ESPN's College GameDay crew details where Cotton Bowl went wrong for Ohio State

Following a relatively uneventful Cotton Bowl game Friday night which Missouri won 14-3, the College GameDay crew certainly didn’t take it easy on Ohio State Saturday morning.

As part of a segment centered around the game, Rece Davis began by pointing out that “quarterback was a looming issue” for Ohio State and the situation looked inoperable vs. Missouri. However, co-host Desmond Howard sees much bigger problems even than that for his rival school on the offensive side of the ball.

“Before you get to the quarterback situation, the offensive line, I was really surprised how they were dominated by Missouri’s front seven. Not only physically, but they had multiple false start penalties. So it just seemed like they were never in sync,” commented Howard.

Howard views Ryan Day’s OSU program as one that prides itself on running the football, pounding the rock. But all season long and never more so than Friday night, the offensive line just couldn’t move enough people.

“When you have a running back, TreVeyon Henderson, and a new starter at the quarterback position, you wanna feature your running back, you wanna get that running game going. And if you really look at what Ryan Day wants to do offensively, everything starts with the running game,” explained Des.

“Once they were dominated at the line of scrimmage and they couldn’t run the ball, then they were dead in the water. Because you’re not going to drop back and pass the ball at that point. To me, that’s where the game was won and lost, in the trenches, Pat.”

Of course, Howard was speaking to Pat McAfee on the set, who then discussed the optics of such a disappointing night all the way around for Ryan Day.

“The conversation about having a quarterback wear No. 33 was maybe saying they were doomed to begin with,” McAfee began, before moving on to discuss Day.

“The conversation about Ryan Day now is getting very loud obviously after a loss to Michigan, and now, in the Cotton Bowl classic, how we look and how the team played is certainly something that the people of Ohio aren’t going to be pumped about.”

For good measure, McAfee sent one more zinger towards OSU, noting: “And there was a towel snatched. I mean, there is a lot of storylines coming out of this Ohio State sideline about how bad they looked.”

He’s referencing the clip that surfaced last night of an Ohio State staffer grabbing a towel straight from the rear end of a Tiger player who ended up on the Buckeye sideline. Shortly after the video came out, folks on the old Twitter machine suggested it was Ryan Day’s son, RJ, who swiped the towel.