Funny thing happened in Happy Valley last Saturday… nobody from Penn State was smiling! Ohio State took control of the Big 10 conference with a 24 -7 win over the Nittany Lions. They weren’t the only team to be upset, they were just one of several top 20 to stumble. Too bad.
Early Saturday morning, I woke up and caught part of a Big 10 Network (B10N) broadcast of the Penn State pep rally from the night before. Joe Pa had been stoking the fans and had them fully fired up when he asked, “If anyone knows what a Buckeye is?” Understandably, it drew a polite smattering of applause and chuckles from the home crowd, as he waved and finished up. Jo Pa was clever, witty and respectful, in his quip but it was probably the last thing Lions fans smiled about until Sunday.
For a full 60 minutes, the OSU defense absolutely restricted the PSU offense’s ability to stay out in front of the sticks and play their brand of offense. Bruising, basic, and take a shot or two down the field. There’s a part of me that has a fondness for that brand of offense. The key to this strategy is that you’ve got to have the horses and it gets overlooked that PSU rolled up gaudy stats against marginal competition. They’ve played 2 good teams in 2009 and been whooped each time. OSU held PSU to less than half of its average offensive (201yds\game vs. OSU and 429yds\game against the others).
There was a lot of growling last week about the Penn State passing attacking. We got a reminder that the best pass defense is a fierce pass rush. Cameron Heyward put on the stud jersey and made his personal presence felt. Everyone else lined up behind him. When using formations from under center, the 3 step drop scheme got stuffed with pressure from the middle of the formation. The mix of personnel, blitzes, fires and line stunts never let Penn State get any sort of offensive rhythm. 1-2-3-kick was the Beaver Stadium dance step for the day. With the exception of Devon Torrence’s poor effort on Clark’s short swing pass that became an explosive play in the 1st quarter, the coverage was first rate (125 yards surrendered). Final analysis: the bite of this air attack was not a serious threat all day.
Terrelle Pryor played a pretty complete game and committed only had 1 turnover. The offensive line was not dominant in the run game, but more than adequate in pass protection. This was a subtle difference, because the total yardage doesn’t tell the story. I caught a few minutes of the Penn State weekly show on the B10N and caught a factoid that the total yards of OSU TD drives were 118 yards. Terrelle should be thankful that it is was Brandon Saine’s catching the 4th quarter TD, because I’m pretty sure none of the other backs catch that rocket he threw. Just goes to prove, it’s sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, and I like any passing touchdowns!
Senior punter Jon Thoma led the special teams with a solid performance. No touchbacks, 4 kicks inside the 20 and our best field position weapon. Ray Small continues to test the opposing team’s discipline in punt coverage, because if you’re not he will hit it with a quickness. I almost never shout out the opposing team very often, but the PSU punter Jeremy Boone put a missile tackle on Ray to save another return from going the distance. Glad to see he didn’t get a concussion from the hit and hope he didn’t give Ray a hip pointer\flexor. Kicker Devin Barclay was steady in both PAT and FGA appearances.
Iowa limps into Columbus on Saturday beat up from season and a painful loss to Northwestern at Kinnick Satdium last week. They lost both starting quarterback Stanzi and the back up QB to injury, in that game. Dashed are hopes of a Big 10 title that looked so bright 2 weeks ago, but now it is back to their familiar role of spoiler. This makes them dangerous, because Kirk Ferentz knows how to maximize that emotion and will have the Hawkeyes ready to play. However, Coach Tressel has way too much at stake to have another Purdue sort of outing.
The Hawkeyes will have limited ability to threaten the Ohio State defense, particularly vertically. To that end, I expect to see Iowa run 2 or 3 gadget plays to try and make some luck. Onside kicks, a fumble-rooski, tackle eligible, nothing will surprise me from them. Here are the three things I expect to see from the Bucks this weekend. First, I think we’ll see a little option to give Rich Rod something else to plan for, probably out of the spread formation. A tight end, probably Jake Ballard catches his first touchdown of the season on senior day. Barclay will get to try, and will hit, a long distance field goal attempt. Just so he has his confidence in case we need a long one at Michigan next week.
My predictive hot streak continues. We saw in the 1st quarter that from the distance I predicted, 47 yards out, Coach Tressel opted to punt instead of trying an excessively long FG attempt. You will also recall that last week, I disclosed my highly scientific and weekly XBox360 simulation to get a feel for how the game will turn out using EA Sports NCAA 2010. This methodology led me to correctly predict an Ohio State win over the Nittany Lions with a nearly prophetic score of 23-6! This weeks score will be tough to predict, but I’m feeling a 31-10 romp as the Buckeyes build momentum for the team up north.
