Ohio State won its 20th-straight season opener – the longest active streak in the FBS – with a 45-21 decision over Florida Atlantic in Ryan Day's first game as permanent head coach.
The Buckeyes sprinted out to a 28-0 first quarter lead behind first-year starting quarterback Justin Fields and a new defensive scheme that even in its simplest form, gave the Owls fits for the entirety of the first half as Lane Kiffin's attack went 3-and-out on seven of nine possessions, mustering only a field goal.
Spackled around all those positives, the offense did run into its fair share of struggles and the defense, which did rotate a ton of reserves and kept it vanilla to a avoid giving Cincinnati much of a look, surrendered points on three of five second half series' and generally looked sluggish after smothering Kiffin's squad in the first half.