Tom Brady enjoyed watching his Michigan Wolverines take down Ohio State in arguably the biggest upset in the history of the rivalry, but he also wondered how the Buckeyes allowed it to happen.
In an interview on FS1’s “The Herd,” Brady credited Michigan for sticking to its identity as a “very tough, hard-nosed football team” that “runs the ball very well” in its 13-10 upset win over Ohio State. Meanwhile, he questioned why Ohio State tried to go blow-for-blow with Michigan in the run game.
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“If I looked at Ohio State’s strengths, they have a great 7-on-7 team. They got guys that you can throw the ball to. In the second half, they don’t even target their best players,” Brady said. “It’s like, I may as well have been out there playing receiver for Ohio State. I can’t run. I couldn’t catch. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t throw me the ball, just like they didn’t throw a lot of their best players the ball in the second half of that game.”
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To Brady’s point, the Buckeyes attempted only 11 passes in their first 24 plays of the second half prior to their final possession. Jeremiah Smith, the talented freshman who some have argued is the best wide receiver in the nation, was targeted just twice after halftime. He recorded one reception for 3 yards. Emeka Egbuka, who could be a first-round pick in the 2025 NFL Draft, had two receptions (on four targets) for 15 yards in the second half.
On the ground, Ohio State gained 41 yards on 12 attempts (3.41 yards per carry) in the second half. While Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson might be the most talented running back tandem in college football, they were running behind a banged-up offensive line and into the strength of Michigan’s defense. The Wolverines rank third in the nation in rushing yards allowed per game.
Brady believed that Ohio State’s method ran counterintuitive to what his teams would do in their biggest games.
“Whenever we got to big games, let’s say the Super Bowl, you’d say, there’s 70 plays left in our season,” Brady said. “The entire six months of work, seven months of work is going to come down to 70 plays. What do we want those 70 plays to look like? Then, you reverse engineer it, and you say, OK, we’re going to want 40 passes and 30 runs. Well, what 40 passes do we want? We could design 150 of them if you want.
“Now, there’s 110 of those that won’t get called. So why don’t we just dial it down and dial it back to only the specific ones where our best players are going to touch the ball, doing the best things that they do, and we’re going to go out like that. If we lose, we lose. If we win, great. But we’re not going to lose doing things that we don’t do well. Coach [Bill] Belichick would always say, coaches lose games and players win games.”
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There was one particular sequence where Ohio State’s stubbornness to remain committed to the run might have cost it the game. After safety Caleb Downs‘ interception gave OSU the ball on Michigan’s 16-yard line in the third quarter, the Buckeyes ran the ball twice on the next three plays. One of those runs was a delayed handoff on third-and-10, with Henderson tackled at the line of scrimmage. Kicker Jayden Fielding’s 34-yard field goal attempt went wide left on the next play, keeping the score knotted at 10-all.
Ohio State’s approach in that red zone sequence has been widely criticized since Saturday’s loss. FOX Sports’ Joel Klatt, who called “The Game” for FOX, pointed to that sequence as the moment the energy changed and moved to Michigan’s favor, crediting the Wolverines’ ability to create pressure with four-man rushes as a major factor in their upset win.
Brady noted that Belichick would begin every game week by defining what each unit has to do in order to beat the upcoming opponent. Ryan Day and OC Chip Kelly’s miscalculation versus Michigan reminded Brady of one Belichick made a few years back versus the Chiefs.
“There’s times where we can misevaluate what those things are,” Brady said. “I’ll never forget, we played the Chiefs once, and we doubled, I think, Travis Kelce a bunch, and not Tyreek Hill. Maybe one of the early times we played Tyreek Hill, and he went for like 180 or 200 [receiving yards], something crazy.
“[Belichick] came in the next day and he says, ‘Hey guys, we’re never doing that again. We screwed that up. If we play these guys again, we know who we’re going to double, and it’s going to be Tyreek Hill.'”
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The game Brady’s likely referencing is the Patriots‘ season-opening loss to the Chiefs in 2017. New England went on to play in the Super Bowl that season.
Just like that loss was for the Patriots, Saturday’s loss to Michigan isn’t a season-ender for Ohio State, even though it might feel that way to some of its fans. As the Buckeyes prepare for the College Football Playoff, Brady identified what their coaching staff needs to do moving forward in order to avoid another loss like the Michigan one.
“You’ve got to have some formula for what you’re trying to accomplish,” Brady said. “What’s the bullseye that we need to hit? We need to get the coaches to deliver that to the players in all three phases of the game for them to go out there so that they have something to hit. If they do that and you identify it clearly, I think you give your team a great chance to win.”
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