Jeremiah Smith put on the kind of performance that bends a game, and maybe a coaching staff, out of shape.
On Saturday, the Ohio State freshman turned 12 catches into 217 yards and four touchdowns as the Buckeyes rolled past Illinois 42-19, piling up 518 yards of offense along the way. By Sunday, Illinois head coach Bret Bielema said the Illini and defensive coordinator Bobby Hauck had “mutually agreed” to part ways.
Hauck had only been in charge of Illinois’ defense for four games after retiring as Montana’s head coach in February. But the problems clearly didn’t begin in Columbus. Illinois already sat 111th nationally in yards allowed per game at 391 and 100th in points allowed per game at 26.5.
Still, Smith made the whole thing look even uglier. Ohio State’s No. 4 kept finding space, kept forcing Illinois into tough decisions, and kept turning routine coverage busts into huge gains.
Bielema didn’t sugarcoat what he saw after the game.
“No. 4 is obviously a very talented player for them, but we just, in critical moments, got to do a better job of having awareness where he is and double him up. And continued to make some bad decisions with leveraging the quarterback, too many miscontained opportunities that just allowed the play to extend,” Bielema said after the game.
“And then obviously had some communication breakdowns; any time you have a defense on the field with only nine players, I can’t understand it. So we’ll make sure that we get that corrected, and that’s got to be 100% on me to move forward.
So really got to look at what we’re doing defensively to make sure we’re not doing too much and figure out what we can do to be good.”
Ohio State also handed out its player of the game honors from the win. On defense, that went to Jaylen McClain.
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In Daniels absence, Gabe VanSickle has held up well at right guard and helped the front continue to play at a high level. That leaves Ohio State with a familiar kind of dilemma: if Daniels is close to returning, the staff has to balance the value of getting a veteran back in the mix against the way the current group has been performing, and that decision is still very much open. [Read more 🡒]
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His latest eruption only sharpened that feeling, even before the stat sheet fully settled in. Smith put together a performance that pushed his season ceiling in a major way and had the Buckeyes thinking bigger about what his role can become as the schedule grows tougher, with his recent production now setting a bar that will be hard to miss for the rest of the fall. [Read more 🡒]