COLUMBUS - Gunner Kiel completed 21 of 32 passes for 352 yard, four touchdowns and wasn't intercepted once Saturday night against Ohio State.
And the Cincinnati Bearcats lost by 22 points.
No amount of Kiel or the multitude of wide receivers the Bearcats have at their disposal will matter when you have a defense that gives up 710 yards of offense â 380 by ground, 330 by air â and holding an opponent to a field goal attempt becomes a victory. Only when Louisville put up 742 yards against the Bearcats in 1998 has a UC opponent gained more yardage than Ohio State did Saturday.
"I think everybody saw it: we got whooped pretty good on the defensive and offensive line for a lot of the game," said head coach Tommy Tuberville. "We knew going into the game we were going to have to grab grass and hold on because they were going to come at us."
The Buckeyes kept coming and they kept coming. And UC never found a way to stop them. The Bearcats slowed Ohio State down a couple of times but never stopped them.
"It's probably as tough as it gets to give up 700," said middle linebacker Jeff Luc. "We pack our stuff, we go home and watch film and we learn from it. That's the only thing we can really do. We can't go back in."
Luc tried to put as positive of a spin on it as possible, about how the Bearcats won't let this performance get them down but after giving up a total of 927 yards and 58 points to Toledo and Miami in victories this game showed just how porous the UC defense has been this season. They haven't been good at the point of attack, they've had trouble tackling and they haven't covered very well in the secondary.
That's a real bad combination.
UC took a 7-0 lead one minute, 24 seconds into the game. That's the good and the bad about the Bearcats' offense. It can come in a hurry but at some point it needs to be able to sustain drives in order to help out the defense.
The four touchdowns the Bearcats scored came on drives that averaged 1:18 in duration. Their longest sustained drive that produced points was 1:44. They held the ball for 3:31 on their second possession, which proved to be the longest of any of their 12 possessions. It was one of just two drives they had that lasted longer than two minutes.
The touchdowns were for 60, 83 and 78 yards to Chris Moore and 19 yards to Johnny Holton.
"Their team speed just absolutely dominated anything that we did on both sides of the ball other than the deep ball," said Tuberville. "We weren't able to sustain any complete drives. If we scored we were going to have to score from way out and get one-on-one, and that's pretty much what happened.
"We can't win football games by just doing this. We've got to be a more complete offense. Obviously we've got to do a lot more on defense, especially against the running game."
Ohio State set a school record with 45 first downs. The Buckeyes actually had the school record for yardage until a snap went over the head of backup quarterback Cardale Jones on what ended up being the second-to-last play of the game and Jones ended up being tackled for a 20-yard loss. He got 10 of it back on the final play as they fell just eight yards shy of reclaiming the record.
Ohio State starting quarterback J.T. Barrett was sacked just once and rarely faced much trouble from the pass rush. When he did, he usually slipped out and picked up positive yardage. When he didn't need to,
he completed 26 of 36 passes for 330 yards and four touchdowns. He completed passes to 10 different receivers.
"It was very difficult. As a defense and defensive backs you don't want to give up any yards or any passes or any catches," said UC safety Zach Edwards. "I honestly can't tell you what went wrong. We just have to go back and watch film on this."
As opposed to UC's quick strike offense, Ohio State's 12 possessions (not counting two plays at the end of the first half) were all between 2:12 and 5:04 in length and the only one that wasn't of at least seven plays was the final possession when the Buckeyes ran out the clock.
"I can speak individually on my part," said Luc, "I missed three or four tackles and that's what I'm hard on myself about, just not missing any tackles. You could see that it came back and it haunted us. That just aggravated me. I'm definitely going to get that fixed."
That's coming from a guy who was credited with making 18 tackles for the second straight game.
Kiel's arm and the UC offense dug the Bearcats out of a 30-7 hole and got them to within five points, 33-28, with 9:20 left in the third quarter. There was a buzz of excitement. Maybe, just maybe, an upset was brewing.
Then Ohio State scored 17 points over its next three possessions to quell any such thoughts.
"A loss is a loss," said Kiel. "Individual-wise, it doesn't really matter. I could've played a lot better."
That's almost always true but it won't matter if the defense doesn't get better in a hurry. UC doesn't have an Ohio State left on its schedule but it does get started with conference play next week against Memphis, have a trip to Miami (Fla.) and down the road plays an East Carolina team that beat the Virginia Tech team that came into Ohio Stadium earlier this month and handled the Buckeyes.
There's plenty of film work to be done.
