Our Honor Defend

Well, Trobuckalypse II: The Search For More Money™ is now finally past us.  It’s a disappointing result to be sure, but the trick now for the Buckeyes is to move on with their season, looking ahead specifically to Saturday’s tilt with Toledo in America’s most American city: Cleveland, Ohio.  Toledo has to be smelling some kind of blood in the water.  They’re off to a flying start so far under first year head coach, and former Buckeye secondary coach, Tim Beckman, who probably has this game pencilled as a resume-boosting win if he could pull it off.  The Buckeyes, for their part, need to put the Trojan loss behind them and get focused for the upcoming season.

There are plenty of negatives to be discerned from the loss to USC, not the least of which concerns building up Terrelle Pryor’s confidence and allowing for a playcalling to compensate for the fact that he’s just a sophomore for the moment.  However, I love what I saw from the defense.  This is the trick for Heacock and Fickell: if they can get the defense as amped for every game on out as they were for USC, it’s hard to imagine many offenses being able to score points on them.  They won’t see another offensive line like that for the rest of the season.  Unleash the hounds of hell, please.

Still, I don’t have too much planned to say in this post.  I am a bit backlogged with work responsibilities, so the rest of this post just kind of peters out with no real closure.

• Remember Bob Brudzinski, the great defensive end for Woody Hayes in the latter stages of Woody’s coaching career? His son is Toledo’s starting middle linebacker.
• The season is young, but Toledo is already 7th in the NCAA in passing offense and total offense.  They’re fresh off pasting Colorado on Thursday by a score of 54-38.
• Consistent with my goal to upload an opponent-relevant YouTube every week, I uploaded the first and only other encounter we had with the Toledo Rockets.  In came in 1998, and was sandwiched in between the season opener in Morgantown and the return leg of the Missouri series.  You already know how this season ended, but here’s some random things about the Toledo game.
  • Throughout the game, the broadcast crew consistently referred to Ohio State as having: A) the best receiver tandem in America, B) the best linebacker corp in America and C) the best secondary in America.  That team was stacked, but you knew that.
  • Gary Pinkel, current Missouri coach, was head coach of Toledo in 1998.  They were the winningest MAC program of the decade under his watch, so said the broadcast crew.
  • The second half was the most boring of any game I have in my collection.  If the offense wanted to, they probably could’ve hung 120 points on Toledo.  They dialed it in after the first series of the 3rd quarter.
  • Then again, dialing in second halves was a problem for the 1998 team…
  • The broadcast crew talked up Fred Pagac and Jon Tenuta frequently during a listless second half.  Pagac was the position coach of the aforementioned best linebacking crew in America and Tenuta was the position coach of the aforementioned best secondary in America.  Both Pagac and Tenuta were on the sideline for this game.

Game is below, if you’re interested.