COLUMBUS – On Ohio State’s first possession of the 2016 football season, J.T. Barrett threw a pass into the arms of Bowling Green’s Brandon Harris, who galloped 63 yards into the end zone, an inauspicious start for the junior quarterback.
But Barrett made very few mistakes after that, throwing four touchdown passes to four different receivers and running for a fifth score while skippering a mostly inexperienced offense to a 35-10 halftime lead over the Falcons while the offense amassed a program record 776 yards and trounced Bowling Green 77-10 in front of 107,193 at Ohio Stadium.
Before giving up the ball to freshman Joe Burrows in the third quarter, with the No. 5/6 Buckeyes (1-0) leading 56-10, Barrett had set a new school record by accounting for seven touchdowns, six of them through the air, matching another OSU record.
Barrett completed 21 passes to seven different receivers for 349 yards.
Two of his scoring strikes went to Curtis Samuel, the games’s offensive breakout player, who scored on catches of 79 and 21 yards and on a 12-yard pitch.
With 13 carries and nine catches for 261 yards, even taking some direct snaps from center in the pistol formation, Samuel showed what is meant by “H-back.”
“He’s the first true hybrid I’ve had in a while where he’s big enough,” head coach Urban Meyer said to reporters after the game.
At 5’11″/197 lbs., Samuel is only slightly bigger than the other H-back, Dontre Wilson, who rushed for 21 yards, including a 10-yard gain off a direct snap, and caught three passes for 37 yards and two touchdowns.
Freshman Mike Weber, named the starting tailback earlier in the week, rushed for 136 yards.
Demario McCall tacked on a touchdown catch from Burrow and a 16-yard run in garbage time (which was most of the second half) to complete the scoring for the OSU offense.
McCall and Burrow were among 30 players Meyer says played in their first college football games, answering the nagging questions about how they would perform on the big stage.
“You just don’t know until you know,” he said and joked about seeing fans paging through programs in search of names to go with numbers of unfamiliar players suddenly grabbing the spotlight.
“Careers are made here and legends are born,” Meyer said. “I tell the players that all the time. Ohio State is different, man. You start making plays and all of a sudden people know who you are at the national level.”
The defense did not allow a touchdown and sacked Falcons quarterbacks twice.
Raekwon McMillan, Joe Burger, Erick Smith, Nick Bosa, Malik Harrison, Justin Hilliard and Malik Hooker each accounted for four tackles. Hooker acrobatically picked off Falcons quarterback James Knapke twice and Bosa recorded one sack. Freshman Rodjay Burns returned the Buckeyes’ third pick of the game 75 yards for a touchdown with 3:23 remaining in the game.
The Buckeyes host Tulsa next Saturday (3:30 p.m.)