Halloween was last Saturday night and happened under a full moon, but not even that could fully explain the strange happenings in Columbus during the OSU game. New Mexico State (NMS) proved to be valiant in their effort and worthy of their $850,000 appearance fee. Worthy enough for Coach Tressel’s staff to break open our bag of tricks for the first time all season!!!
While NMS only had 2 first downs and 63 total yards of offense, they somehow managed to hold the ball for 26.5 minutes! OSU went for 559 in total offense and the equipment manager had to order additional Buckeye leaves for all of this week’s participants.
As expected, this contest was over early, although the offensive productivity in the first quarter was uneven. The defense was dominant and easily managed the shutout. Terrelle actually got a chance to watch the game, Bausermann showed me a glimpse of something I’d like to see down the stretch run (ability to throw the fade route with precision) and a little creativity with the offensive play calling. My brother-in-law was incredulous his assessment of using the gadget plays against this team, “Why do we show this now and not save it for next week?”. Elementary, my dear Ramon.
Clearly my blog is read regularly in the Woody Hayes complex and used in game planning. As you know from last week’s post, I successfully predicted that we would see a few exotic pages out of the playbook. With all due respect, the onside kick had nothing to do with New Mexico State’s tendencies as it did with trying to leverage our return game in the coming weeks. It was a thing of beauty, Coach JT on the edge. Devier Posey’s touchdown pass to Sanzenbacher was the prettiest passing touchdown we’ve had all year. If Sanzenbacher doesn’t make the catch, nobody does. Don’t you have to think about the Wildcat formation, a little bit ????
While I will restrain myself to point out that this new found friskiness with the offensive playbook ”>could’ve served us quite nicely in West Lafayette, I am encouraged for a number of reasons. With Pettrey being hurt and almost certainly a scratch for Happy Valley, Tressel Ball is DEAD ON ARRIVAL this weekend. No way on Woody’s green turf does Tressel give a 26 year old 3rd teamer or 2nd string kicker get the ball at crunch time. JT is cool, but not crazy.
He may actually have to channel his inner Steve Spurrier and try to score early and often, because of the limited field goal kicking capabilities. Should we be able to stake ourselves to 14 point lead in the second half, the defense can be a little more aggressive and then we lean on the regular punter Thoma. There is absolutely no scoring decision on attempts from 47 yards out, unless it is the potential game winner. In this case, the “field position” strategy has to be a directional punt or go for it on 4th and 2 from the 32 yard line.
In this hypothetical situation, there are 3 formations that I would like to see to the Buckeyes attack Penn State with and break our conservative tendencies. The speed option out of the I, is my first choice. If you have an XBox 360 and NCAA 2010 you know how lethal that play can be with Terrelle. For something completely different … (and keep in mind, my theorhetical situation is a long 2 yards) , Joe Bauserman out of the shotgun and empty set. He will not take a sack, make a good throw and I’m not sure the Nittany Lions have enough DBs to match up effectively (I like Small vs their nickel\dime back in man to man coverage). Finally, a backside play to Ballard is a basic play off of a rollout that we have not tried to run all year. My sense is that we will see it this week or next against Iowa.
The biggest reason to worry about Penn State is not as much about Darryl Clark, as it is about the PSU offensive line. They look like slightly more athletic clones of a team we faced a few weeks ago, Wisconsin. The biggest difference is they protect for a potent passing scheme. Although Penn State’s offense has been high octane (429 yds \game), they could come out with a ball control game plan and challenge our interior defense. Blending the power run, with short passes to the outside and 1 or 2 shots down the field to control the clock could prove to be a toxic mixture for our offensive poise. OSU has not had any experience in successfully playing from behind late in the game.
