This is the 45th in a series of 100 daily posts, a Countdown to College Football. (Sort of.)
It probably doesn’t feel like it, but it’s already Wednesday. This is infinitely preferable to the other kind of week when your mind is saying “TGIF” but the calendar is saying “slow your roll.”
Wednesday is also the day when you get a shiny new episode of our Accost The Field podcast, so now you have two things going for you today. You can find that on the Apple Podcast app or wherever fine podcasts are sold.
Today, we’ll touch on one of the greatest players with somewhat unimpressive career stats in OSU history. We’ll also preview a matchup of two offensive geniuses, a single-threat offense, and a true dual-threat quarterback.
If you missed yesterday’s edition of the countdown, you’ll want to fix that by reading it here.
Now please join us as we continue our countdown of the 100 greatest Buckeyes of The Ozone era (1996-present).
We will also preview one of the 100 most exciting games on this fall’s college football schedule, and one of the 100 things we’re most looking forward to this fall.
Plus, we’ll preview one of this season’s 100 biggest personnel matchups.
Greatest Buckeyes Of The Ozone Era
#56 Cardale Jones
Cardale Jones is as close as an Ohio State football player has come to Joe Hardy, the fictional baseball player in Damn Yankees.
In the musical, Hardy magically comes from nowhere to become a star player for the Washington Senators for one season via a deal with the devil.
Jones didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, and he didn’t cut any deals with the devil as far as has been publicly reported.
But at halftime of the 2016 Michigan game, his career passing stats stood at 9-for-16 for 114 yards and 2 touchdowns. He was far better known for one tweet than anything he had accomplished on the field.
Then J.T. Barrett broke his ankle, and the rest is history.
Jones went 2-for-3 against the Wolverines in one of the most “PLEASE DON’T LOSE THIS GAME” sequences of playcalling in recent memory.
The next week, both his life and the course of Buckeye football history changed forever.
Jones completed three long touchdown passes to Devin Smith in a 59-0 blowout over Wisconsin that earned the Buckeyes a College Football Playoff berth.
And just like that, with a little help from Gus Johnson, he was CAR-DALE JONES.
He continued his solid play in the Playoff, passing for 243 yards and a score against a rugged Alabama defense, and then 242 yards and another score in the national title game against Oregon.
His most impressive plays, however, came on the ground. Against the Tide, he dump trucked safety Landon Collins at the end of a long scramble. That set up the wide receiver pass to Michael Thomas just before the half that totally swung the game.
Then, in the title game, he stood up Ducks defensive tackle Alex Balducci and pushed past him for a crucial first down.
Quarterbacks aren’t supposed to be able to do that.
Three starts into his career, Jones had stood atop a podium with confetti raining down on him all three times. Not bad.
If you asked most OSU fans to guess Jones’ stats from that season, they would almost certainly go way over the actual numbers. He completed just 56 passes for 860 yards and 7 touchdowns in all of 2014.
But that hardly matters for his place in OSU lore. Neither does an up-and-down 2015 season that culminated with Jones getting picked in the fourth round of the NFL Draft.
For the three biggest games of his life, Cardale Jones was superhuman.
Best Games This Fall
#56 UCLA at Oklahoma, September 8
The Troy Aikman Bowl pits two teams trying to replace top-10 NFL Draft pick quarterbacks. It’s also a matchup of two guys branded as offensive gurus who are still settling in at their new jobs.
This is technically still Lincoln Riley’s first full year in charge at Oklahoma, although he has already coached one season there. That puts him well ahead of Chip Kelly, who arrived in Westwood back in November.
These two teams last played a home-and-home back in 2003 and 2005. The Sooners won at home in the first game, and the Bruins won the second in Pasadena.
This year’s game will be a little interesting just because it’s a matchup of one of college football’s offensive innovators of last decade against one from the 2010s.
But Kelly isn’t even bringing a particularly pointy knife to this particular gunfight. He’s bringing a butter knife.
There’s a decent chance that former Michigan quarterback Wilton Speight will start for the Bruins this fall. If you remember Kelly’s offenses at Oregon, that’s not exactly his prototypical style of QB.
You’ll want to keep an eye on this one for a quarter or so, just to see what Kelly has to work with this year. But block out a full three hours for the rematch next fall.
What We Can’t Wait To See
#56 Army Football Is… Good?
For pretty much the entire 21st century, the Navy/Army rivalry has mirrored the Ohio State/Michigan one.
When Paul Johnson arrived in Annapolis in 1999, Army held a 48-44-6 lead in the series. The Black Knights had won 10 of the previous 13 games against the Mids.
Then Navy won in 1999. They won in 2000. After a loss in 2001, they ripped of 14 more wins in a row.
As the Midshipmen built their program from laughingstock to annual bowl participants, Army was left in the dust.
The Cadets bottomed out at 0-13 in 2013, and made only one bowl game in two decades.
But when Jeff Monken arrived in 2014, everything changed.
Not immediately, of course. He spent a couple seasons building the program up before beating Navy and winning the Heart of Dallas Bowl in 2016, and then beating the Mids and winning the Armed Forces Bowl last fall.
There are a lot of programs that make people say “college football is better when ____ is good.” Most of those people are idiots.
College football is awesome and hilarious when Notre Dame is an unending tire fire. Or Florida State. Or Alabama.
But with the unique student bodies at the military academies, coupled with their interesting variants on the flexbone triple option that very few other teams run, college football really is better when Army, Navy, and Air Force are good.
It’s about time.
Matchup To Watch
#56 Jonathan Banks TUL QB vs. Jeff Okudah
There isn’t a ton to be excited about in the Tulane game, but Green Wave quarterback Jonathan Banks is at least a little intriguing.
Banks put up close to 2,400 total yards and 19 touchdowns a year ago, with just shy of 600 of those yards and seven scores coming on the ground.
He is a true dual-threat quarterback, and figures to take a step forward this fall in his second year as Tulane’s starter.
Banks started his career at Kansas State, and while Willie Fritz runs a different style of offense from the Wildcats, the type of threat posed by both is similar.
Banks is not a Khalil Tate-style burner on the ground. He’s not an Air Raid-style “make it rain” passer through the air.
He’s not flashy, but he’s effective at finding ways to keep the chains moving.
Okudah will be tasked with helping make Banks and the Tulane offense one-dimensional. He shouldn’t have to cover receivers too long on any given play.
The Buckeye pass rush should overwhelm the Tulane line pretty frequently, even rushing only four guys.
If Okudah can play up in press coverage, that would take some easy throws away from Banks and help get him off the field quickly.
