Big Ten Football

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day is optimistic about the team after their COVID-19 outbreak last week.

Speaking to reporters on Zoom after the Buckeyes' 52-12 win over Michigan State, Day said he hopes "the worst part's behind us."

Day was unable to coach Ohio State on Saturday as he continues to self-isolate after testing positive for the coronavirus on Nov. 27. He will be eligible to return to the program on Monday, as long as he tests negative and doesn't have any symptoms.

The Buckeyes' outbreak caused their scheduled game against Illinois on Nov. 28 to be canceled.

"We have continued to experience an increase in positive tests over the course of this week," Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith said in a statement. "The health, safety and well-being of our student-athlete is our main concern, and our decisions on their welfare will continue to be guided by our medical staff."

Day noted that the program has "been excellent" with its COVID-19 protocols and handling of the situation before having "this one mini outbreak that was hard."

ESPN's Adam Rittenberg noted Ohio State didn't have 23 players available against Michigan State, including four starters, but conference protocols don't allow teams to list a specific reason for their absence.

Big Ten rules also require that any players who test positive must sit out for 21 days.

The Buckeyes' victory over the Spartans moved their 2020 record to 5-0 with one game remaining. They are scheduled to host Michigan on Dec. 12, but it's unclear at this point if the game will be played.

The Wolverines had to pause football activities this week, including canceling Saturday's matchup with Maryland, because of increased coronavirus cases in the program.

Ohio State must play six games to qualify for the Big Ten Championship Game. The fourth-ranked Buckeyes will still be eligible for a potential spot in the College Football Playoff, regardless of what happens in the conference.

No. 4 Ohio State moved one step closer to the Big Ten Championship Game with a 52-12 victory over Michigan State on Saturday at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing, Michigan.

The Buckeyes must play next week's game against rival Michigan to reach the six-game threshold necessary to qualify for the conference title game, barring a rule change. Otherwise they're in the driver's seat to win the East division with a 5-0 record and the tiebreaker over second-place Indiana (5-1).

OSU won Saturday's contest without head coach Ryan Day on the sideline because of COVID-19 protocols. Defensive line coach Larry Johnson led the team on an interim basis.

Michigan State, which upset No. 8 Northwestern last week, couldn't shake up the College Football Playoff race for a second straight week. The Spartans dropped to 2-4 amid one of the conference's toughest schedules with four games against ranked opponents.

Notable Performances

QB Justin Fields (OSU): 17-of-24 for 199 yards, 2 TD, 0 INT; 104 rushing yards, 2 TD

QB Payton Thorne (MSU): 16-of-25 for 147 yards, 1 INT; 42 rushing yards, 1 TD

RB Trey Sermon (OSU): 112 rushing yards, 1 TD

WR Chris Olave (OSU): 139 receiving yards, 1 TD

WR Garrett Wilson (OSU): 59 receiving yards, 1 TD

DL Haskell Garrett (OSU): 3 tackles, 1 INT, 1 TD

DL Tyreke Smith (OSU): 3 tackles, 1 sack

DL Michael Fletcher (MSU): 4 tackles, 2 sacks

Justin Fields Shines Despite Shaky Line Play

It wasn't the sharpest day for the Ohio State offense following a major shake up along the offensive line because of COVID-19, including the absence of left tackle Thayer Munford.

Fields was forced to improvise amid frequent pressure in the backfield, but the Heisman Trophy contender was up to the task with both his legs and his arm.

While he was once again lethal on runs from within the 5-yard line, a stable of his success, he also showed perfect touch on his first-quarter touchdown pass to wide receiver Garrett Wilson. He had to roll out to his right and lofted a perfectly placed pass between defenders for the score.

In addition, he deserves a lot of credit for throwing a lot of balls away when there was pressure and no open receivers. The only path to an upset Michigan State had after falling behind 14-0 was a couple of key turnovers, and Fields made sure that didn't happen.

The Heisman race has been tougher to forecast this season because of the uneven number of games and some players going multiple weeks without getting a chance to bolster their resumes, as was the case for Fields, who had played just once since Nov. 8 before Saturday.

He should at least move back toward the forefront of the conversation alongside a host of other quarterbacks—Alabama's Mac Jones, Florida's Kyle Trask, Clemson's Trevor Lawrence and BYU's Zach Wilson—after helping OSU avoid potential disaster given its large number of absences Saturday.

