PISCATAWAY, N.J. -- For those who fell asleep in front of the TV on Saturday night, what lodged in your cortex wasn't one of those nonsensical dreams that bothers you all day, like your cat cooking breakfast you for you, your third-grade teacher and Iman Shumpert.

Rutgers actually is in the Big Ten. That's still real, and still boring.

The score from Ohio State's dalliance with the Scarlet Knights was 56-0, the score for the four-year conference history of Rutgers vs. Ohio State now at 219-24. If teams could score negative points in a game, the Rutgers' four-year total might have dropped back to zero Saturday.

But here's what happened at High Point Solutions Stadium.

The playoff push resumed.

Ohio State either always was or is once again a legitimate College Football Playoff contender. Bama is Bama and defending national champion Clemson may not have lost a step. Oklahoma isn't a rematch Ohio State should be angling for, and the Penn State game on Oct. 28 grows in magnitude every week.

But the Buckeyes belong in the pack and belong in the conversation. They belong there because the offense continues to mature and the defense continues to attack. It is not perfect, but watch USC lose to Washington State and injury-plagued Florida State vanish and Oklahoma State go down to TCU last week and understand perfection isn't happening many places outside of Tuscaloosa and Death Valley.

Oklahoma trailed Baylor late in the third quarter last week. Baylor is 0-5.

Given a fifth-year quarterback and a flash of a freshman running back and a defensive line filled with future high draft picks, Ohio State right next to Alabama and Clemson in the college football hierarchy would be preferable to fans.

That's not the case. But the Buckeyes are clearly in the next group, and when week two ends with Baker Mayfield plunging a stake into your Block O, you take this trajectory.

Ohio State is on the way back.

At 4-1 now, the Buckeyes entered the week ranked No. 11, but worry not about the rankings. If they run the table, they will make the playoff, because they will have earned it and the committee will appreciate them. If they lose one more, the playoff dream is over, but save your disappointment for if that comes.

It's an if, not a when.

An expansion of the passing game is what was needed and expected and it's what the Buckeyes provided. Understand the lack of talent among the Scarlet Knights, but don't let that erase what J.T. Barrett did. This was a conference game, and when an opponent like this presents itself, Ohio State must do what it did.

Dominate, but with a purpose. Not dominance for the sake of dominance.

Barrett was 14-of-22 for 275 yards. His yards per attempt, an important measure of passing competence, was 12.5 yards. Coming into the game, his yards per attempt were 8.1.

In the first four weeks, Barrett had completed two passes where the ball had traveled more than 20 yards in the air. Saturday, he hit three and his prettiest pass of the night, a 67-yard touchdown to Jonnie Dixon, was wiped out by a questionable pass interference call on Dixon on a moderate left arm pushoff. That one spiraled 45 yards in the air and nestled into Dixon's outstretched arms.

Barrett, after he saw the flag, was left momentarily slump-shouldered at midfield. It didn't count in the stats or on the scoreboard, but it let count in your heart. And let it count in his.

No, this wasn't a quality opponent, but you have to deal with what's in front of you. The only question in Piscataway was WHY IS RUTGERS IN THE BIG TEN? Maybe sometime in the next decade we'll stop shouting that every time these teams play. A year ago, after Ohio State's 58-0 in Columbus, I wrote Rutgers would never beat Ohio State ever, and the search was on this year for some length of time longer than ever.

But when Oklahoma knocks your feet out from under you so early in the season, the Saturdays that follow are never about the opposition. They are about you.

Ohio State knows where it is headed. That might be back to the playoff.