Silver Bullets Podcast: Sparty Rewind and Bye Week Preview

Ohio State passed its first road test with flying colors in Saturday’s 49-20 win over the Michigan State Spartans in East Lansing. The Buckeyes were never seriously challenged, and charitably gave the Spartans some free points to flatter them a bit with a final score that wasn’t wholly indicative of the game. After five home games, the Buckeyes went into enemy territory for the first time, but C.J. Stroud wasn’t fazed and Marvin Harrison Jr. put on a clinic.

On the other side of the ball, Cam Brown returned and then probably wished he hadn’t, but Mike Hall Jr., Tommy Eichenberg, and Ronnie Hickman had big games. The Spartans couldn’t run the ball and could hardly protect Payton Thorne despite some serious holding on both defensive ends throughout the game.

We went through the scoring and the stats, checking in on our predictions and picks to click, and we probably whined a little too much about Kyle McCord not getting to run the actual offense. This is something that could come in handy if he ever had to actually run the OSU offense. As we see around the country each week, every backup quarterback is only one play away from being forced into action.

After recapping the game, we looked back at the other games around the Big Ten this past weekend. Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Illinois are trending up, while Rutgers, Iowa, and Indiana are on the downswing. The season is basically over for some of the teams in the league, so we took stock of the standings in the Big Ten’s East and West divisions. There are some surprises, and then there’s Northwestern.

We also looked ahead to this Saturday, with some big games on the schedule in both divisions of the B1G. We’ll have our eyes on Penn State at Michigan and Minnesota at Illinois. With no Ohio State game to look forward to, we’ll be forced to keep an eye on some upcoming opponents and potential opponents. Which games are most you looking forward to watching this weekend?

We’ll be back next week to talk about the things that transpired during Ohio State’s bye week and to preview the upcoming match-up with the Iowa Hawkeyes. In the meantime, feel free to reach out with your feedback and questions below in the comments section or send us an email.