Even when Ohio State players leave Columbus for the NFL, the itch to dunk on Michigan continues. We saw former quarterback Cardale Jones troll the Michigan helmet last week, and now former star running back Ezekiel Elliott had a little fun with a defensive stat graphic centered around the Michigan program.
First, the background.
Pro Football Focus dug up some stats on defensive backs and shared it to Twitter. We’ve got it for you below, but the point was to highlight Big Ten defensive backs with the lowest completion percentage since 2014 by defensive backs.
As you can see below, Michigan is well represented with all spots in the top five locked in. And while we have no way of verifying what PFF came up with without going through all the video and passing attempts against all the Big Ten defensive backs for five years, they are generally spot on with these sorts of things.
So, we’ll trust it for now.
But Zeke would have none of it. He couldn’t help himself because trolling Michigan is a lot like a reflex reaction if you play or cheer for Ohio State. It’s become second nature, habit, and sometimes even a hobby.
The Cowboys’ star running back couldn’t help but point out a flaw in the methodology used to calculate the completion percentage, pointing out that there’s no need to throw the ball when the TTUN defense is giving up a slew of yards on the ground.
Zeke himself can back this up a bit. He himself rushed for 121 yards on the ground in 2014, then backed it up with 214 more in 2015. What about Ohio State as a team through some of those years? Here are the rushing yards on the ground for Ohio State against TTUN ever since Elliott became the No. 1 option for two years, through the past season.
2014 – 233 yards
2015 – 369 yards
2016 – 206 yards
2017 – 226 yards
2018 – 171 yards
2019 – 264 yards
Okay, it’s clear that Elliott was embellishing just a wee-bit, but that’s still some significant yards to yield to your arch-rival and one of the main reasons why Ohio State has won every single one of those matchups.
Keep up the good fight Zeke.
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