Ohio State's Ezekiel Elliott: "No Chance Of Me Coming Back Next Year"

So Ohio State really melted down fast, huh? After coming into the day looking like a likely playoff participant, against a hobbled Michigan State team, the Buckeyes shit the bed and let the Spartans hang 10 up on them in the fourth quarter to storm back and win. After the game it got worse, as Ezekiel Elliott was acutely critical of the team and the coaching staff, telling reporters he would not be returning for his Senior season:

He also expressed disbelief that he was only allowed 12 carries, before calling out the coaching staff for what he saw as a poor game plan:

It is sort of inexplicable that Elliott had so few carries. The weather today was dreadful, seemingly a recipe for a run-heavy attack. While the Buckeyes did run more than they passed, J.T. Barrett had 15 to Elliott’s 12.

Elliott had a lot to say:

“I’m disappointed in the play calling. I’m disappointed in the situations that we were put in, and I wish it all played out differently,” Elliott said. “It is very disappointing. In the one drive that we had where we kind of had some momentum after we scored on the strip-sack, the plays we ran, we ran a lot of gap schemes and we were gashing them. You guys saw that on that drive. We had a lot of momentum.

“Honestly, we didn’t see those plays for the rest of the game. Those plays weren’t called anymore. I asked for those plays to be called, and they weren’t. It just hurts. It hurts a lot because of how we lost. I feel like we just weren’t put in the right opportunity to win this game. We weren’t put in the right situations to win this game.”

Backup QB Cardale Jones also pretty much confirmed that he would also be leaving Columbus soon:

Elliott doubled down on his departure as well:

Ohio State has one more regular season game left, at Jim Harbaugh’s Michigan next week.

Photo via Getty