it but then they gave up a TD, had that weird unintentional onsides kick, gave up a FG, and found themselves behind 15-14. Ohio State IMEDIATELY responded with a TD to make it 22-15.
Ohio State had the lead and the ball up 28-22 late in the 3rd quarter. That definitely felt like an opportunity to put the game away. Not completely, there was still about 15 minutes left but a TD there makes it a 13 point game and even a FG makes it a two-score game at 31-22.
