Ohio State had been 309-0 all-time when leading by 17 or more points at halftime. That streak ended Saturday night in Austin. Now, Paul Finebaum points to a first-half choice from Ryan Day that may have cost the game.
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The historic collapse put Ohio State coach Day under pressure. They also became the first AP No. 1 team since 2004 to lose after holding a 20-point lead in the fourth quarter, a spot where those teams had gone 197-0. Finebaum pointed to a first-half call that possibly robbed them of three extra points.
“I hate to call it what it is, but it was another Ryan Day choke job. You have to make you have to get a hold of your team. He made a decision in the first half which came back to cost him by not going for the field goal. That would have been that would have come in handy,” Finebaum said on The Matt Barrie Show, September 13.
Early in the second quarter, around the 13:23 mark, Ohio State led 10-0 and faced fourth-and-2 from the Texas 13-yard line. Day sent the offense out instead of kicking. The play gained one yard, and the Buckeyes turned the ball over on downs.
A field goal from that spot would have made the score 13-0. Ohio State left the red zone with nothing. Those three points mattered in the later part of the game.
“That’s right. It would have just given them a little bit of a better situation and an inexplicable meltdown,” Finebaum continued in the YouTube clip. “I think it’s going to really sting a program that really couldn’t afford to lose that game. They had they have a, like, everybody has a tricky schedule, but they have the trickiest schedule they’ve had in a long time,” the analyst continued on the same show.
Texas won 24-23 on Hollywood Smothers’ 1-yard touchdown run with 25 seconds left. If Ohio State had taken the earlier three points, Texas would have needed more than one late score. The loss hurts more because Ohio State had controlled most of the night.
Ohio State led 23-3 after three quarters. The Buckeyes outgained Texas 240-97 in the first half. Texas had only a field goal until Connor Hawkins hit a 48-yarder early in the third to stretch the lead.
“Well, I think today we really played well for three quarters and then didn’t play well enough in the fourth quarter, that’s the bottom line,” Day later said. “And we stalled on some offensive drives. I felt we had them on the ropes and didn’t finish. So we gotta go back and figure out why that was.”
Finebaum blamed Day, yet many other failures piled up. With 4:16 left and Ohio State up 23-17, Hawkins lined up for a 45-yard field goal and had already made kicks from 26, 30, and 48 yards. This one sailed wide left. A make would have made it 26-17, a two-score game. Texas then drove 73 yards for the winning score.
“I think once that happened, and they sustained some drives and then converted those four downs, kept us on the field on defense. And then certainly had a chance to kick the field goal to make it a two-score game, and they didn’t do that. So yeah, this one hurts,” Day added.
The defense wore down after short Ohio State drives. Texas converted two of three fourth downs, including a 4th-and-9 from its own 42 while trailing 23-3. Ohio State also failed to recover two Texas fumbles.
The Buckeyes are now 1-1. Four of their remaining games are against ranked teams, plus the Michigan rivalry. Three of the ranked games are on the road. The stretch from October 3 through November 7 is the hardest. At Iowa, at Indiana, at USC, then Oregon at home, with only one bye in between.
In the 12-team playoff, two losses do not end Ohio State’s hopes, but another loss or two could leave them 9-3 or 8-4 and on the bubble, especially without a Big Ten title.