Ball State Recap and Analysis

Zach Smith · 2026-09-05T20:00:14+00:00

I Asked Him to Scramble. He Did It Twice. Ohio State 42, Ball State 3. A 5.6 rushing average that's fiction, a defense that won the pass rush and finished with one sack, and the two plays from Julian Sayin that I've been waiting nine months to see. By Zach Smith Fourth and goal from the three. Protection breaks down. Everybody's covered. Julian Sayin steps up and runs it in. If you've read anything I've written since January you know why I'm opening there. Eleven scrambles all of last season. Forty-eight yards. Zero against Miami in a playoff game where his pocket fell apart all night. The play I opened his whole article with was him throwing the ball away in a two-minute drill with nothing but grass in front of him. Today he did it twice. The two plays that matter The scramble touchdown is one. The other comes in the two-minute drill, when Philip Daniels gets beat inside and Sayin leaves the pocket and finds Jeremiah Smith. Neither one shows up in a passing line of 21-of-25 for 320 and three touchdowns. Both of them are the reason I feel differently about him today than I did in July. That's development. Not "he's more comfortable" or "he looks poised," which is what you'll hear on a broadcast. He identified two dead plays and went and made something out of them instead of standing there waiting to get hit. The throws that count today: the back shoulder to Smith on third and four in the two-minute drill, and the play action strike to the back of the end zone to close the half. Those are the two that would have been throws against a real defense. The 48-yard touchdown needed a safety to bite on the out and up and it was underthrown. Take that one at a discount. Before anybody gets carried away Ball State played zone almost all afternoon. Clean-pocket zone is exactly where Sayin graded a 94.4 last year. That's his neighborhood. The only real pressure he saw came from his own guys losing one-on-ones, not from anything Ball State schemed up. So no, we did not learn whether he can beat man coverage on a Saturday that counts. We learned he'll run when it's broken, and that was the open question. Bank that and wait for Texas. Five point six a carry is fiction Ohio State averaged 5.6 on the ground. Ignore it. Carries Yards Average First half, sacks removed 15 47 3.1 Second half starters, minus two long TDs 4 12 3.0 Backups 14 46 3.3 Every single phase of this football game produced about three yards a carry. Bo Jackson's 65 and Ja'Kobi's 49 are the entire difference between a good rushing day and a bad one. And there were no halftime adjustments to credit, before anybody tries. Those two explosives came on the same stretch concept they'd been running since the opening drive. Which is the point I keep making and the reason I'm not panicking: when they blocked the stretch correctly on Bo Jackson's touchdown, it worked. That's inconsistency, not incapability. Big difference. Two run concepts all day, plus a goal line man sweep and a jet to Smith. Vanilla by choice, most likely, which muddies the diagnosis. You can't fully indict a line that ran four things against a MAC team. Names, because somebody has to say them Philip Daniels got beaten six times, two of them for sacks. Number 67 got beaten in the red zone. Ian Moore missed his block on the goal line sweep. Ja'Kobi Jackson whiffed the corner blitz that produced the first sack. And there's an uncalled hold on Carson Hinzman that turned a third down into a second one. Block the corner blitz. That's a running back's job description and it cost their quarterback nine yards. If those names sound familiar it's because I spent the offseason writing that this group was the least prepared offensive line I studied. Today was better than the Miami tape. Better than that tape is a low bar. Devin McCuin is the story nobody's telling Jeremiah Smith went 8-151-2 and touched it six different ways. Out and up, curl, comeback, back shoulder, play action score, jet sweep. He's Jeremiah Smith. Moving on. Devin McCuin went 6-97 with a touchdown and was the release valve every time Ohio State was backed up. A go route, an 18-yard conversion, an RPO hitch he took to the house, a corner route, another RPO. Every time they needed to breathe, they found him. Ten pass catchers got a target with the starters on the field. That rotation is deeper than anything Brian Hartline ran, and it's the Cortez Hankton hire showing up on a stat sheet in week one. I said in the spring that room would look different. It looks different. Chris Henry Jr. and Brock Boyd both got held back until