Rutgers Can’t Stop No. 1 Ohio State

Ohio State QB J.T. Barrett scoring his second rushing touchdown of the night against Rutgers / (Andrew Mills | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

If there were any questions whether Ohio State should be the No. 1-ranked team in the country, those questions were put to rest on Saturday night.

The Buckeyes (8-0, 4-0) came into High Point Solutions Stadium with a 20 game winning streak, and left with 21. The defending National Champions of FBS Division-1 football dominated the Scarlet Knights of Rutgers 49-7 in front of a sellout crowd of 53,111.

“Let me start by thanking everyone that came to High Points Solution Stadium,” head coach Kyle Flood said after the game. “I think the crowd at kickoff was exactly what I had said during the week: It is the best primetime crowd and primetime atmosphere in college football, there’s no question about it.

“We didn’t perform very well as a program tonight, and that begins with me. And really, filters through the entire program. We’ll get back to work tomorrow. We’ve got another very tough opponent on the road in our conference that we’ll play next week and we’ll get back to work tomorrow.”

The players and fans were “juiced” early on, as Rutgers led a 12-play, 64-yard drive to start out the game. However, life was sucked out as Kyle Federico doinked a 29-yard field goal attempt off the top of the left upright.

Ohio State would start their first drive, and move the ball downfield 60 yards on seven plays before Rutgers (3-4, 1-3) defensive tackle Julian Pinnix-Odrick caused a fumble of quarterback J.T. Barrett and safety Anthony Cioffi recovered. However, Rutgers couldn’t get any offense going, punting on eight of their ensuing nine drives, with the ninth resulting in an interception on a play-action roll-out by redshirt sophomore quarterback Chris Laviano.

Barrett however continued his dominance over the Scarlet Knights, passing for 223 yards and three touchdowns on 14-of-18 attempts, and rushed for 104 yards and another two scores. Against Rutgers the past two seasons, Barrett has 10 total touchdowns himself after having five last year in Columbus.

“He is the prototype dual-threat quarterback and he puts a tremendous amount of stress on your defense whenever he has the football, because he can run it like a running back and he throws it very well like a quarterback,” Flood said.

Rutgers WR catches the lone TD of the night for Rutgers late in the 4th quarter vs. Ohio State (Andrew Mills | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com)

Laviano struggled a week after engineering a 25-point comeback against Indiana last week, throwing for only 117 yards on 10-of-20 passing with no touchdowns and an interception. Backup quarterback Hayden Rettig came on in the fourth quarter and gave Rutgers fans something to cheer about scoring the only touchdown on the day for the Knights. Rettig went 3-of-7 passing for 72 yards, including a beautifully thrown 58-yard bomb down the sideline for wide receiver Carlton Agudosi and a 4-yard missile to wide receiver Andre Patton for the score.

Getting plenty of opportunities, linebackers Steve Longa (19 tackles and a half tackle for loss) and Quentin Gause (15 tackles) continue to show the heart and the drive of leaders of the unit.

And Gause said even with a blowout loss, the message to the team is just fighting through adversity.

“Keep your head up, don’t put your head down,” the captain said postgame. “I tell them that’s not in my blood, I don’t ever put my head down during the game or with a score like that. You keep fighting and you don’t stop. We’ve got to move onto next week to Wisconsin now, so we’ve got to be 1-0. That’s what the focus is for this team.”

Next Saturday, Rutgers travels to Wisconsin to take on the Badgers for a 12 noon ET kick on BTN.