James Franklin, Urban Meyer weigh in on decisive 4th-down call

Ohio State was expecting Trace McSorley to get the ball. After the record-setting performance like he had been enjoying, why wouldn't he get it for one last shot?

The senior quarterback had already amassed more total offensive yards (461) in a single game than any other football player in school history. He had been Penn State's star all night, both running the ball and throwing it, so with the game on the line with just over one minute left to play, the Buckeyes were ready to see more from him. Penn State, however, wanted to counter – but the plan backfired. In front of the largest crowd in Beaver Stadium history, PSU's fate was decided on a critical fourth-down play and the Buckeyes held on for a 27-26 victory.

A night of back and forth came down to a fourth-and-5 with 1:22 left. After Penn State used its first timeout to determine a play call, Ohio State was anticipating McSorley to take the game into his hands.

"The quarterback is their guy, obviously," said head coach Urban Meyer. "He's a winner, he's competitor, and he's a great, great player, so the conversation was that somehow they were going to get him involved in that play. So [defensive coordinator Greg Schiano] came up to me and said, OK, let's burn a timeout. Let's see what they're in. Right before the snap we did and we could hear over the head sets that they were going to get a zone read and get the quarterback involved."

But they didn't. After Ohio State's timeout, Penn State called another one, exhausting two of their three timeouts and ultimately putting the outcome of the game on the weight of this one play. With only one timeout remaining, Ohio State only needed that fourth-down stop before it could run out the clock. That's just what it did – but not by stopping McSorley.

Rather, Penn State handed the ball off to running back Miles Sanders, who had been contained to fewer than 3 yards per carry on the evening. This time – the last time – Ohio State bottled him up for a loss of three yards.

By trying to outsmart the coaches across the line of scrimmage, Penn State went away from its captain – a decision that head coach James Franklin later regretted.

"Obviously we should've called something different there," Franklin said in the opening statement of his postgame press conference. "I'm pretty upset right now because I'm hurting for those guys in that locker room."

Asked in a followup question about the decision-making to call a second timeout, Franklin lamented how it was his call and accepted responsibility for how the game concluded.

"They changed the look so we called a timeout and had some discussion," Franklin added. "We obviously didn't make the right call in that situation. That's on me. Nobody else. We didn't make the right call in that situation. We've called something similar like that in other situations and they go for big plays. That's on us. That's on me."

Once Ohio State got the ball back – with only one Penn State timeout remaining – it took three kneel downs from quarterback Dwayne Haskins to run out the clock.