The #5-ranked Ohio State football team beat Iowa 31-14 Saturday at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City. The Buckeyes scored at least a touchdown in each quarter and held the Hawkeye offense to just 238 total yards, a scant 38 yards running the football. Here are our three takeaways from Saturday’s game:

1.    It’s hard to talk about the Buckeyes without mentioning Jeremiah Smith as our first takeaway. Well, here we go again. The leading Heisman candidate, in our humble opinion, had another one of those days. He made 11 catches for 206 yards and two touchdowns. Smith set the new mark for OSU career receiving touchdowns with his second score, passing Chris Olave, who had 35. With his 10th catch, the junior broke the career record for receptions previously held by Emeka Egbuka, who grabbed 205.

2.   The Ohio State defense kept the Hawkeye running game to under two yards a carry (21 attempts for 39 yards – average of 1.9 yards/attempt). Linebacker Payton Pierce led the Buckeyes with six tackles and three solo stops. Defensive ends Kenyatta Jackson Jr. and Qua Russaw each had a sack in the game. On Jackson’s sack, which occurred on the Hawkeyes’ third play from scrimmage, he stripped the ball from Iowa quarterback Hank Brown and the Bucks recovered. That led to the OSU’s first score.

3.   The Buckeyes’ kicker, Connor Hawkins, missed one of his two field goal attempts on the afternoon, but made all four extra-point tries. The field goal he converted on was from 28 yards out, while the miss was from 40 yards. That makes two unsuccessful tries this season for Hawkins, who missed from 45 yards at Texas. He is 1-for-3 from 40-49 yards so far. Head coach Ryan Day said that Hawkins was not solely to blame for the Texas miscue, but is this a trend worth noting?