Ryan Day says Ohio State 'felt like it was down 21' at halftime against Penn State
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The scoreboard at Ohio Stadium and the one inside the hearts of the Buckeyes were wildly out of sync at halftime.
Having jumped out to a 10-0 lead and still ahead 17-7 with less than three minutes left in the first half, No. 1 Ohio State was well on its way to another comfortable win when Penn State flipped the script. Or at least, for a while. A C.J. Donaldson fumble gave the Nittany Lions a short field that they used to score with 20 seconds left in the half, pulling them within 17-14 as the teams headed to their locker rooms.
It was not a happy place to be for the Buckeyes.
“We came in at halftime up by three,” coach Ryan Day said. “You would’ve thought we were down by 21.”
By the end, it wouldn’t matter. Ohio State remained unbeaten with a 38-14 win against Penn State and posted a second-half shutout, but the final three minutes of the first half got the attention of Day and the Buckeyes. After the Nittany Lions picked up 12 yards on six plays and punted the ball back to the Buckeyes, Ohio State took over on its own 20-yard line with exactly two minutes left and the lead at 17-7.
The plan was to be cautiously aggressive with the goal of either ending the half with the ball or putting points on the board. Instead, Donaldson lost the football on the first play, giving Penn State possession on the Ohio State 13-yard line.
Four plays later, Kaytron Allen scored from the 1-yard line with 20 seconds left. Ohio State had out-gained Penn State 221-140 and did not punt the ball but wound up with just a three-point lead to show for it.
“It’s a great example for everybody that when you turn the ball over, especially down there, you put yourself at risk,” Day said. “All the work that gets put in can be all for naught if we don’t take care of the football. We wanted to be winning by at least 10. To turn around and only be up three was like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me.’”
In the locker room, safety Caleb Downs said he felt the team’s intensity was lacking.
“Just go in there and put out the fact (to each other) that this is a game,” he said. “These guys aren’t going to come in here and lie down so we have to go out there and take it. We did that at a high level in the second half. We just went out and executed.”
Said Day: “The message was that if we take care of the football, we’re going to win the game. If we turn it over some more, we’re going to be in this game in the fourth quarter.”
After winning the coin toss and deferring to the second half, Ohio State knew it had the opportunity to reclaim the momentum with its first drive. After Penn State’s kickoff resulted in a touchback, quarterback Julian Sayin came out firing to get things going. A 14-yard completion to tight end Will Kacmarek moved the Buckeyes to their own 39-yard line, but the next play broke things open in a big way.
Sayin’s 57-yard pass to Carnell Tate put Ohio State on Penn State’s 4-yard line, and three plays later Donaldson scored from the 1-yard line. It put the Buckeyes ahead by two scores, 24-14, and took all of five plays and 2:37 off the clock.
“When you come out in the second half, you have to learn from the first half but you can’t dwell on it,” Day said. “We knew how important that first drive was. We were aggressive.”
They kept coming from there. Ohio State’s defense finished each of Penn State’s first three second-half drives with a sack on third down, two from Kenyatta Jackson and one from Arvell Reese, and the offense would dial up a 57-yard pass from Sayin to Jeremiah Smith and a 51-yard rush from Bo Jackson also during the second half to steadily pull away. Smith’s 11-yard touchdown catch from Sayin with 9:43 left set the final score.
After halftime, Ohio State outscored Penn State 21-0 and outgained the Nittany Lions 259-60. Downs came up with an interception in the end zone and the defense recorded four sacks after getting zero during the first half.
Near the end of his press conference, Day offered a pseudo apology for harping on the Donaldson turnover and reminded himself of the bigger picture in play.
“All the work that gets put in, if you turn it over your whole season can be ruined,” he said. “I don’t want to dwell on just that one turnover. I feel like I’ve been talking about it a lot. We just won 38-14 against Penn State.”
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: How Ohio State football’s first half set up second half vs Penn State
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