Buckeye Outpost

By far this was the best game the team played all year.   We had rhythm on offense and were dominant on defense.  I must say I was pleasantly surprised by our performance.   This by all appearances was the team we were supposed to have this year.
Pryor and Wells were impressive on offense.   They seemed to be in a better rhythm then when we saw them against Purdue.   The same play which burned us last year against Illinois seems to be our new bread and butter for Pryor/Wells combo.   Pryor has the option to hand the ball off to a cutting Wells or he can fake the opposite direction from Wells.   Pryor can then choose to run it himself or dump it to a short receiver.   It juked the MSU defense for most of the game.  I expect we'll see this against PSU.  Another encouraging sign happened early in the game when Wells reversed field and was running for a first down.   Pryor saw what he was doing and opted to block for him completing knocking the DB he was blocking on his back.   This kind of effort from a quarterback will go a long way with both sides of the ball and shows what type of player Pryor is.   I also have to mention the array of stiff arms that both Pryor and Wells displayed on Saturday.   I still don't think there's a defense that can stop these two (except of course what goes on in Terrelle's head).
The offense line seemed to finally be playing well together.   I had thought that Brewster was out for the game, but saw he had the start at center.   My rule of thumb is that I have to see something occur three times in a row for it to be legitimate, so we still have 2 more games to see if this is a trend or just a fluke.
The defense had another dominating performance.   Lauranitis was everywhere and played like the dominant player we expect him to be.   This was mainly due to the penetration the D line was able to get in the backfield.   Again, the jury is still out on the D line.   One more solid performance and we can say things are finally clicking for this group.   Jenkins and Chekwa had excellent games as well.  I just hope that Chekwa is back for next week's matchup.
PSU's strength is both of their lines and their receiving corp.   They just wear teams down by the second half and dominat in the final 2 quarters.   We always match up well with PSU and this year will be no exception.   I feel that the last 2 years the main difference was quarterback play.   We could always count on Morelli to do something incredibly stupid to help us win the game.   This year we don't have that luxury.   Daryll Clark is a smart QB and rarely makes mistakes.   At the same time, I don't think PSU has seen a strong defense all year, so pressuring Clark is key to victory here.   Their receiving corp is very fast, so we'll have our hands full guarding them.   Again, this game comes down to the trenches.   Whichever team controls the trenches, will win this game. 
I am really hoping that a trend is established in this game on both defense and offense which will propel us for the rest of the year.

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