10 Reasons Why Ohio State Beats Oregon

1. Unlimited...POWER!

The Braxton Miller/Carlos Hyde combo might have been the best Buckeye rush attack since Cornelius Green and Archie Griffin. However, even after losing them both, the OSU rush attack hasn't suffered, racking up over 260 yards per game. And they've done it against such sledgehammer fronts as:
#1 Michigan State (88 YPG)
#3 Penn State (100 YPG)
#4 Alabama (102 YPG)
#15 Michigan (118 YPG)
#23 Wisconsin (126 YPG)
This isn't all on Jalin Marshall end-around sweeps, either. Ezekiel Elliott has the power to blow through the line and the speed to put defenders behind him once he dashes into the secondary. And he's been at his best since JT Barrett went down, going for 220 against Wisconsin and 230 against Alabama. Meanwhile, Cardale Jones decided to jump-start Ohio State's fading second quarter offense by seeking out Alabama linebackers to run over, sending a few of them off the field with injuries. Oregon's run defense isn't terrible (156 YPG, #51 in D1-A), but does anyone expect those spindly LBs and DBs to be a physical match for the bash brothers?

2. Upset City

Shortly after the conclusion of the Sugar Bowl, Vegas opened the championship game betting, giving 7 points to the Buckeyes. The line has come down to about -5 Oregon by this point, but seeing as how the favorite hasn't flipped, Duck fans should be nervous. Why? Since Urban Meyer came to Ohio State, his Buckeyes have been underdogs 5 times: this year against Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Alabama; and two years ago against Michigan State and Wisconsin (again). None of those predicted Buckeye losses came to fruition. No one motivates his team like Urban does, and this is just the extra fuel on the fire Oregon doesn't need.

3. Addition and Subtraction

In East Lansing, during what was then the climax of the Buckeye season, Dontre Wilson broke his foot. It didn't stop him from scoring a terrific touchdown, but the do-it-all wunderkind hasn't gained a yard for the Bucks since. Jalin Marshall has been a more than adequate replacement, single-handedly delivering the Buckeyes from a potentially devastating home loss against Indiana and playing a crucial role in extending several drives against Alabama. But now, Oregon will have to prepare for BOTH of them, including the possibility that both could see the field at the same time. On the other sideline, Oregon's WR corps is becoming more depleted by the day. Their leading Rose Bowl receiver, Darren Carrington, was gonna play, but then he got high; and their leading TD receiver on the season, Devon Allen, was injured early in the Rose Bowl and won't see the field. The Ducks are no stranger to injury on the season, but they can ill afford the loss of key personnel against their toughest opponent on the year.

4. Tradition

Nothing excites the college football fan base like a matchup of two of the sport's blue bloods pitting centuries of tradition against each other. This...is not one of those games. Ohio State is one of 8 programs with with a 70+ winning percentage and has won 7 national championships dating from WWII to the BCS era. Oregon has won less than 60% of its games and has NO national titles to its name. The Ducks have only sniffed a  championship once in their 120 year history, falling to Auburn on a last second field goal in 2011. The Ducks run a gimmick offense and wear gimmick uniforms; particularly egregious are their upcoming abominations that feature NEITHER of their school colors. Ohio State is Script Ohio, Gold Pants, an ancient concrete stadium that looks like the Roman Colosseum, and the 10-Year-War. Oregon is...brought to you by Phil Knight. Of course, the most important tradition is winning, and the Ducks have put together 7 consecutive 10+ win seasons, but Ohio State has been in the title hunt year after year after year, and they've shown they can handle success on the highest level. Oh, and these teams have met often enough to establish a tradition of their own: once in Eugene, five times in Columbus, and twice in the Rose Bowl. Eight games, eight Buckeye victories.

5. Flip the Field

In the unthinkable event that one of these offenses is actually forced into fourth down and leaves the field, who has the advantage? Both teams have freshman placekickers, and while Neurnberger has been a bit inconsistent, the Ducks haven't even attempted a field goal past 42 yards. What if the offense stalls on its own side of the field? Oregon P Ian Wheeler is averaging 39 yards/punt, placing 10/41 punts inside the 20, but Ohio State's Cameron Johnston averages 45 yards, while still putting 24/73 punts inside the 20, including a few that appeared to scrape the goal line paint and jump backwards. If, somehow, the projected shootout turns out to be a Tresselesque defensive struggle, you can bet The Vest will be smiling at the booming punts flipping the field for the Scarlet and Gray.

