Nobody thought it would end with confetti. Honestly, if you look back at the vibe in Columbus during August of that year, it was closer to a funeral than a celebration. Braxton Miller, the reigning Big Ten Player of the Year and the guy everyone expected to carry the team to the inaugural College Football Playoff, went down with a season-ending shoulder injury in practice. Just like that, the 2014 Ohio State football schedule looked like a mountain that a redshirt freshman named J.T. Barrett couldn't possibly climb.
It was a mess.
The Buckeyes were coming off a 2013 season that ended with two straight losses, and the skeptics were out in full force. You had a young offensive line, a defense that had been leaky the year before, and a quarterback who hadn't thrown a meaningful pass in years. Urban Meyer looked stressed. The fans were bracing for an "educational" year. But looking back, that specific slate of games wasn't just a list of opponents; it was a perfectly timed gauntlet that forged one of the most resilient teams in the history of the sport.
The early stumble and the Virginia Tech disaster
The season kicked off at M&T Bank Stadium against Navy. It wasn't pretty. Ohio State won 34-17, but the Triple Option gave them fits and Barrett looked like, well, a freshman. Then came the home opener.
If you want to talk about the 2014 Ohio State football schedule, you have to talk about September 6th. Virginia Tech came into the Shoe and played a "Bear" front defense that completely suffocated the Buckeyes. Barrett was sacked seven times. He threw three interceptions. The Buckeyes lost 35-21. At that moment, the playoff was a pipe dream. No team had ever lost that early, that badly, at home, and made it back into the national title conversation. The national media basically crossed them off the list. "Big Ten is dead," was the headline everywhere.
But something weird happened after that loss. The schedule softened up just enough to let them breathe.
They hammered Kent State 66-0. Then they took down Cincinnati in a shootout where the offense finally clicked, putting up over 700 yards. By the time they hit the road for Maryland and Rutgers, Barrett wasn't just "filling in" anymore. He was a Heisman contender. The offensive line, led by Taylor Decker and Pat Elflein, started calling themselves "The Slobs" and actually playing like it. They weren't just winning; they were erasing people.
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That white-out night in State College
The real turning point—the game where the season almost died again—was October 25th. Happy Valley. A night game against Penn State.
If you remember that game, you remember the phantom calls and the deafening noise. Ohio State jumped out to a 17-0 lead, and then the wheels fell off. Barrett was playing on a bum sprained MCL. The Nittany Lions clawed back to tie it, and the game went into double overtime. This is where the 2014 Ohio State football schedule got gritty. Joey Bosa ended the game by literally picking up a Penn State running back and slamming him into Christian Hackenberg for a walk-off sack.
That 31-24 win was ugly. It was gritty. It showed that this team could win when they weren't playing their "A" game, which is exactly what you need to survive a Big Ten November.
The November gauntlet and the Michigan State showdown
For months, everyone pointed to November 8th. Michigan State was the defending Big Ten champ. They had the "No Fly Zone" defense. They were the ones who had ruined Ohio State’s undefeated run the year before in Indianapolis.
The Buckeyes went into East Lansing as underdogs.
What followed was a clinic. Barrett threw for 300 yards and three touchdowns. Ezekiel Elliott ran through holes you could drive a truck through. The 49-37 score didn't even feel that close. This was the moment the College Football Playoff committee actually started taking them seriously again. They jumped from No. 14 to No. 8. Suddenly, that Virginia Tech loss was being viewed as a "quality loss" because of how much the team had improved.
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Then came the Rivalry.
Michigan wasn't good in 2014 (this was the end of the Brady Hoke era), but "The Game" is always a physical toll. Ohio State won 42-28, but the cost was astronomical. J.T. Barrett broke his ankle in the fourth quarter.
Cardale Jones and the 59-0 masterpiece
Imagine being Cardale Jones. You’re the third-string guy. You famously tweeted about not coming to school to "play school." And now, you have to start the Big Ten Championship Game against a Wisconsin team that had the Nagurski Award winner in linebacker Chris Borland and a superstar in Melvin Gordon.
The world expected Wisconsin to win. Instead, we witnessed the most lopsided high-stakes game in modern history.
Ohio State didn't just win; they deleted Wisconsin from the conversation. 59-0. Cardale Jones was throwing 60-yard bombs to Devin Smith like it was a 7-on-7 drill. Ezekiel Elliott looked like he was shot out of a cannon. That single game jumped Ohio State over TCU and Baylor into the #4 spot in the final playoff rankings. Jeff Long, the committee chair at the time, basically said the "decisive" nature of that win made the difference.
The Playoff: Beating the unbeatable
The 2014 Ohio State football schedule finished with two games that felt like a fever dream for Buckeye fans.
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- The Sugar Bowl (Jan 1, 2015): Alabama. Nick Saban. The SEC juggernaut. Ohio State fell behind 21-6 early. It looked like the blowout everyone predicted. Then, the "85 Yards Through the Heart of the South." Ezekiel Elliott’s run is still played on loops in every sports bar in Columbus. Buckeyes won 42-35.
- The National Championship (Jan 12, 2015): Oregon and Marcus Mariota. The Ducks were fast, but Ohio State was stronger. Despite four turnovers, the Buckeyes bullied them. Zeke had four touchdowns. Cardale Jones was running over defensive linemen. Final: 42-20.
From a broken-down Braxton Miller in August to a third-string quarterback holding the trophy in North Texas. It was a 15-game marathon that proved why "strength of schedule" is such a nuanced thing.
Why this schedule still matters for fans today
Looking back at these specific games provides a blueprint for how a team can overcome a "bad" loss early in the season. If you're looking to understand the mechanics of the College Football Playoff or how a team builds momentum, the 2014 season is the ultimate case study.
- Early season losses aren't fatal: If you show "linear improvement," the committee will forgive a September stumble.
- Style points matter: The 59-0 win over Wisconsin was the only reason Ohio State got a chance to play Alabama.
- Depth is everything: Winning a title with your 3rd string QB is a feat we might never see again at this level.
If you’re a collector or a historian, the box scores from the 2014 Ohio State football schedule tell a story of a team that wasn't the best in September, but was undeniably the best in January. You can find full archives of these games on the Big Ten Network's classic rotation or through the Ohio State Athletics digital library. Studying the defensive shifts from Chris Ash and Luke Fickell during that mid-season stretch reveals how they fixed the "leaky" defense that almost cost them the Penn State game.
To really appreciate what happened, you have to look at the stats of Ezekiel Elliott over the final three games: 696 rushing yards against the three best defenses they faced. That isn't just luck; that's a team peaking exactly when the schedule demanded it.
Keep an eye on the 2024 and 2025 schedules as the playoff expands to 12 teams. The lessons from 2014—specifically how to manage a roster through 15 games—are more relevant now than ever. You don't need to be perfect in September; you just need to be terrifying by December. Reach out to local alumni chapters if you're looking for commemorative DVDs or specific game programs from that year, as the 10-year anniversaries have brought a lot of that memorabilia back into the market.