Our Honor Defend

The Buckeyes put enough of a second-half beatdown of the Wildcats that would have Coach Harris pleased.  Unlike his Adams College Atoms, we did not have our asses whipped by a bunch of goddamn nerds.

That’s not to say that the 45-10 victory over Northwestern today was a cakewalk.  Far from it.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that winning this game by such a comfortable margin was probably reducible to luck.  The Buckeyes found themselves behind down and distance often in this game.  1st and 10 became 2nd and 9 and eventually 3rd and 14-16.  Yet, the Buckeyes made good on 8 of 13 third down conversions in these incredible holes to put themselves in a position to win.  The Buckeyes struggled with Kafka’s running early into the game and the offensive line was lucky enough that Northwestern’s defensive line got more tired than they did.  The Beanie 55yd touchdown was, as Gabby indicated, the sexiest you will ever see awful offensive line play look.  The Buckeyes kept digging their own graves on offense, but somehow leaped out of them.  How this happened over and over again for the Buckeyes is probably best chalked up to luck, with some moderate doses of tactical brilliance.

The first drive of the game was a microcosm for some of the problems I’d see the rest of the game.  The Buckeyes didn’t pass on first down until 6 minutes left in the second quarter.  They didn’t start doing it in earnest until late in the second half.  But on that first drive, the predictable playcalling for Beanie created 3rd and 8 initially, where Pryor hooked up with Robiskie for a first down.  After moving the sticks, the Buckeyes found themselves at 3rd and 16 after two rushing plays, after which Hartline inexplicably popped open for a 44yd gain to the Northwestern 9.  The Buckeyes eventually took a 7-0 lead.

However, Northwestern took the ball right down the field for a touchdown of their own as a response.   It was during this drive that Northwestern’s offense looked like the Tim Tebow-led Gators from last year.  Yet, after some consternation of some poor tackling, lack of discipline (4 penalties) and the inability to contain Kafka that eventually resulted in knotting up the score at 7, things largely settled down.  Both sides exchanged punts afterwards, giving the Buckeyes the ball at their own 28 yard line.  The same execution issues haunted the Buckeyes again, but they came through on a 3rd and 10 with a 22yd pass to Rory Nicol.  After a Cordle false start, the Buckeyes went off left tackle again with Beanie.  It was looking to be a busted play again, but Beanie eluded a few tackles and was in the clear for his highlight 55yd TD run.  The only thing any offensive lineman did on that play was Alex Boone, who gave Beanie a little push right as he was breaking free.

Eric Peterman fumbled on the second play on Northwestern’s ensuing drive, setting up a Buckeye field goal to take a 17-7 lead.  Still, it looked like Beanie’s touchdown run had awoken the offense.  After Northwestern’s next drive ended in a punt, the Buckeyes began their next series at their own 10 yard line.  It was here that the playcalling was mixed up a bit for our amusement.  Terrelle Pryor threw deep for Robiskie on first down, to no avail.  After a 2 yard rush by Beanie, Terrelle Pryor hooked up with Dane Sanzenbacher on 3rd and 8 for 14 yards and a first down as Pryor kept the play alive.  After another incomplete first down pass and a 3 yard loss by Beanie, Terrelle Pryor scrambled 15 yards for a first down on 3rd and 13.  On the next two carries, Beanie gained 8 yards to set up a 3rd and a short 2 at midfield.  Alex Boone, however, wanted to show a Northwestern defender how manly he is, was flagged for unneccessary (and unbelievably idiotic) roughness to push the Buckeyes back to 3rd and 16.  Terrelle Pryor bailed out Boone by rushing for 21 yards and a first down.  The rest was academic.  Boom Herron took the next two carries for 18 yards.  Pryor capped off the play with a touchdown strike to Robiskie to take a 24-7 lead into intermission.

In the interest of brevity, I’ll move on to superlatives without going over much of the second half.  Suffice to say, things got a lot worse for Northwestern after the second half resumed.  The Buckeyes added 3 touchdowns while Northwestern could only take the second half kickoff for a field goal.  The Buckeyes won big, even experimenting with home run balls up 3 touchdowns in what I hope was a means to impress the Orange Bowl Committee members on hand to watch the Buckeyes play.

