Buckeye Outpost

Well, the season is officially over for most Buckeye fans.  We still have the Big11 to play for and it somehow seems hollow.  Most people thought we would reload like USC or Florida does and the way the Defense was playing early on, it appeared to be so.  After last weekends complete and utter collapse, its now a Rebuilding cause for next year.  If Gibson (big if) stays, we'll have 18 returning starters next year and may be back in the hunt.

We'll start with the biggest surprise, the defense didn't come to play.  Hand it to Purdue, they had a quarterback who could throw on the run and they spread the offense out.  Our defense just looke tired and couldn't close on the Purdue play makers.   Make no mistake, every remaining foe will try to do the same thing to us and some might suceed.

The offensive line might have well not even taking the field, they were letting everything get by them.  Our running game never really got off the ground (Purdue was daring us to pass) and Pryor made some bad decisions.  Until Pryor can learn to throw and make good choices, we will face this against every team we play.  Every ome thought we were getting an improved version of Troy Smith and so far all we got is another Steve Bellisari. 

Tressel's refusal to bench Pryor for even a series and unwillingness to say anything negative about Pryor suggests that kid gloves need to be used when addressing him.  He's more a prima dona than a player and that is apparent.  We can't light a fire under him to motivate and have to wait for him to develop.  The biggest question is do we have the patience and the answer is we have to.  Tressel has thrown his lot with this kid and we have to take it for the next 2 years.   He does have the potential to be something special and we have to wait for it.

The offensive line is as much to blame as Pryor is for our 92/119 offensive ranking.  Adams and Shugarts don't appear to have a grasp on the basics of blocking.  I'm tired of ranting about how Bollman needs to go, but whatever he is teaching them isn't working and something has to change.  We are getting 4 star recruits every year on the Oline and have little to show for it. 

Finally, there is no chemistry or emotion on the offense.  I don't see Pryor as a leader (to much into himself) .  Theres no decision to suceed at any cost and we are not imrpoving (regressing actually) on offense,

There's too much to fix in order for us to have an offense which even resembles Northwestern's.

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Tags: Announcements by swjessen
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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.

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Tags: Announcements by swjessen
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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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