Ohio State Buckeyes College Football Postgame Quote, 12/19/2020

On other coaches’ comments and his own thoughts about whether or not families should be allowed to attend the Rose Bowl:

I honestly have not even thought about that yet. I mean every ounce of my energy has been focused on this game. It was a really hard week for a lot of reasons. Losing [WR] Chris Olave and [LB] Baron Browning and [P] Drue Chrisman and some major contributors in all three phases. It was tough. And then we lose Jaxon [WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba] and, you know, it was stress. And we knew this was not going to be easy. This is not a team that gives you anything. And so all of our energy has been focused towards that. I did see the comments that were made and I also agree that I think families need to be there. These guys have been away from their families for a long time. Now the logistics and all that, I have not put any energy into thinking through that, so it’s easy for me to say. But I’ll enjoy this a little bit and try to go through that and try to put more thought behind it.

On Northwestern’s ability to shut down the passing game and when he decided that they should stick with the run game and why it took so long to get to that point:

Yeah, you know, we were always going to be aggressive; that’s just the way we are. We just didn’t execute great [in the passing game]. I think we’ll probably look back and have a lot to coach off of and fix. But the run game started to go and to run for over 300-plus yards. We wanted to kind of throw on them early and wear them down a little bit and then run it a little bit in the second half. And that’s kind of what played out. Now it wasn’t clean, and we certainly didn’t execute the way we wanted to, but at the same time, at the end of the week we’re losing guys that we’ve been practicing with. We had 10 days of practice with certain guys in certain spots and then we had to move people around. So it just wasn’t clean. And I’m not making excuses, it’s just what it was. That’s what this whole season has been. I mean this game was a microcosm of what these kids have been through this season. They’ve been through adversity. They’ve been through a lot. And I just think that this team is gritty and they’re tough. They pull for each other. There have been games where the offense has played really good and the defense has just been okay. Now this game was kind of vice versa, a little bit. And I gotta tell you what, this is one of my favorite teams that I have ever been around. And maybe not because of what’s going on all the time on the field, but more importantly that this team is so tough. They’ve been through so much, and they just don’t flinch. And I cannot give this team enough credit. And I’ll say this, if we had to play one game against anybody in the country, I’ll take the Ohio State Buckeyes.

On RB Trey Sermon’s performance:

He ran hard like you said. The offensive line played unbelievably and the tight ends played really hard. They are the guys that get lost in the mix a lot, these tight ends. I mean, they block their tails off. But [Sermon] ran with a different look in his eye. Sometimes when you come off of an injury it takes a little while to get into a rhythm. And then, you know, Master [RB Master Teague III] went down and he kind of just stepped up in a big, big way. And I’m really happy for him. This is another guy who overcame adversity. There was a time probably after Week Two or Week Three where we really weren’t sure what was going on. It was just maybe not hitting the hole right or [he] didn’t have a lot of confidence and we didn’t know Trey, so we weren’t sure exactly what we had there. And then to see him persevere again through all that and play the way he did in this game and break records like that, that’s tremendous. Against a really good run-stopping defense.