Football
Buckeyes Breeze by New Mexico State 45-0 in Glorified Bye Week
By Brandon CastelCOLUMBUS, Ohio – Terrelle Pryor played only one half of football Saturday, but that was all No. 17 Ohio State (7-2, 5-1 Big Ten) needed to cook New Mexico State’s goose in a 45-0 thrashing at Ohio Stadium Saturday.
The Aggies (3-6, 1-3 Western Athletic Conference) came disguised as a worthy adversary, but their Halloween façade lasted all of one quarter as the Buckeyes put them away with a 28-point second quarter and another dominant performance from the defense, which recorded its third shutout of the season.
“The thing that we've always felt good about is we've got good, solid defense and really their offense never got on track,” OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel said after the game.
New Mexico State came into the game ranked dead-last in total offense and second-to-last in scoring offense this season, but even that could not have prepared them for the kind of ineptitude Head Coach DeWayne Walker would see from his offense
“Teams like Ohio State score a lot of points. Our defense was really hanging in there, but without field goals and touchdowns from the offense, it’s difficult to make it interesting. That’s kind of been our nemesis the last three weeks,” said Walker, whose team has been outscored 124-10 over that stretch.
It was Pryor, however, who turned out to be an even bigger nemesis for Walker’s team in the first half, as he accounted for a pair of touchdowns while passing for 135 yards and rushing for 83 more before sitting out the entire second half with some bumps and bruises accumulated during his nine carries in the first half.
“We knew we had to cage him up. I went ballistic a couple of times when he got out of the pressure, but I guess it’s wishful thinking to keep him contained for the entire game,” Walker said.
“They did exactly what we thought they’d do. It starts and ends with Pryor. We held in as long as we could, but he’s a special player.”
With three critical games (Penn State, Iowa and Michigan) looming large on the schedule for November, the Ohio State defense also talked about staying sharp and playing hungry against the Aggies in what turned out to be a glorified bye week.
The Buckeyes held NMSU to just 62 yards of total offense (that’s for the entire game) and two first downs, both in the first half. The Aggies completed only six passes on the afternoon and averaged 1.3 yards on 40 rushing attempts. They were 2-of-13 on third down conversions and the only thing that kept the game from being even worse was their punter, Kyle Hughes, who averaged 45 yards (37 net) on 11 punts.
“We were unbelievable today,” said senior linebacker Austin Spitler, who finished with three tackles.
“It just seems like we were playing sky-high. It seems like when we play at a high level, it carries over to the offensive side of the ball and boosts their confidence as well.”
It didn’t do much for the OSU offense in the first quarter, as the two teams played to a 0-0 tie thanks to one of four missed field goals for the Buckeyes (to add injury to insult, kicker Aaron Pettrey was lost for the game with an injured knee on his kicking leg).
The Buckeyes did close out the last 4:50 of the first quarter on a drive that would ultimately end in an 8-yard touchdown run by Pryor on the first play of the second quarter. With left tackle Jim Cordle lined up to the outside of right tackle J.B. Shugarts in an unbalanced jumbo set, Pryor kept the ball on an option play to the right and jaunted into the end zone to give the Buckeyes a 7-0 lead.
On the ensuing kickoff, the Buckeyes reached into Jim Tressel’s typically diminutive bag of trick plays for a play that surprised everyone in the stadium except Tressel and Pettrey, who recovered his own onside kick at the 41-yard line.
“On the one kickoff I had no clue,” said linebacker Brian Rolle, who finished with two tackles and a fumble recovery.
“I was just thinking, ‘It can’t be coach Tressel coaching out there today.’ We practiced it this week a lot but I was surprised to see him run it.”
The call seemed to spark something for the Buckeye offense, as wideout Dane Sanzenbacher found a soft spot in the middle of the Aggie defense and Pryor hit him with a strike in the end zone for a 19-yard touchdown that put them up 14-0.
“The way they deployed, you were going to have to go over top, because they just press man and put eight in the box and there weren't short routes there, they were standing right on you and you were going to have to throw over top, which I thought we did pretty well a couple times,” Tressel said.
It was Sanzenbacher’s second touchdown catch, however, that drew the most attention Saturday. Facing a 2nd-and-14 at the New Mexico State 39-yard line, Tressel uncharacteristically called for a double-reverse pass to Posey that was originally intended for Pryor.
Instead Posey checked off his quarterback, who was covered in the left flat, electing instead to throw it up for Sanzenbacher, who made a great catch in the end zone to give Ohio State a 21-0 lead.
“I didn’t think we were going to call it,” said Posey, who also finished with five catches for 79 yards.
“I knew if Terrelle was covered I had two options, either to run it or throw it backside to Dane. I didn’t see any room to run so I just threw it backside and Dane made a great play on it.”
Leading 28-0 at the half, Tressel and the Buckeyes went in to preservation mode in the second half with backup Joe Bauserman taking every snap from center, but so did New Mexico State.
“Offensively we never got into a groove where we could take chances. We probably should have, to be honest with you, in the second half, just to try some different things. But as the game was going, we were just trying to get out of here healthy,” Walker said.
It showed, as the Aggies totaled 21 yards after half time without picking up a single first down.
Meanwhile, the Buckeyes added 17 points in the third quarter, thanks in big part to a gift from Ohio native Trevor Walls, who fumbled a snap into the end zone where it was recovered by Rolle for a defensive touchdown.
Game Notes:
- Ohio State scored a season-high 45 points, the most since scoring 45 in 2008 at Northwestern. The 45-point margin of victory was the largest since defeating Northwestern by 51 in 2007 (58-7).
- Ohio State scored 28 points in the second quarter. The last time the Buckeyes scored 4 TD’s in a quarter was Oct. 17, 2007 against Kent State.
- True freshman Jordan Hall rushed 10 times for a career-high 90 yards, including a career-long 39-yard run in the third quarter.
- Sophomore wide receiver DeVier Posey threw the first TD pass of his career in the second quarter, a 39-yarder to Dane Sanzenbacher. It marked the first time an Ohio State WR threw a TD pass in a game since Ted Ginn Jr. on Oct. 21, 2006 against Indiana – a 38-yarder to Rory Nicol.
-The offensive line did not allow a sack for the second time this season. It previously kept the quarterback safe vs. Illinois.
- The Buckeyes have secured three shutouts in 2009 (vs. Toledo, Illinois and New Mexico State), marking the first time since the 1996 season (vs. Pittsburgh, Minnesota and Illinois).
- Ohio State’s defense has allowed just seven touchdowns over its past 31 quarters of play.
10 Things We Learned from This Game
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