Some of the best moments from Ohio State’s 19-15 win at Indiana happened after the clock hit zero. In a clip shared by CBS Sports CFB, Matt Patricia is embraced by several of his players after the game. It’s a short video. It says a lot about how this defense feels about the person running it.
A game the defense carried
Ohio State’s offense had a hard day, and the defense was asked to hold the line for four quarters against a top-five team on the road. It held Indiana to 73 rushing yards, forced two fumbles and gave the Buckeyes enough to survive a tense fourth quarter.
“This game came down to the defense,” Ryan Day said. “You’ve got to give Matt (Patricia) credit.”
“They just had a great look in their eyes, they played with great emotion, they played with great purpose today,” Day said of the closing stretch.
How the players talk about Matt Patricia
To his players, he’s “Coach P.”
Safety Jaylen McClain used the name when he described the biggest defensive play of the day, a blitz on fourth-and-4 that ended with a strip-sack. “I feel like Coach P wanted to be more aggressive on that play,” McClain told 247Sports. “Somebody had to step up and make that play and I stepped up and made that play.”
It’s a simple quote, and it shows trust in both directions. The coach dialed up pressure in a big moment, and the player went and finished it.
Built over a month
The bond in that clip didn’t start in Bloomington. Three weeks earlier, the defense gave up 199 rushing yards in a win over Illinois. The players were frustrated, and the response from the staff came quickly.
“It’s all fixable,” defensive end Kenyatta Jackson Jr. said that week. “Coach Patricia and Coach Johnson already talked to us on Sunday and it’s fixed,” he added.
That conversation set the tone for a month of improvement. Iowa ran for 39 yards against Ohio State. Maryland finished with 146 total yards. Indiana, which came in averaging more than 200 rushing yards per game, ran for 73. Players who hear a plan on Sunday and see it work on Saturday tend to trust the people who gave it to them.
At Indiana, Earl Little Jr. led the Buckeyes with eight tackles and recovered a fumble forced by true freshman Jay Timmons. It was the first fumble recovery of Little’s career, and Timmons was named 247Sports’ True Freshman of the Week the next day. McClain’s strip-sack came on fourth-and-4 with Indiana in Ohio State territory, and Day called the whole effort “Resilient.” Linebacker Riley Pettijohn pressured the quarterback on the final snap. Different players, different moments, same plan.
What leadership looks like on a defense
The clip shows the payoff of that work: the connection that comes from going through hard weeks together and coming out better.
“These guys, at the end of the fourth quarter, they came together,” Day said.
For a defense that replaced three first-round picks, started slow in parts of September and has grown into one of the country’s best units, the postgame scene was a release. It was also a reminder that the relationships inside a locker room show up in how a team plays when a game is on the line.
The defense will carry a bigger share of the load in the weeks ahead, and if Saturday was any sign, it will do it together. USC comes next, on Oct. 31, in Ohio State’s first trip to the Coliseum since 2008.