Offense

Terrelle Pryor looked fantastic this game.  His 9/14 197 yards and 3 TD performance isn’t a career best.  It’s not more yards than he had against Penn State and it’s not more touchdowns than he had against Troy.  However, the quality of his play was much better than any of those two games.  Andre Ware and Dave Pasch kept remarking during the game that this appeared to have been the game where Terrelle Pryor announced himself to the college football landscape.  It would be nice if it was, but I’ll shy away from that proclamation for now.  As it was, Terrelle Pryor improved on several facets of his game.

In previous games, Terrelle Pryor was a run first quarterback.  He became a one-read quarterback and eventually started going through progressions as a QB.  In this game, though, we saw even more field vision for Pryor.  Of course, Pryor had made it priority one to try to make a play with his arm and not rely on his feet.  It wouldn’t be fair to peg him as a run-first quarterback as such.  However, the difference we saw in this game looked to be one of scanning downfield while escaping pressure, rather than just staring downfield and hoping that someone would come into view.  No play better characterizes this than the Nicol touchdown in the final seconds of the third quarter.  Elsewhere, Pryor also made better, quicker decisions on when to run and when to keep looking downfield.  He also discovered how to throw the ball away as well, granted it came when he was 20 yards in the backfield with Corey Wootton right in his grill.  He can still work on his touch, but he is just a true freshman and this was the best possible response he could have to the Penn State game two weeks before.

Beanie was a monster this game in spite of his offensive line.  He struggled early  into the game as his offensive line was giving him no help, but he made a great individual effort.  Indeed, with the score knotted at 7-7 early into the second quarter, it seems his individual effort to turn a certain 4-5 yard loss into a 55 yard touchdown run was just the play to wake up the Buckeyes.  And let’s be frank too: that was ALL Beanie on that play.  Beanie ended up finishing with two touchdowns and 140 yards on 28 carries, good enough for a clip of 5 yards per carry.  Boom Herron and Terrelle Pryor both registered 6 carries, chipping in 38 yards and 33 yards respectively.  Herron also got the garbage time touchdown, the first such last second touchdown in a Buckeye rout since Brandon Saine’s run against Washington last year.

The offensive line deserves special attention here because, as I’ve mentioned earlier, Terrelle Pryor and Beanie succeeded in spite of the best efforts of their offensive line.  Now, they weren’t all-game awful as they were against USC, Purdue or Penn State, but it seems like they were the benefactors of the fact that Northwestern’s defensive line tired before they did.  Most of this was evident in run blocking, with pass protection not much of a problem for the Buckeyes.  Further, it seems to be the usual suspects.  Alex Boone’s unneccessary roughness penalty was not only unbelievably stupid, but it’s in the same spirit as his penalties against USC.  That is, it’s his ‘senior leadership’ hurting the team, which, in this game, was atoned for by freshman abilities.  The irony wasn’t lost on me.  Further, Browning was a bit of a liability this game and Rehring didn’t create much room on the ground either.  I may have been more drawn to the Wootton-Browning matchup and thus didn’t get a good look at him, but I didn’t see much transgressions from Michael Brewster.  He certainly didn’t turn a 3rd and a short two at midfield to a 3rd and 16 with a dumb penalty.  Buckeye fans should still be weary of the direction of our offensive line, since we can’t feasibly expect to out-stamina Michigan at the end of November.

If the receivers were still upset behind closed doors about the direction of the passing game, they would really have nothing to complain about in this game.  Further, it’s not clear that Ray Small’s absence changed much in terms of personnel.  The veteran wide receivers got most of the touches from Pryor and, for the first time, it looked like Robiskie became Pryor’s favorite target in lieu of Sanzenbacher.  Robiskie’s 3 catches for 58 yards and two touchdowns stood out among the receivers, though Brian Hartline’s performance looks a bit better on paper (2 catches, 90 yards).  Other players got some love too.  Dane Sanzenbacher — whose lone fan among Buckeye bloggers is writing this post — had only one catch, but it was good for 14 yards and an important 3rd down conversion on an eventual touchdown drive.  Rory Nicol (2 catches, 28 yards and 1 TD) and Brandon Smith (1 catch, 7 yards) also got some action as well.  I’m not sure if they’ve been upset about the passing game as well, but having Pryor in the game is the only way the fullback and tight end see the ball.  Curiously enough, I don’t remember seeing DeVier Posey or Lamaar Thomas at any point in this game.

