| Hard to believe that less than two years ago, this was probably the biggest game of the Big Ten season. But on November 21, 2020, #9 Indiana travelled to #3 Ohio State, Michael Penix threw for 491 yards, and the Hoosiers held Justin Fields and the Buckeye offense scoreless over the final 27 minutes, falling just short, 42-35. Hard to believe that where that program appeared to be at the time, earning Tom Allen an extension, they would lose 14 of 15 Big Ten games over the past two seasons. The lone win was a season opening last second win over Illinois this year, so certainly nobody is expecting any such drama this year. After the performance we saw out of the Buckeyes last week, there is also no excuse for them to be sleep walking. Every team has clunkers, but if Ohio State has theirs in back to back weeks, against the two worst teams in the conference, it's officially a concern. The conditions in Evanston did make passing the ball impossible, neither team threw for over 80 yards. So the concerning thing is that even a totally one dimensional Northwestern offense was still able to run the ball against Ohio State. That was the problem we saw last year, particularly from the linebackers, and which appeared to be rectified this year. The Hoosier run game is even worse, a Big Ten worst 1.8 ypc and 46.8 ypg. And to add to the issues for the Hoosiers, they used three different quarterbacks last week against Penn State, none of whom was their starter, Connor Bazelak. Bazelak is expected to be back this week, but Tom Allen mentioned that he likes what he saw out of sophomore Dexter Williams II. Williams did average 6.0 ypc on 4 carries, but he was 4-11 with 2 picks throwing the ball. |