the second half. That reads deliberate to me. One sack, and it should have been five Ohio State gave up 144 total yards. Ball State went 19-of-38 for 94 passing at 2.5 a throw, and 21 carries for 50 on the ground. Zero touchdowns. And the defensive front finished almost nothing. Khary Wilder was the most disruptive edge on that field today and his line reads zero tackles, zero assists. Zion Grady the same. Epi Sitanilei has the only sack on the sheet. Count what got away. Wilder's press rush flushed Luster into Tarvos Alford's interception. James Smith's horse collar erased a sack and extended a drive. Kenyatta Jackson got a hit as thrown. Grady had a near sack. Luster's escapability is the entire reason that box score says one. Get him down. That's the whole coaching point, and it's a fixable one, but you don't get to be sloppy about it against a quarterback who can actually run. Zion Grady started over Beau Atkinson, by the way. I called that in August and I'm taking the lap. Seven defensive backs won a rep The secondary is the real story of this game. Devin Sanchez ended three drives by himself and dropped a fourth-down interception. Jermaine Mathews, Tarvos Alford with the pick, Earl Little Jr., Camp Calhoun. And Jay Timmons, a true freshman, went three for three in coverage with two pass breakups, one of them on a double move. A true freshman corner not biting on a double move in his first college game is the most encouraging individual thing on this whole sheet. Patricia's group also stayed onside through multiple hard counts. Discipline is not a sexy thing to write about and it's the thing that beats you in November. The field position is the actual problem Five drives started inside their own ten. Five. Legend Bey brought the opening kick out from six deep and got to the 15. Later he caught one deep in the end zone, Brandon Inniss told him to stay in, he stepped out, tried to return it anyway, and got stopped inside the ten. Stay in the end zone. When your teammate is screaming at you to take a knee, take a knee. Inniss fair caught a punt at the six instead of letting it bounce. Let it bounce. That ball is going into the end zone and you get it at the 20 for free. A Phillip Bell return came back on a hold. And Inniss took a shot on a punt return at 35-3 and fumbled it before recovering. Ball State's punter went eight for 349, a 43.6 average with three inside the 20. He was the best player on their football team by a mile. None of it cost anything today. Against Texas, five drives inside your own ten is a scoring drought and a loss. Fahey came in ahead of St. Clair Luke Fahey was QB2, and given who Tavien St. Clair was recruited to be, that's the depth chart statement of the afternoon. Fahey went 5-of-7 for 62 and a touchdown. His interception was a Chris Henry drop, so charge it to the receiver. St. Clair did play and went 5-of-6 for 52 with a score, so read this as an order of entry, not an exclusion. But somebody made a decision about who goes in first. Chris Henry Jr. had the strangest afternoon on the sheet Three drops. Two of them were touchdowns. One of them turned into an interception charged to his quarterback. He also caught a touchdown, and he threw the crack block on the safety that turned Bo Jackson's 20-yard run into a 65-yard touchdown. That's the whole player right now in one line. The blocking rep is why he's on the field, and the three drops are why he isn't ahead of McCuin yet. Legend Bey did the same thing in miniature. Two freshman mistakes on returns, and then the most dynamic play of the game: screen pass, makes one miss, cuts it back, makes three more miss with two of them running into each other, touchdown. Same instinct that got him in trouble on the kick return, applied to the right situation. 2-37 and a score. Brock Boyd debuted with the starters at 9:50 in the third and made a hard catch for 22. Riley Pettijohn led the team with six total tackles and looked athletic in space. Isaiah West got seven carries. What the box score gets wrong Same argument I made about Josh Hoover in July, and it applies to your own team too. Sayin's rushing line reads three carries for minus nine. Two of those are sacks that belong to Ja'Kobi Jackson and an uncalled hold, and the scramble touchdown is buried in there somewhere. Fahey's interception is a receiver drop. And that one sack belongs to a defense that won the pass rush most of the afternoon. Three numbers, all of them lying about who actually played well. Forty-two to three tells you Ohio State was supposed to win and did. Everything worth knowing is underneath it. Appreciate you, Menace Army.