The Buckeyes need two more performances like that from their quarterback, next week against the Wolverines and then in the Big Ten title game, to secure a likely CFP berth.

Michigan State Offense Fails to Keep Pace

The Spartans scored a season-high 29 points in last week's win over Northwestern. Rocky Lombardi threw for two touchdowns, while Lombardi, Connor Heyward and Elijah Collins combined to rush for 195 yards as they wore down the Wildcats defense.

Michigan State couldn't find nearly as much success against a more athletic OSU defense.

The team's eight first-half possessions resulted in six punts and a pair of turnovers, including a pick-six in the end zone by Haskell Garrett, and only one of those drives lasted more than four plays.

Lombardi was replaced late in the second quarter after taking a hard hit on a sack by Tyreke Smith.

Payton Thorne provided a nice spark for MSU off the bench by completing his first 11 passes and scoring on a 20-yard run, but it was too little, too late for the underdogs.

The Spartans aren't built to win a shootout, which made giving up a 12-play touchdown drive on OSU's first possession and 14 points in the first quarter a tough mountain to overcome.

Thorne showed enough promising signs to warrant a start next week, though.

What's Next?

Ohio State returns home to the Horseshoe to face off with Michigan in the 117th edition of The Game next Saturday. Kickoff is scheduled for 12 p.m. ET on Fox.

Michigan State finishes its regular season with a trip to Beaver Stadium to battle Penn State. A start time for that matchup, also scheduled for next Saturday, hasn't been announced.

It appears Ohio State fans can breathe a little easier.

Stadium's Brett McMurphy reported Saturday the Big Ten is considering loosening its requirements to qualify for the conference championship game. A team needs to play six games to compete for the Big Ten title this season, and there has been some concern that Ohio State—which has had two games canceled and played its fifth contest Saturday—may not hit that threshold.

The Athletic's Scott Dochterman reported the Big Ten is also weighing whether to stage two games in Indianapolis on Dec. 18, the day ahead of the championship game.

The Buckeyes play their biggest rival, Michigan, on Dec. 12. The Wolverines had to cancel Saturday's clash with Maryland, however, because of positive COVID-19 tests and associated contact tracing. Jim Harbaugh's team may not have the numbers to take the field in Columbus, Ohio.

The Big Ten has a vested interest in strengthening Ohio State's profile since the Buckeyes are the conference's only shot to send a representative to the College Football Playoff. OSU landed fourth in the most recent CFP rankings. No. 12 Indiana was the next closest Big Ten program.

Some will accuse the Big Ten of playing favorites, and that's a fair critique. But this is an unprecedented situation, and changing rules on the fly can sometimes be necessary.

The six-game mandate may have been a mistake anyway. The NCAA Division I Council waived its bowl eligibility standards, eliminating the need for teams to win six games to secure postseason berths. 

The Big Ten isn't the only conference accommodating its best, either. The ACC effectively gave Notre Dame, Clemson and Miami a bye in the final week of the regular season.

All the handwringing about Ohio State could prove moot if the Buckeyes reach the Big Ten title game and lose to Northwestern, which clinched the bid from the Big Ten West on Saturday.

Fourth-ranked Ohio State will reportedly be without multiple starters along its offensive line for Saturday's road game against Michigan State because of COVID-19 protocols.

Fox Sports' Bruce Feldman reported the news. Names weren't immediately released.

Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day, who will also miss the contest because of the program's COVID-19 outbreak, confirmed Thursday the team would be "a little short-handed" for the Big Ten matchup.

"It's been a tough, tough week," Day said on his weekly radio show (via the Associated Press). "It's certainly been a frustrating week. But I'm resting comfortably."

He added that being forced to watch the key game from home will "probably be the hardest three hours of my life."

Defensive line coach Larry Johnson will serve as interim head coach against the Spartans.

Anchored by left tackle Thayer Munford and right guard Wyatt Davis, the OSU offensive line is typically one of the team's major advantages over opponents. The group has consistently given quarterback Justin Fields a clean pocket, and he's taken advantage with 13 touchdown throws in four games.

