Our Honor Defend

The Golden Gophers entered Ohio Stadium thinking upset.  However, they left empty-handed.  The 14th-ranked Buckeyes formally unveiled the Beanie and Pryor show on the Gophers, winning 34-21 with a punishing effort on the ground.  Beanie re-entered the 2008 season with a statement, tallying 106 yards on 14 carries on limited duty.  Terrelle Pryor added to the ground attack with 8 carries for 97 yards.

The Gophers were certainly not without effort for this game.  The 20-3 halftime lead for the Buckeyes doesn’t do justice to how competive Minnesota was in the first half and parts of the second half.  Factor out Minnesota’s turnover-happy first half and perhaps the game has an entirely different complexion at intermission.  However, Minnesota fell victim to precisely what Jim Heacock’s defenses forces its opponents to do: make inferior teams (to the Buckeyes’ caliaber, that is) continue drives for all 60 minutes of a game.  The Minnesota defense was more than open to the task in the first half, where turnovers bit them.  They were also more than open to the task in the first drive of the second half, where dumb Ohio State penalties gave the Gophers a short field and a field goal.  However, Minnesota wore down in the second half and were unable to consistently execute, allowing the Buckeyes’ lead to swell to 34-6 by time the fourth quarter started.

The 2 touchdown deficit belies how comfortably the Buckeyes had this game in the second-half.  With the score 34-6, the Buckeyes subbed liberally in the 4th quarter, principally on the line.  With some 4th down negligence, the Gophers successfully cashed in for six twice in the final stanza (the first touchdown came with about 8 and half left to play and the second touchdown came with about two minutes left to play).  I hold no illwill against the Gophers outside of my general goal to have the Buckeyes run up the score on everyone they play¹.  With the subjectivity problem rampant in polls and positions, I was upset to see the Buckeyes loaf around for the 4th quarter.  Yet, if the Buckeyes were more than willing to phone in the 4th quarter, the Gophers, to their credit, were more than willing to let them.

All that said, there’s still lots of superlatives to spread around.

Offense

The offensive line was wonderful today, I thought.  Ben Person, who I’ve dogged repeatedly for the past couple weeks, turned in an effort that I couldn’t complain about.  His pulling and bulldozing of a Minnesota linebacker set up Boom Herron’s 26 yard run to the goalline — a play that eventually resulted in a touchdown.  I didn’t see much from Alex Boone that wowed me, but I also didn’t see anything that had me throwing my Schlitz can in disgust.  Michael Brewster got torched by one of Minnesota’s linemen, resulting in a sack of Terrelle Pryor, but played very well for the most part.  Besides, with Brewster, I still see game-to-game improvement for a guy who’s making one of the most difficult transitions on the team: a true freshman going from exclusive tackle at the prep level to starting center 4 games into his young career.  I would have to look at the film over again (if I had time) to really dissect things, but the offensive line played a huge hand in winning the game today.  A proxy for how good the line played: Minnesota’s star DE Willie VanDeSteeg — the one guy they needed to contain on Minnesota’s defensive line — had only 3 tackles, all assisted.  They did give up 6 TFLs, though. Hmm.

I guess the cat is out of the bag about Terrelle Pryor.  He’s good.  Like really good.  And he’s a true freshman.  On top of his aforementioned 96 yards on 8 carries (and two TDs), Pryor threw for 70 yards and a touchdown, completing 8 passes on 13 attempts.  After a few beers and basking in the glory of Florida’s inexplicable loss, some of the details of Pryor’s scores elude me at the moment.  However, both his rushing touchdowns were awesome.  The first, if nothing else, was an announcement that if Terrelle Pryor was regular, and nothing special, then much worse could be said about Minnesota’s hapless secondary.  The second was just a wonderful playcall that will have defensive coordinators around the Big Ten rethinking Tressel’s goalline tendencies.

Lest we leave out Todd Boeckman.  The Todd, senior captain and former starter, looked pretty good in his second string duty.  However, some of what happened with Todd in there I can only giggle at.  He still has tunnel vision for Robiskie, shown most notably on that toss into double coverage that fortunately was incomplete.  Second, that shotgun option play actually worked against Minnesota.  Let that show that, if nothing else, Minnesota != USC.

