Ohio State football: 3 flaws keeping Buckeyes from the National Championship

Ohio State football looks flawless but these flaws could cost the Buckeyes a national title.

When legendary head coach Urban Meyer decided to retire from coaching after the 2018 season, some thought that the Buckeyes would cease to be among the college football elite in 2019. Everyone who thought that could not have been more wrong with new head coach Ryan Day leading the Buckeyes to an undefeated regular season and Big Ten Championship.

Despite Ohio State’s success heading into their College Football Playoff matchup against Clemson, the team did have a variety of weak spots, which resulted in them getting bounced before having a direct shot a national title.

Here are the flaws that Ohio State needs to look at if they want to avenge last seasons’ semifinal loss and bring a title back to Columbus.

Ohio State football flaw No. 3: Red zone offense

Ohio State fans love to blame the officiating for their squad’s loss to Clemson in the College Football Playoff semifinal last season, but in reality, the Buckeyes’ struggles with getting touchdowns while in the red zone allowed Clemson to hang around, and then ultimately emerge victoriously.

In that semifinal matchup, Ohio State made it into the red zone four times where they opted for three field goals and then Justin Fields had an interception. That was good for an average of a measly 2.25 points per red zone trip and was by far the Buckeyes’ worst mark of the season. Coming into that game, Ohio State’s red zone offense was actually very efficient, scoring a touchdown on 81.94 percent of its red-zone trips, good for third-best in the country.

Despite past red zone success, when the team got to the most important game of their season against an elite defense, with Clemson ranking fifth in the country in percent of touchdowns allowed in the red zone, the Buckeye offense failed to cash in when they were in a position to do so.

While red zone offense is not a nagging issue for the team, it showed itself as a tangible concern in the biggest matchup of the Buckeyes’ 2019 season and played a major role in them losing to the Tigers. If the Ohio State doesn’t come up with a better plan for adapting to red zone struggles, it will prevent them from achieving a national title.