There’s a reason why many Ohio State fans don’t fully enjoy a regular season win unless things go perfectly.
It’s because they feared what happened on Saturday in Ann Arbor.
Ohio State’s first 11 games of the season, for the most part, were a success. The Buckeyes did suffer a loss to Oregon in their second game of the season, which eliminated their margin for error for the rest of the year. But they responded to that by rattling off nine straight wins in which they defeated their opponents by an average margin of 30.3 points, often looking like the best offensive team in the country – statistically, they were going into the final week of the regular season – while showing substantial improvement on defense.