Thanks to a little experience and a spot of tea, J.T. Barrett slept better on his second trip to the state of Maryland as Ohio State’s starting quarterback.
And it showed.
About a month ago, Barrett was a bundle of nerves prepping for Navy after Braxton Miller was lost for the year after shoulder surgery. He did OK, but he was what he was — a redshirt freshman making his collegiate debut for a marquee program.
On Saturday, he returned and spoiled Maryland’s first home game as a member of the Big Ten, throwing for 267 yards with four touchdowns and running for 71 and a score in the No. 20 Buckeyes’ 52-24 win.
“He’s playing very well,” coach Urban Meyer said. “And the neat thing is, we can still get better.”
Barrett is starting to run Meyer’s score-all-the-time offense as if he’s been doing it forever. The Buckeyes (4-1, 1-0) scored on drives lasting 3:01, 3:27, 1:18, 1:46 and 0:05 to take a 31-10 halftime lead and hush the first sellout crowd at College Park in nearly six years. Ohio State has scored 168 points in three wins since losing to Virginia Tech, a stumble that now seems as distant as that Navy game that had Barrett so antsy.
Asked to compare the two, Barrett smiled.
“It was one of those deals, popping up in the middle of the night, I think I popped up at like 2 o’clock, 3 o’clock and, like, 5:30,” he said. “Just nervousness and having butterflies in my stomach. Compared to last night, you sleep easy. The thing I do now, I take the Sleepytime tea, so I go to sleep so I’m not sitting there with my thoughts at night. It’s way better than it was.”
Sleep was a major topic in general this week for Meyer, whose team had a noon kickoff at a stadium he had never seen. He put the players to bed at 9 p.m. Friday in an effort to eradicate what he called “that dullard look coming out of the locker room.”
“It’s 50-50 when you go on the road for a noon game,” Meyer said. “Sometimes it’s the middle of the first quarter before they wake up and that other team jumps on you. All of a sudden, it’s 7-0 and you’re playing uphill the entire game. We went nuts this week with that. Our coaching staff, I was grinding them pretty hard Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday about a fast start.”
They sure got it. The Buckeyes might have never played Maryland before, but they marched up and down the field as if they owned the place. The 51,802 fans, at least those rooting for the home team, must’ve wondered what their great conference shift had wrought.
The Terrapins (4-2, 1-1) had an impressive Big Ten debut win on the road the previous week at Indiana, but their top highlight Saturday was a school-record 57-yard field goal by Brad Craddock.
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