Silver Bullets Podcast: Toledo Rewind & Wisconsin Preview

The Ohio State Buckeyes who took the field against the Toledo Rockets are the ones we’ve been expecting. Offensively and defensively, the Buckeyes showed up and, for the most part, dominated. There were a couple of defensive hiccups, but nothing consistent as Ohio State continues to adjust to a new coordinator on that side of the ball. We break down the key plays and players from the Buckeyes’ 77-21 thumping of a Toledo team that is expected to challenge for the Mid-American Conference title. We compare our score predictions to actual events and see whether are picks to click actually... err, clicked.

To prepare us for this Saturday’s Big Ten opener against the Badgers, we welcomed Rohan Chakravarthi from SBNation’s Wisconsin blog, Bucky’s 5th Quarter. Rohan got us up to speed on what’s different about this year’s Badgers, how that vaunted Wisconsin defense is going to deal with Ohio State’s offense, the maturation of quarterback Graham Mertz, and where the team is strongest and weakest. Big thanks to Rohan for jumping on with us to talk some B1G football.

We took our usual stroll through the rest of the Big Ten scores from Saturday, which featured some surprises — both good and bad — for the conference. If not for Sparty’s most recent road trip, the entire Big Ten East would be unbeaten. That’s right, even Rutgers and Indiana have managed to avoid defeat thus far. Meanwhile, there are several tire fires ablaze in the West, including what is looking like an exceedingly long season in Lincoln.

We turned our attention back to Wisconsin for the final segment, looking at what Ohio State has to do either with or without TreVeyon Henderson on Saturday. Winning first down is going to be a big key, particularly when the Buckeyes are on defense. We’re expecting one of those annoyingly close games at least until halftime and then we’ll see which team adjusts and has the better second half.

We’ll be back next week to analyze the Wisconsin game, check on our picks and predictions, and get ready for Rutgers. This is impossible, because one can never truly be ready for Rutgers, but we’ll try. In the meantime, feel free to reach out with your feedback and questions below in the comments section or send us an email.