Greg McElroy believes that Ohio State could win the Big Ten this year. In fact, the ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback is convinced that the Buckeyes should win the Big Ten.
But, he isn’t sure that they are a national championship caliber team. Let’s start with some background on this first…
Ohio State was offensively the best team in the Big Ten a year ago, leading the conference with 45.7 points per game. Defensively, however, they were not nearly as dominant. In fact, they were a bit middling.
The Buckeyes checked ninth in the Big Ten in total defense (22.8 points allowed per game). For a team with legitimate national championship ambitions, it simply wasn’t good enough and a major reason why Ohio State didn’t win the Big Ten last year or make the College Football Playoff.
And there lies the rub for McElroy when it comes to projecting Ohio State as a national championship contender.
Now an analyst with ESPN, McElroy won a national championship with Alabama in 2010 and then spent three seasons in the NFL. Last week, he joined College Football Live on ESPN and discussed why he thinks Ohio State is the favorite to win the Big Ten.
And what he thinks could hold the Buckeyes back.
“Ohio State winning the league should be a slam dunk. No doubt they should win the league. They should. If they don’t, it’s their own fault,” McElroy said on ESPN last week.
“It really is but have they addressed the issues that have plagued them the last two years? Because this is not a one-year occurrence and a two-year multi-year occurrence in which they have been atrociously bad at times on the defensive side of the football. Ohio State’s M.O. forever has been they want to get after the quarterback and they want to create turnovers.”
For comparison, Michigan, who won the conference, was second in scoring offense (35.8) and fourth in scoring defense (17.4). The Wolverines lost a lot of pieces this offseason to the NFL draft, but their demise is…
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