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Tags: commentary, OSU Alumni blog, OSU Football, sports humor
This entry was posted on November 10, 2009 at 1:55 pm 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 11
Funny thing happened in Happy Valley last Saturday… nobody from Penn State was smiling! Ohio State took control of the Big 10 conference with a 24 -7 win over the Nittany Lions. They weren’t the only team to be upset, they were just one of several top 20 to stumble. Too bad.
Early Saturday morning, I woke up and caught part of a Big 10 Network (B10N) broadcast of the Penn State pep rally from the night before. Joe Pa had been stoking the fans and had them fully fired up when he asked, “If anyone knows what a Buckeye is?” Understandably, it drew a polite smattering of applause and chuckles from the home crowd, as he waved and finished up. Jo Pa was clever, witty and respectful, in his quip but it was probably the last thing Lions fans smiled about until Sunday.
For a full 60 minutes, the OSU defense absolutely restricted the PSU offense’s ability to stay out in front of the sticks and play their brand of offense. Bruising, basic, and take a shot or two down the field. There’s a part of me that has a fondness for that brand of offense. The key to this strategy is that you’ve got to have the horses and it gets overlooked that PSU rolled up gaudy stats against marginal competition. They’ve played 2 good teams in 2009 and been whooped each time. OSU held PSU to less than half of its average offensive (201yds\game vs. OSU and 429yds\game against the others).
There was a lot of growling last week about the Penn State passing attacking. We got a reminder that the best pass defense is a fierce pass rush. Cameron Heyward put on the stud jersey and made his personal presence felt. Everyone else lined up behind him. When using formations from under center, the 3 step drop scheme got stuffed with pressure from the middle of the formation. The mix of personnel, blitzes, fires and line stunts never let Penn State get any sort of offensive rhythm. 1-2-3-kick was the Beaver Stadium dance step for the day. With the exception of Devon Torrence’s poor effort on Clark’s short swing pass that became an explosive play in the 1st quarter, the coverage was first rate (125 yards surrendered). Final analysis: the bite of this air attack was not a serious threat all day.
Terrelle Pryor played a pretty complete game and committed only had 1 turnover. The offensive line was not dominant in the run game, but more than adequate in pass protection. This was a subtle difference, because the total yardage doesn’t tell the story. I caught a few minutes of the Penn State weekly show on the B10N and caught a factoid that the total yards of OSU TD drives were 118 yards. Terrelle should be thankful that it is was Brandon Saine’s catching the 4th quarter TD, because I’m pretty sure none of the other backs catch that rocket he threw. Just goes to prove, it’s sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good, and I like any passing touchdowns!
Senior punter Jon Thoma led the special teams with a solid performance. No touchbacks, 4 kicks inside the 20 and our best field position weapon. Ray Small continues to test the opposing team’s discipline in punt coverage, because if you’re not he will hit it with a quickness. I almost never shout out the opposing team very often, but the PSU punter Jeremy Boone put a missile tackle on Ray to save another return from going the distance. Glad to see he didn’t get a concussion from the hit and hope he didn’t give Ray a hip pointer\flexor. Kicker Devin Barclay was steady in both PAT and FGA appearances.
Iowa limps into Columbus on Saturday beat up from season and a painful loss to Northwestern at Kinnick Satdium last week. They lost both starting quarterback Stanzi and the back up QB to injury, in that game. Dashed are hopes of a Big 10 title that looked so bright 2 weeks ago, but now it is back to their familiar role of spoiler. This makes them dangerous, because Kirk Ferentz knows how to maximize that emotion and will have the Hawkeyes ready to play. However, Coach Tressel has way too much at stake to have another Purdue sort of outing.
The Hawkeyes will have limited ability to threaten the Ohio State defense, particularly vertically. To that end, I expect to see Iowa run 2 or 3 gadget plays to try and make some luck. Onside kicks, a fumble-rooski, tackle eligible, nothing will surprise me from them. Here are the three things I expect to see from the Bucks this weekend. First, I think we’ll see a little option to give Rich Rod something else to plan for, probably out of the spread formation. A tight end, probably Jake Ballard catches his first touchdown of the season on senior day. Barclay will get to try, and will hit, a long distance field goal attempt. Just so he has his confidence in case we need a long one at Michigan next week.
My predictive hot streak continues. We saw in the 1st quarter that from the distance I predicted, 47 yards out, Coach Tressel opted to punt instead of trying an excessively long FG attempt. You will also recall that last week, I disclosed my highly scientific and weekly XBox360 simulation to get a feel for how the game will turn out using EA Sports NCAA 2010. This methodology led me to correctly predict an Ohio State win over the Nittany Lions with a nearly prophetic score of 23-6! This weeks score will be tough to predict, but I’m feeling a 31-10 romp as the Buckeyes build momentum for the team up north.
Like this:
Tags: commentary, OSU Alumni blog, OSU Football, sports humor
This entry was posted on November 10, 2009 at 1:55 pm 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.