So Ohio State beat Penn State on Saturday night, and the sun rose again this morning. One is nearly as consistent as the other with Urban Meyer in Columbus.
The Buckeyes are now 6-1 against the Nittany Lions with Meyer on the sidelines, and have done it in a variety of ways, with a variety of players, offenses, assistants and systems. Running quarterbacks, passing quarterbacks, dual threats, the zone read, pure passing, pick your offense.
Braxton Miller, J.T. Barrett, Cardale Jones, Dwayne Haskins, pick your quarterback.
Blowouts, overtimes, last-second heroics, dramatic drives, pick your style.
The one constant is Meyer.
Some insist Penn State vs. Ohio State is a rivalry, but the Buckeyes don’t view it as one, and shouldn’t. OSU has a rival, and is even more dominant against that team at the moment. At least the Michigan game has some history. This one can’t match that for its decades of relavance, although it’s trying in the past few years. The past two years the winner has emerged as the Big Ten champion.
The past five years, including Saturday night’s 27-26 thriller in (un)Happy Valley, has included an overtime, a dramatic upset on two blocked kicks, and two one-point wins. It’s been great theater, but the only suspense is how Meyer will win it, because (with the exception of 2016) the result has become a fait accompli.
Penn State coach James Franklin shouldn’t feel bad. He has a lot of company in the coaching fraternity, looking up at Meyer. Franklin admitted as much in Saturday night’s postgame press conference, branding his program as great, but not elite like Ohio State — something the Buckeyes will no doubt point out to recruits.
What Meyer is doing, and how he’s doing it are incredible in the consistency of it.
When an Ohio State website reporter breathlessly asked Meyer recently if he’d ever seen a quarterback like Haskins at the control of one of his offenses, Meyer coolly pointed out he had Alex Smith in 2004, only the No. 1 overall NFL draft pick at Utah.
Uh, yeah.
Meyer is the greatest quarterback whisperer in college football.
He’s won a national title with Chris Leak, and another one with Jones. Neither of those pass-first guys registered as an NFL starter, yet it didn’t matter to Meyer, who got the absolute most out of both of them.
Smith and Miller both quarterbacked perfect seasons, one was a better passer, the other a better runner, but both managed each of those skills well enough to earn the dual-threat moniker and lead their teams to top 5 seasons at vastly different programs. Barrett, a three-time all-conference QB with 25 school records, a pair of Big Ten titles and a 9-3 mark against top 10 teams was wildly successful, too, and he didn’t make an NFL roster this year.
Interestingly, the only year a Meyer QB hasn’t been the first-team All-Big Ten quarterback was when Jones started and played himself to the bench after the first seven games of the 2015 campaign.
It doesn’t matter who has the offensive coordinator title either.
Dan Mullen, Tom Herman, Ryan Day, all offensive coordinators under Meyer, all became the hottest head-coaching candidates in the nation while learning at his knee.
In Saturday night’s dramatic win, Ohio State didn’t have the best quarterback on the field. That was Penn State’s Trace McSorely, who threw for 286 yards, ran for 175 yards, and had a 55.8 QB rating. Haskins threw for 270 yards and ran for 8 yards with a 33.8 QB rating. McSorely easily outgained Ohio State by himself, 461-389.
Still, the previously unbeaten Nittany Lions could not beat the Buckeyes, who rose to No. 3 in the nation when Sunday’s polls were released.
While it seems trendy in Columbus to credit Day or Haskins, or before them Herman and Miller, the constant is Meyer. He is now 75-8 in seven years at the helm and has won at least a co-division championship every year to date.
Earlier this season Meyer was suspended for three games for mismanaging a woeful assistant accused of domestic violence and a variety of other misdeeds. Meyer was correctly suspended, not for an allegation so far unproven, but because he didn’t hold an assistant to the same standards of excellence expected of everyone else in his program.
No one could ever accuse Meyer of such shoddy management when it comes to his quarterbacks, his offenses, or his teams.
