(Side note, when UW fans were stoked about our win over Michigan earlier this season, an Ohio State fan was pretty quick to tell us we shouldn't really be that stoked about it because Michigan really isn't very good this year.)
There's like a 98% chance that was me. To be fair, nearly all my ripping on the Huskies was just friendly smack talk in a thread started by someone who claimed UW would steamroll through the Big 10, although I suspect that was purposely hyperbolic as well.
Michigan still isn't great, although they'd probably be fringe top-15 at worst with even a decent QB. Ohio State was absolute shit in that game. I'm certainly not going to pretend otherwise. Hopefully, we can get it back together before the playoff. That game was nothing short of demoralizing and discouraging, but the talent is still there, and teams can get their mojo back quickly.
Again, I wasn't really serious when I was downplaying UW's victory to begin with (as a Buckeye fan living in Michigan, I was certainly not unhappy with that result), but let's be careful about that transitive stuff. I remember UW also losing 40-16 to an Iowa team that Ohio State beat 35-7. I also remember the Seahawks losing to a Giants team that is in firm contention for the #1 overall pick. Bad weeks happen. I thought UW was a great addition to the conference, and I would much, much rather see them have sustained success than Oregon, UCLA, and especially USC. Shame UW and OSU didn't play this year, which is stupid considering we were forced to cancel the game we had originally scheduled when it was considered OOC for both.
Kinda shows how slim the margin is between great and washed. Just a week ago, the Buckeyes thoroughly demolished a fifth-ranked Indiana team and was widely considered one of the two biggest title favorites. Now, one awful showing against our bitter rival, and there's talk about whether this team should even be in the playoff over schools like Miami, BYU, and a number of 3-loss SEC schools. Even as bad as that game was, it was just a three-point deficit and Michigan didn't get their first lead until the final minute. Our kicker had not missed a single attempt under 40 yards in his OSU career. In this one, he missed two of them. He makes those, as he typically does, and right now, the talk on OSU is that they escaped and need to tighten things up before the playoff, but are still a huge threat, kinda like the talk around Oregon when they escaped with a 16-13 win over 5-7 Wisconsin last week. Instead, he missed those chip shots, and now we're considered a reeling team in disarray with an incompetent head coach.
As disappointed as I am to not get a second shot at Oregon next week, hopefully the week off helps and maybe the committee does us a favor with our first-round playoff opponent. Basically the entire playoff field will be teams that looked fraudulent at some point this season. Hopefully, that was a one-week blip.
Regardless, UW looked much better as the season progressed. Hopefully we're both at the top of the mountain next year, and the talk on December 1st is about how great the teams looked, rather than what we hope they had done better.