Ohio State posted a picture of Fields getting on the team plane Friday night, strongly suggesting he'll be available for Saturday's battle with Michigan State:

The Buckeyes haven't provided official confirmation of who's in and who's out, though. Yahoo Sports' Pete Thamel reported several defensive backs will also miss the contest.

OSU must complete both Saturday's game and next week's matchup with rival Michigan to reach the six-game requirement necessary to qualify for the Big Ten Championship Game. It leads the East Division with a 4-0 record and holds the tiebreaker over Indiana (5-1) thanks to its head-to-head win last month.

It's unclear whether the conference would consider altering the rules if either Ohio State or Michigan, which canceled Saturday's game against Maryland because of COVID-19 concerns, can't compete next week.

For now, the undermanned Buckeyes are focused on getting past a Spartans squad that's coming off an upset win over No. 8 Northwestern last week.

Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh told 247Sports' Sam Webb there's no truth to the rumor he's told recruits he's not sure if he'll be back in Ann Arbor next year: 

Harbaugh's Wolverines are 2-4 this year and the coach is 49-22 overall since taking over the program in 2015. Harbaugh has yet to produce the type of results Michigan fans have long expected with a 1-4 record in bowl games, one first-place finish in the Big Ten East and five consecutive losses to rival Ohio State.

Now that Michigan's game against Maryland is canceled, the Wolverines will finish the year without a home win for the first time in program history. 

Yet there's no question this has been an unusual season across the board, given COVID-19's impact on the sport and the world, and that could make it difficult to fully assess Harbaugh's position this year. 

The athletic department in Ann Arbor has already shut down all team activities through Monday after members of the program tested positive. In the meantime, recruiting season is in full swing for Harbaugh and his staff with the early signing period set to begin in mid-December. 

"It’s going good," Harbaugh said earlier this week. "I’m never really allowed to talk about recruiting publicly. Good. Good relationships, tight bonds being made. Personally, on our staff. With the families. Feeling really good about it."

Michigan's 2021 class is currently ranked second in the Big Ten, per 247Sports, behind only Ohio State. The Wolverines have commitments from one five-star player—quarterback J.J. McCarthy—with 11 four-star prospects on-board to play at The Big House next season. 

Harbaugh is planning on remaining in his role long enough to welcome them to campus.

The fourth-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes will be back on the field Saturday for their scheduled game against Michigan State.

Ohio State team physician Jim Borchers issued a statement confirming the team's improved COVID-19 situation, via ESPN's Adam Rittenberg:

"We are very confident that we are heading to East Lansing with a team that can safely compete and whose health, safety and well-being has been our utmost concern. We've tested, monitored and evaluated our results daily and have advised the student-athletes, coaches and performance staff accordingly. Our population positivity rate, which exceeded the threshold for participation at this time last week, has now returned on the seven-day rolling average to a level that allows us to compete safely this weekend."

Ohio State's game against Illinois last Saturday was canceled after the program announced "further positive tests for the coronavirus were discovered" following PCR testing on Nov. 27.

The Buckeyes said in a separate statement that head coach Ryan Day had tested positive for COVID-19. 

On Tuesday, the team was able to resume football activities leaving open the possibility this week's game against Michigan State would be able to take place. 

Day won't be able to coach in the game as he continues to self-isolate following his positive test. The 41-year-old is required to sit out at least 10 days, per Big Ten rules. He will be eligible to return on Dec. 7 as long as he tests negative and isn't experiencing symptoms. 

Ohio State (4-0) has games remaining against Michigan State and Michigan (Dec. 12) in the regular season. 

Michigan's scheduled game against Maryland on Saturday has been canceled due to COVID-19 issues within the program. 

The Wolverines confirmed the cancellation after Pete Thamel of Yahoo Sports first reported the decision.

On Monday, Michigan spokesman Dave Ablauf told Aaron McMann of MLive.com the team was going to hold virtual meetings "out of caution."

McMann noted that Wolverines head coach Jim Harbaugh told reporters the decision to cancel in-person activities was "due to an increased number of presumptive positive cases that are awaiting confirmation."

Per Nicole Auerbach of The Athletic, Dec. 7 is the earliest date that Michigan can resume practicing. 

"We have seen an increase in the number of student-athletes unavailable to compete due to positive tests and associated contact tracing due to our most recent antigen and PCR testing results," Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said in a statement, via Auerbach.

