Despite a competitive first half, Marshall Football came up short with a 49-14 loss to the explosive No. 3 Ohio State Buckeyes in Ohio Stadium with over 100,000 fans watching on Saturday, Sept. 21.
“I thought our guys battled 60 minutes, but they wore us down a little bit in the second half,” head coach Charles Huff said. “I thought we showed that when we do what we need to do from the things that we can control, that we can play with anybody in the country.”
The Herd received the opening kickoff and marched methodically 75 yards down the field. With a mix of quick strikes from quarterback Stone Earle and a two-yard touchdown run from Ethan Payne, the Herd took an early 7-0 lead and drained nearly seven minutes off the clock. The short run from Payne was the first touchdown scored against the Buckeyes this season.
“They hadn’t given up a touchdown all year, and only one team had gotten into the red zone all year,” Huff said. “I thought the biggest play of the day was we go down there on the goal line, and we punched it in. That’s a man’s yard down on the goal line. Offensively, we were a lot more efficient today.”
The Buckeyes would soon tie the game with a screen pass from quarterback Will Howard to wide receiver Emeka Egbuka that went for 68 yards into the endzone and further ignited the Buckeye faithful that filled Ohio Stadium.
Going into the second quarter, the Herd was deadlocked with Ohio State 7-7. Less than three minutes into the second quarter, the Buckeyes took the lead with a short run from Howard.
With the Herd trailing and forced to punt, the Buckeyes muffed the punt on their own 10-yard line that was recovered by the Herd. However, the cheers from Herd fans scattered throughout the sea of scarlet shirts were silenced after a penalty on illegal formation negated the play and forced a re-kick.
Following two scores from the Buckeyes, the Herd trailed 28-7 with six seconds remaining in the first half, and the offense led by Earle positioned in the red zone. Earle launched the ball toward the back of the end zone where he found wide receiver Elijah Metcalf, who pirouetted to get a foot down to move the score to 28-14 going into halftime.
The Herd did not find the endzone following the conclusion of the first half. Ohio State’s offense continued its dominance with three touchdowns scored in the remainder of the game.
Earle finished the game with 132 yards on 16 of 21 attempts and one touchdown. The Herd finished with 264 yards of offense on 70 total plays.
Marshall will take on the Western Michigan Broncos at home on Saturday, Sept. 28, in its first home contest since defeating Stony Brook in the home opener.