PREDICTION: Ohio State 24, Penn State 20
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Tags: commentary, OSU Alumni blog, OSU Football, sports humor
This entry was posted on November 3, 2009 at 1:22 am and is filed under SPORTS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Buckeye Breakdown 9
Halloween was last Saturday night and happened under a full moon, but not even that could fully explain the strange happenings in Columbus during the OSU game. New Mexico State (NMS) proved to be valiant in their effort and worthy of their $850,000 appearance fee. Worthy enough for Coach Tressel’s staff to break open our bag of tricks for the first time all season!!!
While NMS only had 2 first downs and 63 total yards of offense, they somehow managed to hold the ball for 26.5 minutes! OSU went for 559 in total offense and the equipment manager had to order additional Buckeye leaves for all of this week’s participants.
As expected, this contest was over early, although the offensive productivity in the first quarter was uneven. The defense was dominant and easily managed the shutout. Terrelle actually got a chance to watch the game, Bausermann showed me a glimpse of something I’d like to see down the stretch run (ability to throw the fade route with precision) and a little creativity with the offensive play calling. My brother-in-law was incredulous his assessment of using the gadget plays against this team, “Why do we show this now and not save it for next week?”. Elementary, my dear Ramon.
Clearly my blog is read regularly in the Woody Hayes complex and used in game planning. As you know from last week’s post, I successfully predicted that we would see a few exotic pages out of the playbook. With all due respect, the onside kick had nothing to do with New Mexico State’s tendencies as it did with trying to leverage our return game in the coming weeks. It was a thing of beauty, Coach JT on the edge. Devier Posey’s touchdown pass to Sanzenbacher was the prettiest passing touchdown we’ve had all year. If Sanzenbacher doesn’t make the catch, nobody does. Don’t you have to think about the Wildcat formation, a little bit ????
While I will restrain myself to point out that this new found friskiness with the offensive playbook ”>could’ve served us quite nicely in West Lafayette, I am encouraged for a number of reasons. With Pettrey being hurt and almost certainly a scratch for Happy Valley, Tressel Ball is DEAD ON ARRIVAL this weekend. No way on Woody’s green turf does Tressel give a 26 year old 3rd teamer or 2nd string kicker get the ball at crunch time. JT is cool, but not crazy.
He may actually have to channel his inner Steve Spurrier and try to score early and often, because of the limited field goal kicking capabilities. Should we be able to stake ourselves to 14 point lead in the second half, the defense can be a little more aggressive and then we lean on the regular punter Thoma. There is absolutely no scoring decision on attempts from 47 yards out, unless it is the potential game winner. In this case, the “field position” strategy has to be a directional punt or go for it on 4th and 2 from the 32 yard line.
In this hypothetical situation, there are 3 formations that I would like to see to the Buckeyes attack Penn State with and break our conservative tendencies. The speed option out of the I, is my first choice. If you have an XBox 360 and NCAA 2010 you know how lethal that play can be with Terrelle. For something completely different … (and keep in mind, my theorhetical situation is a long 2 yards) , Joe Bauserman out of the shotgun and empty set. He will not take a sack, make a good throw and I’m not sure the Nittany Lions have enough DBs to match up effectively (I like Small vs their nickel\dime back in man to man coverage). Finally, a backside play to Ballard is a basic play off of a rollout that we have not tried to run all year. My sense is that we will see it this week or next against Iowa.
The biggest reason to worry about Penn State is not as much about Darryl Clark, as it is about the PSU offensive line. They look like slightly more athletic clones of a team we faced a few weeks ago, Wisconsin. The biggest difference is they protect for a potent passing scheme. Although Penn State’s offense has been high octane (429 yds \game), they could come out with a ball control game plan and challenge our interior defense. Blending the power run, with short passes to the outside and 1 or 2 shots down the field to control the clock could prove to be a toxic mixture for our offensive poise. OSU has not had any experience in successfully playing from behind late in the game.
PREDICTION: Ohio State 24, Penn State 20
Like this:
Tags: commentary, OSU Alumni blog, OSU Football, sports humor
This entry was posted on November 3, 2009 at 1:22 am and is filed under SPORTS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.