STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — College football as a sport begins with a coin toss and somehow gets even more random from there, a lovable quirk illustrated in color as Ohio State broke Penn State’s heart, 27-26, in a game it shouldn’t have won but did anyway.

The Buckeyes trailed 13-0 in the second quarter before a touchdown just before halftime cut the Nittany Lions’ lead to 13-7 and briefly shifted momentum into the Buckeyes’ corner. Ohio State faced fourth-quarter deficits of 20-14 and then 26-14, with the Buckeyes silenced into a two-possession deficit by Penn State quarterback Trace McSorley’s brilliance, which should vault the senior deep into the Heisman Trophy conversation.

McSorley set a Penn State single-game record for total offense at 461 yards, with 286 coming through the air and another 175 on the ground. Penn State as a whole outgained the Buckeyes by 103 yards. The Nittany Lions averaged two additional yards per pass attempt than the Buckeyes, along with an added yard and a half per carry.

Ohio State committed 10 penalties for 105 penalty yards. The offense converted just four of its 17 third-down attempts. The same offense that steamrolled over hapless Oregon State and woebegone Rutgers learned not long into the first half that Penn State was many things but not Oregon State or Rutgers.

“The first half was awful in a lot of ways,” said Ohio State coach Urban Meyer. “The penalties, that’s awful. We’ve got to get that fixed, because usually you don’t win a game like that.”

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This was a game Penn State had almost no business losing. The Nittany Lions had the home environment in their favor. They had the best player on the field, McSorley, who willed the offense into some semblance of cohesion in the second half. They had a 12-point lead with eight minutes left and all of the momentum, only they coughed it up by allowing Ohio State to wrestle away the established pace of play. This was a game Penn State lost just as much as it was a game that Ohio State won, if not more so.

“It wasn’t pretty,” said Ohio State quarterback Dwayne Haskins, “pretty much the whole game.”

All the peripherals — the box score, the flow of the game, the two-possession edge in the fourth quarter — called Penn State a better team than Ohio State, if only on this one night. The scoreboard said otherwise, which is why Ohio State now finds itself in the driver’s seat in the Big Ten Conference. But the scoreboard can’t cover up the fact that Ohio State isn’t ready for a stiffer test than the one the Nittany Lions presented on Saturday.

Penn State is a very good team. Postgame, an impassioned James Franklin put it perfectly: Penn State is a great program and Ohio State an elite one. As a team, however, the Buckeyes are one point better than the Nittany Lions. Being one point better than Penn State doesn’t inspire tremendous confidence in the Buckeyes’ end goal when you consider the eventual competition.

Ohio State wants to win a national championship, as this program always does, and in certain ways is perfectly equipped to do so. Even without a healthy Nick Bosa, the All-America end out indefinitely with an injury, the defensive line ranks among the best in college football. A maligned receiver corps has turned into an asset. There is speed and athleticism to burn at the offensive skill positions and in the defensive backfield. In Haskins, the Buckeyes have chanced upon another game-changing talent at the position.

That this program has such grand goals means that it doesn’t compare itself to Penn State — as Franklin said, the Nittany Lions aren’t yet in that class. Ohio State compares itself to Alabama. At present, the comparison doesn’t reflect well on the Buckeyes. That nearly every team pales in comparison to the Crimson Tide isn’t an excuse.

Asked in what areas he feels his team has yet to tap into its full potential, Meyer said “to put a big circle around the first half.”

“Everything,” he said. “We gave up a big hit, a 95-yard touchdown or something. The biggest thing is just offensively, ineptitude. Not blocking guys. Not executing.”

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In meetings with the two Power Five opponents on their schedule with a pulse, Penn State and TCU, the Buckeyes are allowing a whisper over 500 yards per game and 6.6 yards per play. Each of those games has seen the Buckeyes’ defense allow at least one play from scrimmage of 90 or more yards. For all of Saturday’s first half and much of the second, Penn State’s attacking defense made Haskins look less like one of college football’s rising stars and more like what he is — a redshirt sophomore just now putting the finishing touches on his first month as the starting quarterback.

“It was tough sledding there for a little while,” said Ohio State offensive coordinator Ryan Day. “It was a learning game for the whole offense and for (Haskins).”

There are mitigating factors at play. For one, Ohio State’s occasional sluggishness might be a byproduct of the chaos surrounding this program, which sent Meyer into a three-game coaching hiatus and altered the fragile makeup of a team reloading behind a new cast of contributors on both sides of the ball.

That the offense didn’t click for a good portion of Saturday’s win might be due to a handful of factors: Penn State’s hostile crowd, the Nittany Lions’ defensive scheme and Haskins’ inexperience. That the defense continued to juggle stinginess with porousness might be a result of one factor in particular — that would be McSorley, who put on a show that even in defeat should linger in Penn State’s history.

There are two takeaways from Saturday night, and while they may seem contradictory they’re not mutually exclusive. The first is that Ohio State is an extremely good team and one that may get even better as October turns to November, after a four-game stretch against Big Ten also-rans that’ll almost certainly leave the Buckeyes unbeaten midway into November.

“We’re really not even at our full potential yet,” said junior defensive tackle Davon Hamilton. “That’s how I feel. We let some plays go that shouldn’t’ve been let go. Just pure, small mistakes, really. We just have so much more potential to show. People don’t even know the real Ohio State Buckeyes, even after this game.”

The second is this: Ohio State needs to get better, needs to meet its full potential, if not against Penn State then before the last week of December. As the heart of conference play begins, this looks like a team good enough to win the Big Ten and reach a College Football Playoff national semifinal. That’s pretty good. But barring improvement, that’s where the Buckeyes’ season will end.