Here's another interesting SB Nation article, on 5 factors important in winning. We've heard about many of them before, but the article has some interesting takes on them:

1. Explosive plays
2. Efficiency (an efficient play gets half the needed yards on first down, 70% of it on 3rd down, all of it on 3rd or 4th down)
3. Field position
4. Finishing drives (he likes looking at points per opportunity inside the 40, rather than red-zone)
5. Turnovers

The factors are also interconnected. If you are efficient, you will finish your drives. If you are explosive, you will also finish them, just much more quickly. If you have turnovers, you won't be finishing your drives.

Ohio did have a lot of explosive plays last year, and pretty good in turnovers. For them I think the problem was miserable efficiency, which in turn led to less points per opportunity. The defense also had issues. They gave up far too many explosive plays, and they allowed foes to be far too efficient.

It wasn't just efficiency on first down that was the problem. I know from the line stats we just saw that Ohio's efficiency on 3rd and short was very low. I don't have stats for it, but I think Ohio's efficiency has been reasonable the last few years, and last year was more of an anomaly.

BTW, you have to also look at the defense, and I personally think that 70-80% of the problem last year was on defense. I suspect that if we had stats, we'd find that last year Ohio gave up far more explosive plays than they have in most years, and was less efficient, too.  It just seemed like the defensive line, while getting a lot of sacks, wasn't plugging things up, and the linebackers weren't making the plays to stop drives.