Big Ten Championship 2014: How Wisconsin Can Beat Ohio State

Talk surrounding the Big Ten Championship has started and ended with the starting quarterback for Ohio State, but for Wisconsin, the objective remains very much the same: finding a way to beat the Buckeyes and secure a Big Ten Championship.

How can the Badgers accomplish that feat? Well, the task looked a lot more difficult with Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett healthy, upright and on his way to a historic season with 34 touchdowns through the air and another 11 on the ground.

But to take a page straight out of the John Madden playbook, you win by scoring more points than the other team, and by that line of thinking, what the Badgers must do on offense hasn't changed.

The star player for Wisconsin is running back Melvin Gordon, a name that Big Ten country will be happy to soon see paired with an NFL team after what he's done to nearly every opponent over the past few seasons.

Gordon is averaging just a hair under eight yards per carry in 2014, and his worst game against a Big Ten opponent was rushing for 122 yards and three scores on Maryland. He has five games this season with over 200 yards on the ground, including three out of the last four games. Oh, and there's a 408-yard, four-score outing against Nebraska.

Nam Y. Huh/Associated Press

Needless to say, the Badgers can not only win by rushing the ball, it's the only way to secure a victory. Quarterbacks Joel Stave and Tanner McEvoy have combined to throw for just 1,774 yards with 13 touchdowns and 10 interceptions.

The impressive aspect of Wisconsin's offense is that even without balance, the Badgers have maintained an identity en route to a 10-2 record. Smashmouth football isn't just being physical and running the football, it's trampling all over teams even when they know what's coming.

Checking in with the Ohio State defense, you'll see a unit that ranks 40th against the run, allowing a modest 145 yards per game. However, the Buckeyes allowed over 200 yards on the ground to both Minnesota and Indiana. The Golden Gopher's David Cobb had 145 yards and three scores against Ohio State, and Tevin Coleman piled up 228 yards and three touchdowns.

Even in a win over Michigan State, the Buckeyes allowed Jeremy Langford to rush for 137 yards and three touchdowns. While Urban Meyer would love to see balance from his defense, he knows where the focus should be against the Badgers, via Austin Ward of ESPN.com:

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When you do devote so much time to pass defense and actually think from the back end first, at times you’ll give up some rush yards. What we want to do is be flexible enough to do both. But this is as good of a rushing team as there is in the country, so we have to devote some more personnel to stopping the run.

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It doesn't take a genius to work out the equation of what could happen when Ohio State faces the best running back in college football, so as we've become accustomed to seeing, the Badgers will run the ball early and often and see where it gets them on the scoreboard.

Moving to the other side of the ball is where things can get tricky. Barrett was a Heisman Trophy-caliber quarterback for the Buckeyes, and what we know of new starter Cardale Jones comes from high school game tape and stats (mostly) accumulated in garbage time.

On the season, Jones is 10-of-17 for 118 yards and a pair of scores, but he's also rushed for 206 yards on just 26 carries. He's 6'5", 250 pounds, so a way-too-early comparison to Cam Newton might be appropriate.

But as is the case with any new player under the spotlight for the first time, you've got to make him uncomfortable and keep him from doing what normally comes easiest, which is running ball.

Regardless of a player's passing ability at the high school level, college football is completely different in every way imaginable, so while Jones has been able to get his feet wet, he hasn't faced a defense that will get a week to game-plan for his strengths and weaknesses.

In short, Wisconsin needs to test his arm and force him to throw the ball down the field. Ohio State isn't likely to come out and throw the entire playbook out there, and the safe idea is to attempt to establish the run between Jones and Ezekiel Elliott with short passes mixed in.

If you ever wonder why coaches appear to be conservative earlier in games, it's because they're looking for the easiest possible route to victory. If running the football is working and you can score points without risking throwing the ball behind a new signal-caller, why would you try anything else?

The danger for the Badgers is that if the Buckeyes are indeed able to run the ball early on, it could spell major trouble. Barrett had some advice for Jones on how to approach the biggest game of his young career, via Austin Ward of ESPN.com:

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Don't try to do it all yourself. We've got a great offensive line; they've gotten better since Week 2. The offense as a whole, we've just gotten better offensively from Week 2. He doesn't have to do it all by himself. We've got a great group of receivers ... and we can hand it off to the running backs, so you don't have to win the game.

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The best-case scenario is stopping Jones and Elliott early, forcing Urban Meyer to look farther down on his call sheet and take some chances.

Taking chances is something you'd hope to avoid with a player who hasn't earned trust, and that's when the Badgers should have opportunities to force turnovers and create game-changing plays on defense.

Anyone pretending to have an elegant solution for how the Badgers can score on offense is lying: The answer has been and will continue to be Melvin Gordon running the football. He's the very best at what he does, and the style works well behind a dominant offensive line.

Coaches don't ask for advantages, but facing Jones at quarterback should be one of them if Wisconsin can crowd the line of scrimmage, make him uncomfortable and keep him confused about why guys aren't wide open like they were in high school.

The Buckeyes will have a similar game plan on defense, but the Badgers have proven they can beat opponents even when they gear up to stop the run. Ohio State hasn't had to face a defense without a tested signal-caller to keep it in check, and therein lies the key to a Wisconsin victory on Saturday night.