Well we survived a potential let down after last week's heart breaking loss.  This game provided just about everything we needed to help us feel better about the Buckeyes for this year.  Terrelle Pryor had some shaky decision making but in the end had the type of game we were hoping to see every week.  The Defense was spectacular and actually made some stops when it mattered.  Unfortunately, the running game isn't there again this year.

I'll start with the Defense, since that is the easiest to cover.   They were flying all over the place and really dominated a very good Toledo offense.  The Toledo QB couldn't get any rhythm and their running game was nonexistent.   Overall, I've been really impressed with the play of our corners over the last few games.  They performed much better then I expected.  The D line is ferocious this year and I retract any earlier comments about them being a weakness.

It's broken record time.  Our offensive line is yet again offensive.  We have let inferior teams D line push us around.  We have no game up the middle and we lack a decent running back to compensate for this atrocity.  This seems to be a staple for any Tressel team I can think of in years past.  The only logical solution is to lose Bollman.   This guy is worthless and Tress has to get rid of him.  We have recruited some of the best O linemen in the country the last few years and have nothing to show for it.    There is no reason why we shoiuld be performing so poorly on offense other then we do not have a good ground attack and it starts at the the point of attack.  Even supposedly revamped this year and leaner and meaner we seem to be same old same old.

Pryor seemed shaky in his decision making until he finally tucked it and ran it for 44 yards in the 3rd quarter.  I think that really enabled him to take control of the offense and make better decisions.  This game had to be a confidence builder for him and hopefully he can blossom from it.   I still think he is thinking too much and needs to just relax.

Bottom line is we will not win any championships until we have a balanced offense.  Pryor has shown he can not shoulder the responsibility for winning games for us.  We are basically a one dimensional team with some "X" dimension sprinkled in.  We can pass the ball and have that Pryor "X" dimension for when things breakdown.  Until we can establish a running attack which starts with the O line, we will be beatable by teams with disciplined defenses because they just need to shut Pryor down and get in his head.    Unfortunately, I will probably be cutting and pasting this last paragraph for each of my posts for the rest of the year.  In fact I've probably already been doing this as this is a broken record.

Illinois always gives us fits and as long as Ben  and Juice are healthy we could be in for a long day on Saturday.  Illinois had a bye week, so they'll be ready to give us something special.  Hopefully the Troy Smith version of Pryor shows up and not the Steve Bellisari version.

Technorati Tags: 3rd Quarter, Array, Atrocity, Buckeyes, Confidence Builder, Control, D Line, Decisions, Games, Ground Attack, Heart, Linemen, Logical Solution, Offensive Line, Qb, Record Time, Rhythm, Running Game, Staple

I honestly thought total annihilation was in store for us last week and was very surprised by how close the game was.  That said, we had ample opportunity to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and were unable to capitalize on them!  Originally, I wanted to cite both Pryor and Tressel as the main culprits in this loss, and now believe it was a team loss.

No matter how much you hate Tress' conservative ball control and field position chess match, it's the pill we will have to swallow as long as he is our coach.  We can second guess him all we want, but the bottom line is that the offense didn't execute as he intended.  Ohio State football has been about 3 yards and a cloud of dust for as long as I can remember.  When we failed to even get a 4th and 2 against Navy a few weeks ago that should have been a sign that we have major issues again with the running game.  All the juggling of O'line is an indication that we really don't have strong O'linemen  and we have to make do with what we have.  In all honesty, the O'line (revamped or not) isn't any better than what we've been forced to swallow the last 3 years.  In neither of these games did we create holes for our RB's or move opposing D'lines.  Bollman has to take a lot of the blame for this and really needs to go, but again our players are not executing either.  Something desperately needs to change here or we will never get back to our winning ways.  The only Tressel call I don't get, is why we don't use Pryor on a 4th and short situation, he's 6'6" and weighs 260 lbs, he should be able to get us a short yardage situation easily.

Pryor looked to me like he was thinking way too much.  His hesitation to act really cost us the game.  Last year I was complaining about him looking to run first before checking down and this year it's just the opposite.  If he has improved in the passing game, it hasn't shown because his decision making is horrible at this stage.  This is the second week in a row that Pryor has been outplayed by the opposing teams supposedly inferior QB.  Oh and don't be fooled by UM's Forcier, he didn't play a real defense yet and I expect him to look worse in the near future. I also feel Pryor doesn't forget his mistakes, he dwells on them during the game and it effects the rest of his play.  He is unfortunately a work in progress.

