The first is obvious. The Buckeyes recorded eight sacks against the Ducks’ quarterback in the teams’ second meeting of the season, which took place in the College Football Playoff quarterfinals at the Rose Bowl. They recorded no hits in their first game against Oregon. Defensive linemen stood in Gabriel’s way and came home to play in the postseason matchup.

But it’s the second difference of watching Gabriel in the pocket that fueled that sack count as much as the dominance of the defensive line. According to Pro Football Focus, Gabriel’s average time from snap to throw on October 12 was 2.6 seconds. On January 1st it was 3.4 seconds. Any pass rusher will tell you what a difference almost a second can make.

The focus was on nickel Jordan Hancock and safety Caleb Downs. Panels in the Ohio State secondary forced Gabriel to hold the ball longer in OSU’s 41-21 win, underscoring one of the key catalysts for the Buckeyes’ defensive dominance since their 32-31 loss at Autzen Stadium.

“I feel like we’ve done enough now with the coverage and the structure of our look that hopefully we’ll force the quarterback to hold the ball a little bit longer,” Knowles said. “And then comes the rush to success.”

When it comes to getting quarterbacks to grab the ball longer, moving chess pieces in a secondary is key.

“You have to change the image after the snapshot,” Knowles said. “You change the frame after the snap, and that forces him to keep the ball and try to figure it out.”

Ohio State University’s first experiment, in which Hancock bypassed its defenses, was a necessity. Starting safety Lathan Ransom suffered an injury during the Buckeyes’ bye week after the first game at Oregon, and Hancock, normally the team’s cornerback, rolled deep to play safety against Nebraska.

Even when Ransom returned for the next game at Penn State, Hancock continued to see action at safety while Downs was deployed around Ohio State’s defense. In the CFP, Hancock played a majority of his snaps as a free safety, according to PFF, playing a total of 79 snaps against Tennessee and Oregon, including 41 in the slot and seven in the box.

The beauty is that it allows Downs, perhaps the most athletic, intelligent, instinctive and dynamic safety in the country, to move around even more on defense. One of Ohio State’s trademarks in these playoffs was a Tampa-2 look, with Hancock and Ransom capturing deep zones while Downs plays 12 yards from the line of scrimmage in the middle of the field and attacks where he gets the ball sees running. Downs has played 56 snaps at deep safety, 37 in the box and 35 in the slot in these playoffs.

“He’s just really good. Makes me look good,” Knowles said of Downs. “I’ve done that with different players throughout my career, more with players from the front than from the back. At Oklahoma State, when you had to defend against the explosive play all the time, I really created that structure. It just makes sense when you have a guy like Caleb Downs to put him in the middle of the action.”

Early in the season, when Hancock was still learning the safety position, he felt like he couldn’t really execute on coverages and confusing quarterbacks. But now that it’s “natural” for him to line up at safety, Ohio State’s secondary as a whole is harder to read in coverage.

“It definitely helped (our defense) a lot just because I got more reps at safety and stuff like that. That makes it easier for the defense to disguise me,” Hancock said. “Maybe at the beginning of the season I couldn’t really dress up because I really didn’t know much, but now it’s easy because I feel like it’s a natural position for me to dress up quarterback and change different looks .”

Hancock has also found a natural chemistry between downs and downs as they switch spots on the field and maneuver in and out of coverage.

“It’s simple,” Hancock said. “I just play him off. Whatever he does, I just try to really fix him and vice versa.”

Forcing quarterbacks to hold the ball longer is something Ohio State’s secondary is proud of in these playoffs as their defensive line has responded accordingly. Now it’s about transferring this success into the CFP semifinals at the Cotton Bowl against Texas.

“We go by the saying ‘Cover and haste work together,'” Hancock said. “It’s kind of a joke that we use, but we don’t take it lightly. We feel like no one can block our defensive ends and defensive tackles if we hold our own on the back end. And vice versa, it makes it easy for us because we know that the pressure is on the quarterback.”

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