Buckeyes' Playoff Hopes Take a Major Hit After Full Day of Football on Saturday

The Ohio State Buckeyes unimpressively took down the Northwestern Wildcats. Saturday in a game that they both needed to win and they needed to look good.

Well, they accomplished half of that in a game that they won by a final score of 28-19, thanks to a touchdown scored as time expired in the game. It was the furthest thing from a clean performance, but the goal today was to just win the football game, and they did just that; they got the win.

The Buckeyes had a tough road to travel to make it to the College Football Playoff, and it didn't clear up on Saturday afternoon.

If they wanted a chance to jump over some of the three-loss teams, then they were going to have to beat the Wildcats convincingly, by several scores and without stress. That didn't happen at all, and for the most part, the first half was played with a major question of who was actually in control.

So, with that in mind, their hopes of sneaking into the Playoff transferred to just winning the Big Ten Championship game. In theory, the Buckeyes should be there, but Saturday's results tell a different story.

The two biggest games for the Buckeyes were in Eugene and Bloomington, Indiana.

Starting in Eugene, the Buckeyes were rooting hard for the Michigan Wolverines. That is a sentence people don't say much, but it was absolutely true on Saturday. 

Ohio State needs Oregon to fall in at least one of their final three games. It didn't happen today, so the Ducks will still remain the top three-loss team in the country.

The second game, and the most important one, happened between Indiana and USC. The perfect scenario was that USC was going to take down Indiana, drop them down to two losses, and tie with the Buckeyes in conference, with Ohio State owning the tiebreaker. 

Then they would have needed USC to lose to UCLA in the final week of the season. Again,  they needed a lot of things to happen that didn't.

Nothing that the Buckeyes needed came to reality, and that leaves their playoff hopes really out of reach for now.

This isn't to say that there aren't opportunities for them to make up some ground in the next couple of weeks but it is going to take a whole lot of luck for things to fall in their place. The Buckeyes are on the outside looking in for the 2027 College Football Playoff.