The defense was the biggest surprise of the night.  The line held up for most of the game and really gave it to the vaunted USC O'line.  The corner coverage was outstanding and LB play was decent.  Yet again, though, we found someway to give up 2 big drives at the end of each half.   This is a disturbing trend which has continued in every big game.  In the Tressel ball control system, the defense has to be able to make stops when it counts.  That is critical to the success of the system.  Somehow, the defense can't put an end to the game when we really need to do it.  The defense is as much to blame for the loss as the offense. 

Tressel ain't going anywhere and his system will work against a lot of teams.  He plays not to lose.  He plays the percentages and tries not to take risks.  This only works when the team executes his plays that he calls and minimizes mistakes.  When we play a team like USC with offensive firepower and the "play to win" attitude it will give his system some fits.  Pryor's poor decision making, the lack of any offensive line push and a "let us down" when it counts defense has created this problem for us.  The problem really is that we've been talking about the same issues for the most part the last 5 years and it hasn't changed.

Toledo will give us fits on offense this week, but their defense is horrid.   Now is a good time to change our losing ways.  Pryor gets some exciting plays on offense, the line actually creates a big hole that a mack truck could drive through and the defense makes a stop when it counts against a potent offense.  That would be the makings of the perfect storm for the buckeyes.  Hopefully, we'll see it for a change.

Technorati Tags: Ample Opportunity, Bollman, Bottom Line, Chess, Cloud Of Dust, Culprits, Decision Making, Field Position, Hesitation, Honesty, Jaws, Linemen, Ohio State Football, Passing Game, Rb, Running Game, Total Annihilation, Tressel, Unexpected Occurrences, Winning Ways

As a surprise treat last weekend, I took my family to Yogurtville.  You get to fix your own frozen yogurt with toppings all at a set price per ounce.  It was great, my kids had a field day.   After sampling all the flavors of yogurt, I went with my mainstay, vanilla.  I added minimal amounts of toppings, cause I like the vanilla yogurt.  My oldest daughter on the other hand, went the chocolate route and proceeded to put just about every topping possible. 

I like vanilla as my yogurt flavor, not my football teams offensive scheme!  The play calling was so predictable, even the announcers were telling you what OSU was going to do on each play.  This appears to be the sad trend in OSU offense and we really have no one to blame except Tressel.  Oh yeah, we finally threw it to the tight ends (which made me drop my drink since I haven't seen that since Cooper days) and we had an option pitch to the running backs and some run to the first down markers and stop passes, and it was all so predictable.  The O line was supposed to be revamped, but the Navy undersized Dline was pushing them around.  We should have been able to run the ball all day and we looked really bad up the middle.  If this is what we should expect the rest of the year (and based on past experience it is), we won't be in the top 25 by the end of the season.  I hate to say it, but Tressel's downfall may be his uncompromising loyalty to his staff.  Bollman has proven time and time again that he isn't a decent Oline coach or asst coach to boot.  If Tressel keeps this up, he'll be coaching somewhere else next year. We desperately need to add some toppings to this vanilla or they'll be some serious beat downs on us this year.

As alluded to earlier this year (see spring ball posting), our Dbacks couldn't cover anyone.  We are in for a lot of trouble the rest of the year if this is the case.  Again our Dline couldn't move the Navy Oline (with the exception of Gibson who looks like a beast).  The linebackers were average at best in this game as well.   In a nutshell, our defense is in rebuilding mode (not reloading). 

Finally, Terrelle Pryor didn't impress me as being much better than he was at the end of last year.  He was flat out outplayed by the Navy QB who had less to work with then Pryor did.  The only noticeable improvement was that he looked to pass first then run. 

This upcoming week will define our season and I'mafraid we are up for an historic home loss, the worse in OSU history.  I can just see Pete Carrolls prep for the week, it'll go something like this:

"On offense, we need to double team Gibson.  Uhh.. that should do it."

"On defense, we need to place a middle linebacker as spy on Pryor.  Oh and on third and long we'll need to double team Sanzenbacher."

Folks, it'll be that simple for USC.  You look at every category and they have someone in the top 5 except for QB.  USC doesn't need Barkley to do a thing cause they'll be able to run it down our throat the whole game.   Their whole Oline is back and so is our Dline and we know what happened last year!  To boot, we don't have the same LB's as last year or even a decent DB.  This is going to be ugly.

