4 Lessons Ohio State Buckeyes Learned From Penn State Loss

Four lessons learned from the No. 2 Ohio State Buckeyes loss to unranked Penn State.

There’s something about bad weather games that the Buckeyes can’t quite handle. Last year was the loss at home to Michigan State. This year, it was the swirling winds and wet conditions at Beaver Stadium that didn’t do any favors for the Buckeyes.

It wasn’t the weather, though, that resulted in the road upset for the Nittany Lions. There are quite a few lessons to be learned from Ohio State’s first loss of the 2016 campaign.

1. Experience matters

There is undeniable talent up and down the depth chart. That talent broke loose against lesser competition and caught Oklahoma by surprise. But remember how much of a struggle Indiana was? How about the overtime challenge in Camp Randall by Wisconsin? In conference play, it isn’t just a matter of who is more talented. You have to rely on more intangible skills.

This is seen best in the struggles the last three weeks to move the ball through the air. Against a fairly experienced defense on the road in the Big Ten, you cannot rely on your receivers to simply just run past defensive backs. You cannot simply hope for jump balls to go your way. You cannot simply bank on all of those new faces to just handle the first time things don’t work out in the best way.

This Buckeye team is the least experienced team in the country. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the youngest position groups on offense struggled. The performance from the receiving corps was dismal, save for one nice catch by Marcus Baugh. The offensive line was consistently beat by a four man front. No, the sky isn’t falling. It’s part of the growing pains when a bunch of true freshman and first year players are suddenly thrust into major roles.