With Saturday's game against Maryland officially canceled, the Wolverines' final game of the season at Ohio State on Dec. 12 remains up in the air at this point. 

If the Michigan-Ohio State game is canceled, it will mark the first time since 1917 that "The Game" hasn't been played. 

Imagine trying to sum up the past five months of Big Ten football in two pictures for a viral meme.

How it started was back on July 9 when the Big Ten was the first of the 10 FBS conferences to cancel nonconference games. Instead, its original plan was to play 10 intraconference games from Labor Day weekend through the weekend before Thanksgiving, with the conference championship still slated for its normal spot on the first Saturday of December.

That schedule was released on the morning of Aug. 5, and factoring in Thanksgiving weekend as a "break in case of emergency" buffer before the B1G Championship, it would have given each team 13 weeks to play 10 games.

(In hindsight, that would have been fantastic. The Big Ten presumably would have also pushed its conference championship to Dec. 19 when the other Power Five leagues did, which would have given those schools 15 weeks to play 10 games. Maybe a couple of teams still would have been unable to fit in more than eight or nine games, but 10 in 15 would have been a whole lot more doable than the eventual plan of eight in eight.)

Less than a week after releasing that 10-game schedule, the Big Ten pulled the plug on Aug. 11, indefinitely postponing the season—much to the chagrin of Nebraska, we might add. No one was thrilled with the decision, but Scott Frost and Co. threw a fit and threatened to leave the conference.

The Pac-12 followed the Big Ten's lead in postponing the fall season, but the ACC, Big 12 and SEC marched forward into the unknown. And as those leagues soldiered onward, players, coaches, parents and fans petitioned and protested the Big Ten's decision for weeks. Even President Trump got involved in trying to bring back Big Ten football.

Despite significant COVID-19 outbreaks among athletes at Iowa, Maryland and Wisconsin and even though "myocarditis" might have been the most Googled word in the country for a few weeks, it became clear by early September that it was now or never for Big Ten football. The Power Three was going to play, and a spring football season for the Big Ten and Pac-12 would have been a farce at best—an injury-plagued, opt-out-filled disaster at worst.

Advancements in (and increased availability of) daily antigen testing and an improving trajectory of new cases at a national level played a big part in the Big Ten's Sept. 16 decision to start the season on the weekend of Oct. 23, culminating in an innovative approach when all 14 teams would play on championship weekend instead of just the two division winners.

So that's how the whole "nine games in nine weeks" plan got started.

How it's going? Not great.

It took Penn State—which opened the season ranked in the AP Top 10—six tries to finally win a game. That lone victory came over Michigan, which has been a disaster in its own right and could be on the verge of going winless at home for the first time in program history.

Northwestern at Minnesota has already been erased from this coming weekend's slate, which makes six consecutive weeks with at least one Big Ten game canceled.

Minnesota now joins Maryland, Ohio State and Wisconsin on the list of teams that have lost multiple games to COVID-19 protocol. Wisconsin has already been eliminated from Big Ten championship contention because it can no longer reach the minimum threshold of six games played. More importantly, Ohio State is one more cancellation away from also being ineligible for the title game.

This week's game against Michigan State is somewhere between "slightly in doubt" and "seriously in jeopardy" as the Buckeyes are still working to get their current outbreak under control. Next week's game against Michigan is also quite up in the air, as the Wolverines paused team activities on Monday following presumptive positive tests.

It bears mentioning here that while the Big Ten has a minimum games requirement for its championship, no such prerequisite exists for bowl games or the College Football Playoff. And if Ohio State does fall shy of B1G Championship eligibility, it would still be allowed to participate in the rest of the Big Ten's designed "interdivision" event on Dec. 19.

In that scenario, it would presumably be Northwestern vs. Indiana for the championship with Ohio State drawing either Wisconsin or Iowa as the marquee game of the undercard. And that scenario would be kind of hilarious considering how much Big Ten fans a) railed against the CFP selection committee's decision to award Alabama the No. 4 seed in 2017 when it didn't even play in the SEC Championship Game and b) said that a 6-0 Pac-12 champion wouldn't be deserving of a playoff spot this year.