On offense, this game will define Pryor's entire college career.  The pressure is solely on him to perform for this game as he really is the only guy on the field (maybe Gibson) who can play with these guys.  Based upon past performances, I don't think he'll be able to deliver.  We have an unproven receiving corp (who apparently couldn't get open deep against Navy, cause I don't recall any long passes) and our backs seemed ineffective in running the ball.  This is going to be ugly.

There is still a very tiny part of me that believes Tressel was holding back the true offense and it would be chocolate frozen yogurt with all the fixings just busting with pizazz.  Unfortunately I've been burned on this too many times and know I have to eat the vanilla frozen yogurt and like it...

Technorati Tags: Beas, Beat Downs, Bollman, Dbacks, Dline, Downfall, Flavors, Football Teams, Frozen Yogurt, Mainstay, Minimal Amounts, Offensive Scheme, Oline, Ounce, Running Backs, Sad Trend, Serious Beat, Spring Ball, Tight Ends, Tressel, Vanilla Yogurt

This is by far the best week of the year!   We've been patiently waiting and waiting for what seems like eons for the football season to finally begin.   In our minds are thoughts of winning big games, winning the conference and winning the natty!  We all rationalize that this will be our year and things will be different and better.  I even convinced myself that we would be better this year.

Well, I am starting to already burst my bubble with reality.  I really think we'll be fortunate to win the Big 11 this year and keep that streak alive.   When you start looking at things on paper, it sobers you up real fast.   Sure everyone in the country is talking about Terrelle Pryor and his great potential, but theres the rub, he's an unproven commodity and no one is talking about anyone else on the team.  In a nutshell the whole team is an unproven commodity.  Until we actually see Pryor in the big game, we won't know for sure if he is it.  There are too many holes to fill the void which is left from last year's team.

Last year, it was clear that our greatest weakness' were the Lines.  This year everyone is saying the strength of our team is the defensive line.   Wait a second here, that was the weakness last year?!? Here's the paradox, if our strength this year was last year's great weakness, we could be in lots of trouble! 

Our O-line is supposed to be quicker and leaner with a complete overall from last year's unit.   You take the core of that excellent recruiting class last year and add the Michigan xfer Boren into the mix and we are revamped, but not a unit which has played together a long time.   With all the mixing around this spring and the injuries this camp, you need to be worried about how this gels together.

Granted Beanie Wells was a killer when he was healthy, but that was only 50% of the time, so we already have some experience in having to play without Beanie.   Herron and Saine looked good in the Spring and throw in Freshman Berry and we are alright at RB.   Unfortunately these guys are all the same type of runner, so there isn't going to be a change of pace.

Who will step up at WR is the biggest question on offense.  We have the incredibly skilled, but head case WR in Small.   He makes you say O my gosh what a play in the same breath as what a knucklehead.  Duron Carter has come in as a freshman and appears to be the real deal.   We just have to see how Washington, Thomas, Sanzenbacher and Posey perform.

We supposedly will be able to reload at linebacker, but there are really big shoes to fill and there may still be the same problems for our LBs this year as last year in that the Dline (our strength)  can't stop the run or rush the passer.

Safeties should be strong but you have to worry about the corners.  Chekwa makes me nervous as our top DB.

Navy has all the makings of a trap game.   Their offense is so different then anyone elses, it's the first game of the season and our biggest game of the year is the following weekend.   I expect a close game well into the third quarter with both the offense and defense looking bad until our dpeth just wears out Navy.   This will be a typical Tressel lead first game back with a lot of rust being shaken off.   The only question is whether we can shake it off quick enough.

I honestky think we are in for a rebuilding type year.  USC will most likely give us one of our worse home losses in history.  Both Penn State and Illinois may very will add to our misery forcing us to play in the Capital One Bowl if we are lucky.   As always, I hope I am wrong and will gladly take any abuse for being a doubter.   I am just happy to have football back!   Go Bucks!

Technorati Tags: Big Game, Big Games, Boren, Commodity, Defensive Line, Dose Of Reality, Eons, Football Season, Gels, Great Potential, Greatest Weakness, Herron, Holes, Long Time, Lots Of Trouble, Nutshell, Paradox, Recruiting, Terrelle Pryor, Xfer