In my opinion, the wildcard will be injuries. Twice before Ohio has has good teams, and been crushed with injuries. The 2008 team was good enough to lead Ohio State going into the fourth quarter, but after crushing injuries, limped to a 4-8 finish. Eight of 22 starters, including some of their best players, were lost for the season that year, Michael Mitchell, Andrew Mooney, Theo Scott, Mitchell Morsillo, Julian Posey, Eric Kenkle, Garry Schussler, and Michael Brown. They also lost six backups for the season.
The 2012 team had it worse, losing nine of 22 Starters for the season: Ryan McGrath, Vince Carlotta, Landon Smith, Mario Dovell, Carl Jones, Neal Huynh, Tremayne Scott, Travis Carrie, and Xavier Hughes. They also lost ten backups that year.
The flip side is that there have also been years with very few injuries, and those teams have done even better than expected. In 2006, the only starter lost was Bush (LG), and that helped the team exceed expectations. In 2011, no players at all were lost for the season, according to my records. In 2016, there was only one season ending injury, OUellette.
Normal seems to be to lose 3-5 losses. You lose less than that, the team will exceed expectations. You lose more than that, it gets rough, and then you find out what sort of depth you have. I think Ohio has pretty good depth this year, but I prefer not to find out.