Buckeye Outpost

Well folks, it wasn't pretty by any means. From the get go, we were in trouble and before you knew it we were down 21-0 and reeling from the beating we were taken by UW. Herein lies the problem with Tressel ball, it isn't designed to overcome huge deficits. It's predicated on defense and special teams and we had neither last Saturday.

I was surprised by 2 items: how poorly the defense played and how well the offensive line run blocked. You've heard me harping all year about our lack of a push off the offensive line. It appeared that the Oline finally received the memo and started to make some holes. Of course, we didn't establish this until the second half and we had to abandon it to try and score some points.

The inability to score on our two opportunities in the first half doomed us. If you intercept a pass in the opponents territory and you are down by 3 scores, you have to capitalize on it. that right there probably sealed the game for us.

The defense flat out got whipped by Wisconsin. They were knocking our highly rated Dline on their collective asses. If you think about it, they have neither played or practiced against an Oline that can run block. Day in and day out they face our Oline which can only pass block. This causes complacency. Our Dline just was in no way prepared to handle this onslaught.

Any chance of a National Championship showing are gone. The best we can hope for is a Big 10 title at this point. We have to wait and see how things fall with MSU, Iowa and Wisconsin. Based on what we've seen, we were never a number 1 team to begin.

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If you had asked me to predict the outcome of last weeks game, I would have not said it would be a dominating performance.  I would have believed a tight game with either team squeaking out a win.  The fact that we dominated PSU on both sides of the ball was shocking (and most welcome) to say the least!

One has got to ask, who is this offensive line which showed and dominated a PSU Dline with 5-6 NFL caliber players?  More importantly, where has this line been all year and will the come back to play again this year?  Pryor also showed restraint in his decision making and didn't put us in danger to lose the game.

Heyward treated the PSU Oline like ragdolls for the entire game.  They couldn't get any rhythm established.  The secondary (especially Chekwa) held everyone in place. 

Really there are no complaints about this outstanding effort.  The only issues come after the game.  Pryor was a little too smug in the post game interview.  Sure a little cockiness is good in a QB, but a) he hasn't earned it and b) he is way too full of himself.  We won the game partly because he played within himself and partly because there wasn't tremendous pressure on him the whole game.  Before we get carried away with ourselves, let us remember we have been way too inconsistent on offense to allow ourselves to think we have arrived.  Just like in the Purdue game, we can have ups and downs through the course of the season.  Last time I checked, Iowa still has their defense intact and 4 turnovers from one cocky QB could end another day for us.  In addition, UM isn't a cake walk, as it is a rivalry game and will be desperation for RichRod who will be trying to save his job.

Sure, we may have gotten back on the track to our winning ways, but the verdict is still out whether we have twisted the Ginn...

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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...

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Tags: Announcements by swjessen
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Yes folks you've seen the heading correctly, the Buckeyes are Champions again! Crown them now!   We are the MAC Champions!   There is no other word to describe the performance we saw on Saturday except pathetic.   I would excuse this performance if this was the first game of the year, but we looked real good last week against Youngstown State.   I am reluctantly given into the National Consensus that the Big 10 is nothing but a glorified version of the MAC.   Living in Texas, I am constantly bombarded with our lack of performance in the Big games.   How do we contribute the cause for this collapse?

Both the offensive and defensive lines didn't show up to play.   In the last 2 National Championship games you can contribute our loses to poor perfomances by the OLine in particular.   They looked slow and unprepared for each of these games.   I somehow convinced myself that this year would be different.   We would work in the offseason to improve speed and strength.   It was like I awoke form a long sleep last Saturday and found myself thinking the same thing I thought for the last 2 January's...   Our OLine didn't start to block it seemed until late in the 3rd quarter.   With this kind of perfomance, I'd be inclined to let Shugarts, Brewster and Adams start getting their reps.   These guys were highly recruited and our the future of our OLine.   Anything has to be better then the uninspired play of these guys.  In addition, we have lost how many defensive coordinators since Tressel took over?   I've lost count, but we have had the same Offensive coordinator/ OLine coach since day 1, Jim Bollman.   I have been uninspired by any of the OLine we've had in the Tressel era.  Guys we are supposed to be playing cupcakes this time of year, not eating them.

The DLine didn't help any either.   We weren't getting any penetration into the pocket and we didn't collapse the pocket.  Instead there were many plays were Boo was able to get outside of the pocket and outrun our ends.   Let's remember this guy was the backup QB for Ohio, not the starter.  We have so many problems with a spread offense, it is scary.  By the way, the team up North just went to a spread offense.   We better get ready to see this the rest of the year because it seems to be a blueprint for victory against our Defense.   There were also many mis-tackles across the board on the Defensive side of things.  The play just looked unispired at times.

What us wrong with the running game (besides the obvious lack of effort from the OLine)?   I thought prior to the beginning of the season that we were finally 4 deep at running back.   We look like we are woefully one deep and he's got a sprained toe.   These other RBs were all highly recruited and would allegedly be starters on any other team in the country.   I realize Saine is still coming back from a hamstring pull (and he was moving tacklers), but the other backs were unimpressive.   Maurice Wells still falls down whenever someone is close to touching him.   The problem is he doesn't have any finesse to make up for it.   Herron looks like he can move some piles, but I haven't seen too much more out of him in the moves department.  

This brings us to Boeckman.   He was supposed to be improved in the "let's not throw it deep every time department."  I really saw a regression to the old "look and throw deep"  attitude he had.   If all of our receivers were covered on all those pass plays then we are in loads of trouble.  The USC DBs are even better than our DBs.   I really wish Boeckman would check down and get some throws to our TEs.  

There was really one bright spot in this pathetic performance.   Ray Small had a great game.   He appears to finally getting out of Tressel's doghouse.   Ted Ginn Sr said that coming out of high school he thought Ray Small was just as fast as his son.   We haven't seen this yeat, but hopefully we will soon.   We desperately need a deep ball threat.  Robo and Hartline demonstrated again that they aren't barn burners.

I do have to question why none of the supposed team leaders have stepped up and taken responsibility for this loss.   Tressel has said that this year he is leaving the motivation up to the seniors on the team.   The only player to really step up and discuss his reaction is Hartline.  He also described the perfomance as pathetic.

I am expecting another embarrassment for us on Saturday night.   I am getting ready to assume the fetal position once again.  The USC Defense will be the best defense we see all year.  Based upon our performance last week you would have thought Ohio was the best D in the country.   The USC offense will also be the best we see all year.   I feel the only way for us to stand a chance is for the best 2 players on the field to play.   We need both Beanie Wells and Terrelle Pryor to play.  We need their explosiveness to beat SC.   I just don't see it happening.  I'll be watching and hoping for the best.

As an aside, I was watching the UF/UM game last Saturday night.   UF had the game in the bag with 3 minutes to go.   They were up by > 2 scores and Urban Meyer chose to try and score a touchdown and run up the score.   He ended up kicking a field goal, bu the point is it was unnecessary to score again.   I truly hope that what goes around comes around for Urban Meyer.

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