The 2 adjustments Ohio State made that ruined Indiana

We generally overstate the value of halftime adjustments.

That term is a narrative device, more than any actual strategic breakthrough. By the time the coaches from the press box get to the locker room at halftime, you’ve got maybe three or four minutes to talk tactics. Then you have to communicate them to your units, go to the bathroom, and go back upstairs.

Halftime adjustments are likely one or two tweaks at most. And usually they are going to result in the more talented team figuring out how to assert its advantage. That’s what Ohio State did in beating Indiana on Thursday, 49-21, in Bloomington.

The Buckeyes were always likely to pull away from the Hoosiers. The Buckeyes are the more talented team in almost every game they play, and as efficiency is the best predictor in college football, they were the more efficient team in the first half:

Indiana built a lead with some brilliant catches — mostly by Simmie Cobbs Jr., who finished with 11 catches for 149 yards — and big plays. But the Hoosiers were living on the edge, operating at a mach-speed tempo despite inefficiency. They were, from the start, at risk of everything falling apart quickly.

Whether these were tweaks or simply the law of averages taking over, a couple of slight Ohio State adjustments indeed caused everything to fall apart quickly.

On Indiana’s first touchdown drive, Cobbs caught three passes for 49 yards, and on the Hoosiers’ second touchdown drive, he caught three for 45. On that latter drive, quarterback Richard Lagow targeted him with five consecutive passes, identifying a friendly matchup and cudgeling away with it.

From the start, this was the only truly winning matchup for Indiana. The Ohio State pass rush was occasionally productive, and the Hoosiers couldn’t pretend to run the football — backs Morgan Ellison, Mike Majette, and Cole Gest combined for 35 yards on 16 carries. Plus, short passes got nowhere. Before garbage time, IU threw 19 passes within four yards of the line of scrimmage; they completed 15 of them but gained only 35 yards in the process.

In the second half, Ohio State shaded Cobbs with a safety and hinted at obvious double teams. They did this at times in the first half, too, but loudly announced their intentions to start the second. This was less of an adjustment, I guess, and more of a commitment to a winning tactic.

The well-drilled Lagow checked down to secondary options, and in two three-and-outs to start the third quarter, he completed four checkdown passes for six yards.

Lagow and Cobbs connected midway through the quarter — Lagow targeted Cobbs five straight times again, completing three for 42 yards and setting up Indiana’s final touchdown — but Cobbs would catch only one pass thereafter, and when IU couldn’t lean on Cobbs, IU couldn’t score.

Completing longer passes was a massive issue for Ohio State late in 2016, and this season seemed to pick up where last left off. After some initial success, J.T. Barrett went through a 6-of-19 stretch, completing five passes within 5 yards of the line of scrimmage and going 1-of-14 beyond.

This wasn’t all Barrett. His receivers were struggling to get open, with Indiana dropping seven and eight defenders into coverage, and they suffered some drops as well.

The Buckeyes exploded when they began using more of the field. For the run game, that meant attacking the edges. In the first half, 14 of their 20 rushes were between the tackles, and they had just a 23 percent rushing success rate midway through the second quarter.

In the third quarter, six of their first eight rushes were to the outside. Those gained just 25 yards, but it probably wasn’t a coincidence that their first three between-the-tackles rushes of the half gained 48 yards. They were making Indiana’s job a little too easy in the first half. Then they stopped that.

They also started better employing the intermediate pass. Thanks in part to drops, they still couldn’t go long — Barrett threw four second-half passes farther than 11 yards downfield, and all four were incomplete — but they found space underneath.

It’s funny what happens when you find space for really fast guys. A one-yard pass to Parris Campbell on a crossing pattern gained 28 yards, a 7-yarder to Campbell went for a 74-yard score, and an 11-yarder over the middle to Johnnie Dixon went for a 59-yard score.

But the Buckeyes survived because they had more matchup advantages, and it was only a matter of time until they exploited them.

The lack of deeper passing success is foreboding, but considering Ohio State is going to be able to out-talent virtually every team on the schedule, this might not catch up to the Buckeyes for a while.