HOW ‘BOUT THAT DEFENSE?

It feels like every week, we’re saying something along the lines of “Now THIS is the week we find out if Ohio State’s defense is legit.” Friends, I’m here to tell you that this is another one of those weeks.

Ohio State’s secondary was put to a proper stress test against Western Kentucky and the run defense was obviously challenged against a strong Notre Dame ground-and-pound rushing attack. The defense largely passed those tests, but this week comes a new one: a complete offense.

Maryland is a team with an offense that is well-rounded enough in terms of the run and the pass to provide a legitimate trial run for this Ohio State defense across the board.

The Terps are obviously led by Taulia Tagovailoa, who’s coming off back-to-back 3,000-yard seasons. The team does not necessarily have elite talent at the wide receiver position this year with no true target player in the offense, but Maryland still ranks top-20 nationally with 297.4 passing yards per game, and Tagovailoa leads the Big Ten in both passing yards and touchdowns.

But Maryland has also been quite effective on the ground. While this is by no means a run-first team, the Terps have actually been rather efficient on the ground so far this season, ranking 5.1 per carry – which ranks No. 28 in the nation.

This is not exactly a prolific offense, but it’s really the first time Ohio State won’t be able to simply focus on one aspect of the game to stop. It won’t make sense to roll with a pure coverage scheme with Jordan Hancock playing heavy snaps in the nickel, and it won’t make sense to sub on Cody Simon and play three linebacker sets the way they often did against Notre Dame.

This is a team game where Ohio State is probably going to be in its base defense for the majority of the game against a relatively balanced offensive attack.

We’re going to truly see how it holds up.

OFFENSE BACK???

Maryland’s defense has been resoundingly fine this year, ranking No. 16 in scoring defense with 13.2 points allowed per game and No. 39 with 328.2 yards allowed per game.

Now, the massive caveat here is that this was against notorious offensive powerhouses Towson, Charlotte, Virginia, Michigan State, and Indiana. When Michigan State is the most prolific offense your team has faced this season, it’s probably not wise to overhype above-average defensive numbers.

That said, this game will be much more about Ohio State’s offense than Maryland’s defense.

The Buckeyes have played exactly one game this season where the offense looked as-billed, blasting Western Kentucky. Outside of that, there’s not been a whole lot to celebrate.

It’s somewhat reasonable to give the offense a bit of a mulligan for the performance against Notre Dame – by far the best defense they’ve faced all season and a game where they had just eight offensive possessions.

It would ease a lot of concerns in Buckeyeland to see Ohio State come out and look dominant against a perfectly fine defense this week.

Kyle McCord has reason to be confident after that game-winning drive against the Irish, TreVeyon Henderson is coming off of probably the biggest game of his career, and Ohio State proved it will make teams pay with Cade Stover all game if they choose to just bracket Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka.

There’s good reason for this offense to be open and confident. We’ll see if that’s how it turns out.