Buckeye fans, and maybe interested observers nationwide (who went out of their way to watch the game on BTN, that is), saw first hand why Beanie Wells was a front-runner for the Heisman trophy and why Ohio State was rightly thinking national title with him this season.  Oh how we missed him.  There were several plays during the game where Beanie got 6 or 7 yards where Boom Herron would’ve got 2 or 3 yards.  Though Beanie had no touchdowns, and his first half fumble was an indication that he hadn’t fully adjusted to game speed just yet, Buckeye fans saw enough out of him in limited duty to feel a lot better about their prospects at a 4th straight Big Ten title.  Oh, and him supermanning that Gopher player (not interested in his name) ruined Knowshon Moreno’s moment, which I’m all for.

I didn’t see much out of the receiving game to write about.  Indeed, Pryor only had 70 passing yards and Boeckman, who did throw a TD, had glorified mop-up duty.  Robiskie seems to be back in the swing of things.  Brian Robiskie had 8 catches for 90 yards and two touchdowns, with both TDs coming from Pryor and Boeckman respectively.  Nothing else to really note other than Pryor and Posey trying to hook up a few times.  If memory serves correct, Posey had a drop on a play that, with an additional move, probably could’ve gone for big yardage.  As it is, he had one catch for 11 yards.  Lamaar Thomas made an appearance as well: 2 catches for 4 yards.  Brian Hartline had one grab on the day, a 22 yard haul.

Defense

The defensive line looked much, much better this week against Minnesota.  Most of it came off the edge.  Curtis Terry had 4 tackles (3 solo, 1 assisted), including a TFL.  Lawrence Wilson was disruptive and also had 4 tackles (1 solo, 3 assisted).  Count Thaddeus Gibson in the 4 tackles (all assisted) off the edge category as well.  I know I’m interested in him because I wrote a BKAB feature on him, and because I know definitively that his mom reads this blog, but Nathan Williams continues to impress.  He’s only a true freshman, and one that missed a significant part of the summer as well, but the guy is basically a monster truck.  Better yet, he has no offswitch.  I have an eye for whenever I see #43 on the line, and his blowing up of a play in the second half was awesome.  It doesn’t show in the stats, but the interior of the line got some penetration as well.

However, penetration by the front four was, at the most, inchoate.  The linebackers did the rest.  If the defensive line is going to have an average ceiling for the rest of the season, the linebackers are going to have to do a great job at anticipating plays and jumping them for minimal gain.  They did just that today.  It would be difficult to argue who had the better game between James Laurinatis and Ross Homan.  Laurinaitis had 12 tackles (4 solo, 8 assisted) and was always near the ball.  Homan had 10 tackles (4 solo, 6 assisted), with one of those being a TFL.  On that TFL in particular, Lawrence Wilson had forced the safe, underneath throw from Adam Weber, which Ross Homan jumped and squashed for a loss.  Freeman wasn’t bad either (4 tackles: 3 solo, 1 assisted), also chipping in a TFL.

After probably taking the first 4 games off, Anderson Russell and Donald Washington had great efforts today.  Anderson Russell in particular may have been the best player on defense for the game.  His 7 tackles (5 solo, 2 assisted) and 2 forced fumbles (including one recovery) suggest just that.  Donald Washington only had one play of note: an interception.  However, it was a timely one in the second quarter, right as Minnesota was on an extended drive.  After returning it for 34 yards, Ohio State capitalized on the turnover for a field goal and a 13-3 lead.  Malcolm Jenkins also had 4 tackles (all solo), including a TFL on the game.

Final Thoughts

• Make no mistake: Gopher fans have reason to be optimistic for the future.  Thinking ahead, Gophers fans have reason to believe that Tim Brewster is capable of making the Gophers an 8-4 team every year.  However, part of me wonders where all the hubris came from entering this game.  Not this year Gophers.  See you next year in Columbus.
• Yes, the next game in the OSU-Minnesota series is played in Columbus.
• I think Brandon Saine looks for tacklers to run into.
• Some cause of consternation for me: The Buckeyes knew Adam Weber was going to find Eric Decker.  We had him covered and double-covered and Weber was still able to find him on key 3rd down plays. Hmm.
• Pryor’s throwdown of that Minnesota secondary player is worth 5 Buckeye pride stickers by itself.

1. and hence why I originally wanted to title this blog “Close the Gates” in honor of Francis “Close the Gates of Mercy” Schmidt for his notorious ambition of humiliating every team he could… [↩]