For whatever it's worth, I do think Ohio State would end up in the College Football Playoff if it goes undefeated—whether that's 7-0 with a Big Ten title or 4-0 with five cancellations. That's going to enrage a lot of fans of teams like Florida, Texas A&M and Cincinnati, but what would beating up on sub-.500 Michigan State and Michigan in these next two weeks really do to change the committee's opinion of this team?

But the fact that we're even having the debate just goes to show you how far off the rails things have gone for the Big Ten.

Adding literal injury to insult, Indiana quarterback Michael Penix Jr. suffered a torn ACL in the third quarter of Saturday's win over Maryland and will miss the rest of this season—ruining one of the only feel-good stories the league had going in the past few months.

So, to reiterate, things aren't going great in Big Ten country, and they're looking even worse for the remaining few weeks.

The decision to reverse course and play the season this fall made sense at the time. At a national level, the rolling seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases had dropped from around 67,000 in mid-July to around 37,000 in mid-September. (That's still a lot of cases, but it was definite improvement all the same.) But that number has been hovering above 150,000 for more than two weeks now, and these colder states have been hit especially hard.

Both Ohio and Michigan were doing relatively well until a couple of weeks before football came back—which partially explains why everyone was so upset with the decision to postpone in the first place.

From June 5 through Oct. 4, Michigan's rolling seven-day average was constantly below 1,000. It has been above 6,500 every day since Nov. 13. Similar story in Ohio, which did not have a single day with more than 2,000 new cases until Oct. 14. By Thanksgiving weekend, the seven-day average had soared above 9,000.

Minnesota, Indiana, Illinois and Pennsylvania aren't doing any better, each showing at least a 600 percent increase in rolling seven-day average from the day the Big Ten decided to come back (Sept. 16) to Thanksgiving. Minnesota actually went up almost 1,200 percent during that window from 564 to 6,751.

Everyone has been wondering what might happen if Ohio State is unable to play for the Big Ten Championship, but I'm starting to wonder if there will be any two Big Ten teams healthy enough to play a game on Dec. 19.

Because—and, to be clear here, I'm no epidemiologist—I doubt we've even scratched the surface of the inevitable COVID-19 spike from Thanksgiving yet. This is likely still fallout from Halloween parties and trick-or-treating. And if things continue to get worse in the Rust Belt, even "Ohio State needs to show it belongs in the CFP" might not be a good enough reason to keep playing games.

I hope I'm wrong, because I, too, would love to watch as much Justin Fields, Jayson Oweh, Rondale Moore and Michigan implosion as possible in 2020. But if the Big Ten had known in September what it knows now, it might have stuck with the original plan to maybe play in the spring.

Kerry Miller covers college football and men's college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.

With Ohio State drawing closer to failing to qualify for the Big Ten Championship Game, ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit suggested on the network's College Football Playoff rankings show Tuesday that the Michigan Wolverines could purposely duck the Buckeyes for their scheduled Dec. 12 meeting.

Herbstreit apologized for his comments in a tweet after the show.   

"I had no business at all saying that," Herbstreit said. "I have no evidence of that. It was completely unfair to the University of Michigan, to Jim Harbaugh, to his players and coaches, and I just wanted to apologize."  

The 4-0 Buckeyes, who were slotted No. 4 in the latest edition of the College Football Playoff rankings, are dealing with an outbreak of COVID-19 that has jeopardized this weekend's game against Michigan State, a week after their game against Illinois was canceled after the program had to stop football activities Nov. 27.

Last week's cancellation was the second of the year for the Buckeyes, who have just two games left on the schedule. In order to be eligible for the Big Ten Championship Game, schools must play at least six games. So if Ohio State, the only undefeated team in the conference, misses its game against Michigan State or Michigan, it will be ruled ineligible.

Maryland is also on the brink of ineligibility with four games played and two left in the regular season. Both teams are scheduled to play Michigan, which is dealing with a COVID-19 outbreak of its own. The Wolverines have held all team activities virtually since Monday "out of an abundance of caution," according to Derick Hutchinson of ClickOnDetroit. 

After canceling consecutive games due to their own outbreak and falling victim to a cancellation after Minnesota was forced to sit out a game due to COVID-19, Wisconsin is already eliminated from the Big Ten title game on the basis of games played.