I don't care how long you've been watching Buckeye football, you haven't seen games like this "many times", and games like this certainly don't happen "all the time".
The 55 points scored by Iowa was the 5th most by any Buckeye opponent:
1890: Wooster 64, Ohio State 0
1902: Michigan 86, Ohio State 0
1946: Michigan 58, Ohio State 6
1994: Penn State 63, Ohio State 14
2017: Iowa 55, Ohio State 24
The only other time that a Buckeye opponent reached the 50-point mark was in 1892 when Oberlin won, 50-0.
I'm going to throw out the leather helmet games because they have little historical value.
The 1946 Michigan squad was ranked #8 by the AP, and the Wolverines were at the beginning of what would become a 25-game winning streak that would lead to back-to-back national championships in 1947 and 1948. A bad loss to a great team.
The 1994 Penn State team was #1 at the time and the Nittany Lions would finish the season a perfect 12-0-0 and #2 in both major polls. A bad loss to a great team.
The 2017 Iowa team was unranked and scored a grand total of 56 points against Penn State, Michigan State, Minnesota, and Northwestern combined. This was a horrible loss to a mediocre team.
It's one thing to get blown out by #1 Clemson (2016) or #4 Southern Cal (2008) or #1 Florida (2006).
It's one thing to have "let down" games against inferior opponents like Virginia Tech (2014) or Purdue (2009) or Michigan State (1998).
It's quite another thing altogether for a playoff contender to get historically blown out by a non-entity like this 2017 Iowa team.
There's been something fundamentally wrong with the Buckeyes for the better part of two years now. I can't quite put my finger on the cause of this "wrongness", but the symptoms are sloppy play, mental mistakes, penalties, chippiness, blown assignments, and lack of effort. I hope that I'm wrong, but it seems to me that Urban might be at risk of "losing" this team.
I completely agree that there are fundamental problems with this program. The mentality seems to be "It's ok to play out of control as long as you make big plays as a result of being out of control". And I think it's been there for more than 2 years. Honestly, it seems to have started at the end of '14. OSU played fast and loose with the ball, but was so damn good on offense that it really didn't matter. I remember Minnesota and Indiana being infuriating and sloppy games. I think they turned the ball over a combined 6 times while beating very good Bama and Oregon teams. Turned the ball over 3 times against a mediocre VaTech team in '15.
As for the point scored by Iowa; it's extremely embarrassing, but honestly right now I could care less if they scored 30 or 80. OSU played as if they were trying as hard as possible to score 50 points in 1 half. Once that became an obvious fools errand, they were so deep in the hole that it really didn't matter. This game is the result of playing with fire over and over and over again. Eventually you will get burned, badly. If the team can't learn from this game and we see them go on to lose another game or 2 in the same manner, with many turnovers and a large margin, then it's panic time. But at this moment I don't think Meyer has lost this team.
I think the chief difference between Saban and Meyer is that one is willing to patiently wait and choke the life out of teams while the other charges head-on into a wall with his hair on fire, hoping to get a knockout punch. That doesn't always work though, especially with this team. Starting slow is one thing, lots of teams do that, but when you're starting slow with a reckless abandon resulting in being down 14 or 18 points at multiple parts of a game, you've got to make changes, or else risk derailing the program that you've built.
Against PSU they were able to regroup, refocus, and be patient until the passing game opened all the way up. A big part of that was sticking to the game plan, which included running the ball (although on a lesser scale) and yes, throwing the dreaded bubble screens. Against Iowa, they stuck to the game plan early, made mistakes, scored but didn't put Iowa away, abandoned what was working, and then got blown out.
Meyer and co. need to regroup and admit that they are not a first half team. Blow out UNLV and Nebraska and Rutgers in the first half so that you can rest starters, but if a team has a pulse, you're not going to house them in the 1st quarter. Stick to the game plan, please run the god damn ball with Dobbins, and be content to chip away at the other team instead of gift wrapping points for them. And you know what? You'll start to see the other team make mistakes. You'll see your players break off big plays. And hell, you might even put some decent teams away by halftime by making them panic.
In summation: I could care less that this was a blowout loss. I care that this game was completely avoidable and we still see the same mistakes being made over and over again by the man in charge.