6. Weathering the Storm

The Buckeyes are quite intimate with adversity this season, from the preseason injury to practical Heisman finalist lock Braxton Miller to the late season injury to practical Heisman finalist lock JT Barrett. After a series of embarrassing losses on September 6th, various idiots around the nation read the eulogy not just for the Bucks' 2014 season, but the entire B1G's. On a micro scale, OSU has found itself behind the 8-ball in a number of games this season, from trailing in their season-opening half against Navy, to dropping behind early by 14 against Virginia Tech, to struggling all first half long in a nightmare East Lansing environment,  to trailing their hapless rival even into the 2nd half, to finding themselves behind 21-6 to the #1 team in the country. But on each of these occasions, this team found a way to fight back, folding only once to a team with a brilliant game plan designed to take advantage of this team's considerable youth. September feels like a long time ago, and though this team continues to make mistake after mistake and dig hole after hole, they don't have an ounce of quit in them. Florida State showed that mistakes can doom a team against the Ducks, but the Noles were still in the game for 2 1/2 quarters, until they gave up. Don't expect this squad to do the same.

7. Under Pressure

The Pac-12 season didn't start off so rosy for the Ducks, as they squeaked out a 7 point win over terrible Washington State and then folded to Arizona at home. What was the secret of their lack of success? A horizontal quarterback. The Cougars managed to sack Mariota 7 times, and the Wildcats were able to add 5 more even from a 3-3-5 scheme. Oregon has since righted the ship after the return of LT Jake Fisher, allowing only 17 sacks in its other 12 games, but they haven't seen a D-line like Ohio State's. The Silver Cannonballs sit at 12th in the nation in sacks, led by Joey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, who's sitting on 13.5 sacks and hungry to sit on a few more. A couple of these might put Oregon into yardage sufficiently long to end a drive or two.

8. Getting Better All the Time

For the last couple of months, I've struggled to analogize this team to past OSU greats. After the Virginia Tech debacle, I feared another 2011, where a brand new QB and unproven RB struggled and a so-so defense let us down when we needed them most. After a couple of impressive wins over subpar competition, I thought they could be like the 2000 squad, with a QB nobody wanted to start, a decent running back, and a defense that could get us close to a B1G title, but not quite there. Then the legend of JT Barrett continued to grow and I began to have visions of 2007, with a terrific QB no one saw coming, hampered by a subpar O-line. Then the line started to jell, the receivers started to make plays, and the secondary picked off everything thrown their way; the 2006 juggernaut seemed more like the appropriate comparison. Every time I think I have this team pegged, they go above and beyond expectations. How should I think of them after the 59-0 dismantling of Wisconsin and a win over #1? 1998? 1996? 2010? 2002? True, the dream of undefeated died a long time ago, but I've never seen a team improve so much over the course of one season. And I don't think we've seen their best performance yet.

9. Heisman Revenge Tour

Marcus Mariota, Marcus Mariota, Marcus Mariota. No one player dominates the conversation leading up to this game like this year's Heisman winner, and rightfully so. However, the Buckeyes have run into a few Heisman contenders so far this season, and these difference-makers didn't make much of a difference against the Silver Bullets. D1-A's leading rusher, Melvin Gordon, racked up all of 76 yards on 26 carries, well below his season averages of 184 YPG and 7.5 YPC. Alabama's Amari Cooper did catch 2 TDs against the Buckeye secondary, but neither was longer than 15 yards, and Cooper was limited to 9 catches for 71 yards overall. Mariota wasn't at his best in the Rose Bowl, but he was effective. It's time for the Heisman curse to finish him off, at the hands of the Scarlet and Gray.

10. Coaching

Mark Helfrich has done a terrific job in his first two years as head man at Oregon, compiling an absurd 24-3 record and masterminding one of the nation's top two offenses (alongside Baylor's). However, Urban just went head-to-head with the nation's leader in national titles, the Devil himself, and outschemed him for another huge victory. This is nothing new for Urban, of course. He crashed the big boy BCS party with his undefeated Utes (back when it was hard to do so) and later created the fiction of SEC dominance by destroying Tressel's Buckeyes in the desert on January 8, 2007, adding another national championship a mere 2 years later for good measure. Despite what some boneheaded Buckeye fans believe, Meyer hasn't slowed his pace since coming to Ohio State, immediately reshaping the personnel from a 6-7 disappointment into 12-0 perfection, even though they had nothing to play for, and elevating each subsequent team to a higher and higher level. Helfrich is a fine coach, but Urban is first-class. If I were Helfrich, I'd be having trouble sleeping this weekend, distraught by the thought of having Urban's full attention for 11 days.