Doug Gottlieb Criticizes Ezekiel Elliott

The line punished a stout Ohio State front as no one had in almost two years. The junior running back also marked his 15th consecutive game with a rushing touchdown, the longest streak by an SEC player in 20 years.

Lots of emotions, lots of passion, lots of heart.

Are today’s goings on a sign that Meyer is losing his touch in keeping these players on his side?

The Spartans have beaten Ohio State three of the last five years. “I came back and practiced Thursday”.

Even with the Buckeyes out of the mix, the Big Ten championship looks like it could be the only de facto playoff quarterfinal of all the conference title games.

Thanks to the victory, the Big Ten East now goes through East Lansing. More accurately, the way Ohio State lost. There was no panic from the Spartans. It couldn’t. Backups Tyler O’Connor and Damion Terry alternated, and passing was not at the top of their to-do list. Against the Spartans though, Elliott only carried the ball 12 times for 33 yards and a score and was clearly unhappy with the play calling after the fact.

If Ohio State can win a national championship with a third-string quarterback, it can lose to a bitter rival playing with its second-team QB. He got a big first down, and it ended up with Geiger – who earlier missed a 43-yard try – lining up for the game-winner with three seconds left form 41 yards. But a negative run and a false start stalled the MSU drive and Michael Geiger was unable to connect from 43 yards out, and MSU came away with nothing. That streak is over … and so are any Heisman hopes for Elliott.

Junior quarterback Cardale Jones also suggested, strongly, on Twitter that this was also his last home game for Ohio State.

He capped off his postgame broadside with the announcement that: “Honestly, this was my last game in The Shoe”. The Big 12 has the tiebreaker it lacked last season, so OU’s win against Baylor would give it the title no matter what Baylor does.

The Spartans were 13-point underdogs coming in and you probably could have gotten another touchdown from the odds makers when MI State took the field for its first drive without Cook. Was Meyer happy with it a year after last season’s offensive coordinator Tom Herman bolted to take the Houston job?

No wonder Elliott said, “How we lost, I just feel like we weren’t put in the right opportunity to win this game, we weren’t put in the right situations to win this game”.

“I told them we need to cherish these moments together”. It was to Dantonio and MSU in the aforementioned 2013 Big Ten title game.

Meyer said Elliott physically was “fine”, saying the ailment occurred earlier in the week. We stopped calling plays that worked.

“Honestly, I go into every game planning to dominate”, he said.

“We tackled well, won at the line of scrimmage and there wasn’t a lot of places to go”, said Dantonio of his team’s defensive performance. That’s why the Spartans are in the driver’s seat in the division and the Buckeyes are looking for help from Penn State. Ohio State sputtered a few through 10 games but was never really challenged. The Buckeyes had dueling quarterbacks, a leaky offensive line and a banged up secondary. Still, MI State fought through the adversity all season and is just a controversial call at Nebraska from being unbeaten. The Spartans rushed for 203 yards, many of them with OSU stacking the box. The Buckeyes avoided throwing downfield despite MI State’s suspect pass defense, while the Spartans won the game with a two-quarterback system because of the absence of star quarterback Connor Cook, who sat out with a shoulder injury.