Ohio State football had heated team meeting after stunning loss to Michigan

Things got heated after Ohio State lost to Michigan last month.

And not just among Buckeyes fans.

Inside the walls of the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, frustration with what just happened in the Horseshoe led to calls for explanation and accountability among players and coaches.

Did it get intense?

No,” quarterback Will Howard said, before immediately flipping to “Yes.”

There was plenty to be frustrated about, from disappointing special teams play to lack of offensive production, due in large part to a patchwork offensive line and stubborn, head-scratching play calling that saw the Buckeyes repeatedly run between the tackles with little success.

Mixing testosterone with competitive passion is a combustible cocktail, and it boiled over in a team meeting after the loss, during which players communicated their dissatisfaction with how The Game went down.

“You have to talk. You have to work the issues out, and I think we did,” Howard said, addressing the anger of players and coaches in the immediate aftermath of the 13-10 loss to the Wolverines. “We came in (to the team meeting room) and we hashed some things out.”

Did the hashing include some bashing of the play calling?

“No comment,” sophomore safety Caleb Downs said Tuesday.

Minutes before, Downs had said no one inside the program is beyond reproach and that holding everyone accountable, including himself, is essential to team success.

 

At the end of the day we’re a team,” Downs said, explaining that one individual failing at his job impacts everyone. “You have to go (fix) that specific thing that caused us to not get the job done. You have to make it right and find a way to grow from that and make decisions and play the best game possible, based off your strengths and weaknesses and what we have right now.”

What the Buckeyes have at the moment is a fractured offensive line, a dangerous passing game featuring Emeka Egbuka, Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate, and a B+ QB in Howard who sometimes grades an ‘A’ and sometimes, like against Michigan, sinks to a C-minus. Ohio State also has a top-five defense that is good enough to win a national title, as long as the offense does its part and scores more than 10 points in five trips inside the red zone, which is what happened against the Wolverines.

owns hinted that he said his piece after the Michigan loss.

“I was the person I was the whole season,” Downs said. “I wouldn’t say I did anything more or less (after Michigan) than I did all season, in terms of leadership. But, yeah, everybody had to step up in terms of trying to get the team back on track in terms of where we need to go.”

Players pointing fingers at each other, or the offense calling out the defense, and vice versa, is nothing new to college football.