Buckeyes Gameday: Must-Win to Stay Alive Against the Northwestern Wildcats

The Ohio State Buckeyes are not in control of their own destiny at this point; the only thing that they can do is focus on getting a win on Saturday afternoon against the Northwestern Wildcats. 

The Buckeyes are sitting at the No. 20 College Football Playoff position but are absolutely not out of the race. They nearly got some of the help that they needed on Friday night as the No. 4-ranked UCLA Bruins found themselves in a close game against the Illinois Fighting Illini.

Had UCLA fallen to the Illini, that would have both shaken things up and put the Buckeyes one step closer to being at the top of the Big Ten.

As it stands right now, Ohio State is ranked No. 5 in the Big Ten behind UCLA, Indiana, Oregon, Iowa, and USC. 

Today, Indiana and USC clash so one of them are going to lose while they finish the season with a cross-town clash against UCLA, which will have very significant ramifications on it. Oregon is the team that is sitting pretty, actually, with three winnable games to finish. Iowa is just lurking in the shadows and is going to have a chance to stick around up until the very end.

The point is that even if Ohio State wins out, they still could be caught empty-handed. However, there is a possibility that if they do win out, they have a chance to sneak back into the Big Ten conversation and the College Football Playoff conversation.

To do that, they need to see a lot of improvement from this current team because what they are doing right now is just not good football.

The Buckeyes haven't had good play from anyone on offense outside of Jeremiah Smith. Every position group, for sure, and most players have disappointed Ohio State, which has one of the most boring, vanilla offenses in the country.

They were labeled as an Iowa offense with Jeremiah Smith at wide receiver by Brooks Austin, which isn't exactly high praise.

On defense, it's the same story. The two cornerbacks on this team are good, and everyone else is just average at best. The defensive line is just flat-out playing badly; no other way to put it. 

They need several players to significantly improve, and if they do, they will remain in the conversation. If they don't, well, today could get interesting.

Ohio State and Northwestern kickoff at 12:00 PM EST on Saturday afternoon.