Defense

I’ll go ahead and say it: our defensive line looked outstanding this game.  The real eyecatcher among the unit was Nader Abdallah, who may have had the best game of his career.  The Beast from the Middle East had eight tackles (3 solo, 5 assisted), good for third on the team.  He also split a TFL, broke up two passes and registered a QB hit.  Abdallah’s dominance in the interior took away any chance of Stephon Simmons (14 carries, 39 yards) being a factor for Northwestern’s offense.  So, while Kafka got most of the carries (29 carries, 83 yards), he did so because he had to.  Elsewhere, Nathan Williams — true freshman — had back to back sacks early in the fourth quarter.  In fact, he was the one responsible for taking the Wildcats from the Buckeyes’ 12 yard line to the 39 yard line.  He’s also responsible for denying Kafka from finishing with 100 yards rushing on the game.  He eventually finished with 7 tackles (3 solo, 4 assisted), 2.5 TFLs good for a loss of 28 yards.  Cameron Heyward (3 tackles, 1 solo) forced a fumble on an 8 yard TFL that was recovered by Doug Worthington (4 tackles, 1 solo).  Dexter Larimore was active, but only had an assisted tackle. for his efforts.  I don’t know how much of this is an indication that our defensive line is finally ready to be a force or how much of it is reducible to Northwestern’s offensive line being not that good.  But with that said, I’ll take this performance and enjoy it.

I don’t know why, but it seemed like our linebackers were slow today.  James Laurinaitis was his usual active self this game, leading all Buckeyes with 11 tackles.  Yet, only two of those were solo, but still indicative of Laurinaitis being active and around the ball.  He even had an interception late in the second half as the game was already decided.  Still, it seemed that when Kafka was able to elude the defensive line, or when he found a receiver open in the middle, our linebackers were not up to the task.  Ross Homan’s 8 tackle (2 solo) and Marcus Freeman’s 5 tackle (2 solo) performance don’t appear to be real good proxies for that, though.  Both also had a TFL.  I guess I would need to rewatch the game to make sense of what I thought I saw.

Similarly, it seems like the performance of the secondary was a mixed bag.  Kurt Coleman had 7 tackles (5 solo) and Anderson Russell was second on the team with 9 tackles (5 solo).  Anderson Russell even had the presence of mind to get in bounds to recover the Peterman fumble in the second quarter.  Still, both had costly penalties leveled against them.  Jenkins and Hines may have been the best performers on the defense.  Hines had 5 solo tackles (6 total) while Jenkins forced the Peterman fumble, eventually finishing with 7 tackles (3 solo).  Still, if the treatment of the secondary seems all too brief, it’s just that the defensive line — especially Abdallah — was the biggest story on the defense today.

Miscellany

• Jim Tressel put on his Barry Switzer hat at some point after the 3rd quarter intermission.  I’m sure there’ll be questions about that too, such as A) why go for a fake punt while up 3 touchdowns? B) Why keep throwing 40-50 yards into the end zone while up 3 touchdowns late in the 4th quarter?
• Jim Tressel’s grimace at Boom Herron’s last second touchdown seems odd.  The only reason I can think he did that was to try to allay Pat Fitzgerald from powerbombing him after the final gun.  After all, why was Jim Tressel upset that he scored that touchdown when he called the damn play? I’m sure he could’ve told them to kneel if he wanted.  That is, unless Jim Tressel just sent out his second team offense on to the field with no directions.
• Lamaar Thomas didn’t seem too particularly fast returning kicks, but I like the attention he shows to making sure he has a firm grip on the football.  For freshmen kick returners, that’s a problem.
• We really should throw more on first downs earlier into the game since it’s just too obvious for everyone involved what the playcall would be otherwise.  This would be fine if we could block, but we can’t.  Alabama can get away with predictable playcalling by virtue of their offensive line.  We can’t.
• The Orange Bowl as a destination for the Buckeyes? Wouldn’t we get some crappy ACC Champion then? Cool.
• James Laurinaitis really listens to Dave Matthews Band to get pumped up to play football? Really? Ewwwwwwwww.