One player’s health may determine the ceiling of Ohio State’s offense

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Earlier this season, Ohio State found itself in a back-and-forth, defensive battle with Notre Dame on the road, unable to generate offense.

Then TreVeyon Henderson popped a 61-yard touchdown run helping to finally break things open.

The Buckeyes were again in a defensive battle weeks later on the road against Wisconsin, on a night when Kyle McCord had arguably his worst game as their starting quarterback. He threw two interceptions and — as has been the case for most of the season — his only consistent target was Marvin Harrison Jr. with six catches for 123 yards and two touchdowns.

Then Day decided to spend the second half giving TreVeyon Henderson the ball. He turned 24 carries into a career-high 162 yards and a game-sealing 33-yard touchdown.

On Saturday at Rutgers, it was the same story in a 35-16 win.

OSU’s offense spent the first 30 minutes unable to get much going outside of one drive that ended with Gee Scott Jr. getting his second career touchdown catch. It struggled to keep passes alive, McCord threw an untimely interception, receivers dropped passes and even Harrison was kept in check with only four catches for 25 yards and two scores. Even the special teams unit added to the problems with a weird decision to fake a punt deep in its own territory that predictably failed, setting up the Scarlett Knights with more favorable field position.

If it weren’t for a defense that continues to put up impressive performances, there’s a chance that a pick-six by Jordan Hancock, which helped Ohio State retake the lead to open the second half, might not have been such a momentum-shifting play.

Henderson was the only thing that worked for the Buckeyes’ offense against Rutgers. As a runner, he had 115 yards and a touchdown on 18 caries. As a receiver out of the backfield, he caught five passes for 80 yards, including a 65-yarder on a crucial third-and-9 during a drive that eventually ended in McCord’s only touchdown pass of the night.

That’s the guy Ohio State spent most of the offseason talking so highly of.

That’s the guy it thought it was getting when he first committed as the top running back in the 2021 recruiting class.

That’s the guy who first flashed on a 70-yard touchdown catch against Minnesota two years ago.

That’s the guy this offense was missing for three weeks after its win over the Fighting Irish, when he suffered an upper-body injury that he revealed was the byproduct of “taking a cheap shot.”

Time is running out on the idea that this offense will ever be as explosive as we’ve grown accustomed to seeing under Ryan Day. McCord has continued to flash moments of upside but they’re always paired with a few bad decisions that he can’t seem to shake.

Harrison is a clear Heisman Trophy candidate at this point, but the rest of the wide receiving corps has either been absent, thanks to injury, or just not producing the way they were last season. The same can be said of a tight end room where Cade Stover failed to have a target against Wisconsin and didn’t play against Rutgers while nursing what is clearly a hurt right knee.

Ohio State’s defense didn’t have its best day against Rutgers, but it’s been so dominant for most of the season that it’s OK to see Saturday’s performance as a one-off rather than something to be worried about. Plus it showed up any time it mattered most, never giving up a touchdown and having multiple red zone trips end with only a field goal or nothing.