ANN ARBOR, Mich. — J.T. Barrett took off and ran, as he had a thousand times before. Ohio State was down six in the Big House — a game the Buckeyes had to win to preserve any hope of making the College Football Playoff.
Barrett finally found a groove late in the second quarter and looked to be building on it. But when he was taken down by Mike McCray in the third quarter with 6:15 to play after gaining 10 yards, Barrett didn’t get up. Even with Ohio State holding a one-point lead after three quarters, that seemed to be the end of its playoff hopes. The operative word being seemed.
Backup Dwayne Haskins kept his team’s playoff hopes alive by helping the Buckeyes rattle off 17 straight points to defeat the Wolverines, 31-20, at Michigan Stadium. No. 9 Ohio State ends the regular season 10-2 and will play No. 5 Wisconsin (12-0, 9-0) in the Big Ten championship game next weekend.
Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer was furious afterward about Barrett’s injury, which he said initially happened on the sideline early in the game and was aggravated on that third-quarter run. Myers called for an “all-out-investigation” to find out who was responsible.
“I’m just so upset with myself, it was a non-football injury,” Meyer said. “Too many damn people on the sideline. A guy with a camera hit [Barrett] in the knee, I’m going to find out who.”
For his part, Barrett seemed fine after the game. He said he will play next week in the Big Ten championship game against Wisconsin without hesitating.
The senior even got up to give a demonstration of what happened on the sideline, citing the tight area to warm up on the Buckeyes’ sideline as reason for the injury.
“Warming up, and I’m going to go throw, somebody just tried to squeeze through, I guess,” Barrett said. “Not to get close to our bench, which, I don’t care as long as you don’t hit me. And he hit me. He just kinda shifted in and like I said, [my knee] just twisted up on me.”
It doesn’t appear to have cost Ohio State.
Haskins — a freshman — had attempted just 50 passes all year and none of them with the wrath of 100,000-plus opposing fans in the crowd. He finished the game for Barrett, completing 6 of 7 passes for 94 yards and a touchdown and running for 24 yards.
Shortly after Barrett left the game, Haskins faced a third-and-13 and was ready for the challenge. He found sophomore Austin Mack on a fade route and Mack went up and made the catch. A few plays later, J.K. Dobbins was in the end zone, Ohio State had a 21-20 lead with 1:34 to play in the third, and the Big House was silent.
On the very next drive, with Michigan’s pass rush bearing down on him, Haskins broke the pocket, rolled right, and found K.J. Hill coming across the field. It wasn’t the type of play you’d expect a freshman to make, let alone one who hadn’t played much, to make on the road in the biggest game of the year. Hill was eventually tackled, but only after gaining 29 yards — enough to set up a 44-yard field goal which extended the Buckeyes’ lead to 24-20 with 10:21 remaining in the game.
“It was really unreal,” Haskins said. “I’m the first person who’d be nervous and honestly I wasn’t. I had the O-line, had the receivers everybody else was behind me the whole entire way.”
The Wolverines had their best chance at a comeback on the ensuing drive. Quarterback John O’Korn struggled all day long, but he managed to find Eddie McDoom on a 24-yard fade to set up Michigan near midfield. On fourth down, the Wolverines, who led 14-0 in the second quarter, needed a conversion and it was there with running back Chris Evans sitting in open space. O’Korn overthrew him with 6:53 to go.
“We had a good play called,” said Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh. “I wish we could have executed it better. Wanted to be aggressive, wanted to attack there. Now, we don’t pick it up, easy to say I wish we would have punted it, but I felt good with the call.”
Michigan was given another chance to win the game when Ohio State’s Sean Nuernberger missed a 43-yard field goal. O’Korn, who had 2:47 left and the weight of an anxious fan base on his shoulders, didn’t deliver.
On the drive’s first play, Kekoa Crawford and Zach Gentry were both open downfield. O’Korn looked for Crawford and overthrew it to Ohio State safety Jordan Fuller instead. That would have been the end for Michigan even if Mike Weber didn’t run for a 25-yard score to seal it for Ohio State a minute later.
Early in the contest, Michigan was feeling the upset. O’Korn found Gentry down the seam for a 27-yard gain. That set up a Khalid Hill touchdown on a 2-yard run and Michigan lead 7-0 with 6:02 to play in the first quarter.
Through the early part of the game, Michigan dominated Ohio State’s defensive line. Sophomore Rashan Gary, a New Jersey native, took Barrett down for a sack early in the game. Gary consistently caused disruption along the Buckeyes’ offensive line.
In fact, Ohio State’s offense only got going in the first half when Gary was out of the game. After the Wolverines went up 14-0 on a Sean McKeon three-yard touchdown catch early in the second quarter, Gary got hurt on the ensuing drive. He missed just a couple plays, but one of them was a 17-yard run by Dobbins where the Buckeyes pushed Michigan’s line out of the way with ease.
Once Gary came back in the game, it was too late. The Wolverines’ best chance to stop the Buckeyes came in the form of an errant pass from Barrett. Safety Josh Metellus dropped it and a few plays later, Barrett scrambled into the end zone.
“That would have been big,” Harbaugh said. There were some mistakes made and that was one of them.”
Last year, it was “The Spot,” but this year, the dropped pick will be the play which haunts Michigan. That and Quinn Nordin’s blocked extra point in the third quarter.
After Chris Worley swatted Nordin’s PAT away, it was Haskins’ day. The Buckeyes scored the game’s final 17 points to win their sixth straight against their archrivals.