Someone Get Me A Lyre
The bigger issue for Buckeye fans is, well, that this game sucked. This may be a more embarrassing flop than the 2006 title game. That was at least Florida, a conference champion. This was a 1-5 team with losses so soul-crushing that it seems like half the Goddamn stadium was empty because their fans had written this off as a loss.
Ignore the fact that Purdue retreated into a shell in the 4th quarter, allowing our offense to put up some numbers and almost allow us to tie the game. For the sake of this exercise, let’s even look beyond the fact that our defense couldn’t make plays when we needed them and couldn’t bail out the offense again. We put up only 66 rushing yards total against a Purdue team that gives up 167 a game. We had more turnovers (5) than first downs (4) before Purdue played prevent. Terrelle Pryor — designated preseason offensive player of the year — was 7/14 and with 4 turnovers before the 4th quarter. The unfortunate problem for Ohio State is that it’s not just Pryor. I’m sure boo birds were asking for the change midstream. But given the false starts and poor blocking (even when Purdue wasn’t blitzing), and the poor game plans, are we to believe Joe Bauserman would fare any better?
Long story short, I gotta know. Inquiring minds have to know: what in God’s name does the offensive coaching staff see in practice? Do they not see symptoms of an impotent offense? Do they not see an offensive line, tackles especially, incapable of holding blocks? Do they not see a quarterback making zero progress from one play to the next? Do they not see said quarterback losing any and all poise he has? If it’s not there behind the city walls of the WHAC, then where does it come from and why do we have to look at it on Saturdays? If the symptoms are there, then what are we doing to compensate and adjust for the fact that opposing defenses will send 8-9 guys on a given play and dare the offense to beat them with slow-moving progressions and Pryor’s arm? Surely there are constraint plays in our offense. I should hope. Where are the swing passes, middle screens, bubble screens, flat passes, inside slants and et cetera?
Until then, all I can say to describe our offensive philosophy is that we’re a power running team that gets no power at the point of attack and struggles to run effectively through what narrow creases they get. We’re a ball control offense in that we control the ball very little and are a field position team in that we largely position the opposing offenses on our side of the field. In short, our offense is average at best and lousy at their average. Problems go uncorrected and adjustments have not been forthcoming and why am I to believe that it’ll get any better any time this season? It hurts to watch this offense, but it hurts even more with all the assurances we were given in the preseason of “quantum leaps” and things of this nature.
Well put again Vico………….I was calling for Bauserman midstream in this game just to change something, a spark that wasn’t there. But obviously it would not have mattered at all. The offense was what is was and has been …….OFFENSIVE.
I too Vico would love to know what it is they do to prepare for games, I too would like to know what Tress and company do within the halls of the Woody Hayes Center all week. Tressels cred is dropping like a stone, and he can continue with his Senator speak and yada yada all he wants in his responses to questions about the offense , but Jimmy the road meets the curb eventually………and you have to man up and take responsibility. I mean when there isn’t any inclination of adjusting to the issues……………..the finger points in one direction, as it should…………..the troop leader.
C’mon Tressel………….right the ship………….
………just watched his post game presser.
Same sh** ……….different week. Percentages , percentages , percentages………………for the love of pete I am so sick of hearing answers like ” Well the percentages are in that situation , that you do this “……………..can Tress just for a couple situations make a descision on guts and feeling , instead of charts and the laws of physics????
I’m more disappointed that you didn’t use this as an entry to a “History Of the World Part 1″ reference….
“Bring me a small lyre”
Well….I look at it as a positive. This SHOULD be the icing on the proverbial cake that lands us wholesale change on offense. Let’s just hope that we hire someone with a dynamite, proven offensive track record. Whipple from Miami would be awesome. Maybe the dude from Houston.
One thing I worry about though are these obscure guys being brought in that NepoTressel coached with in 1974 who went to the same church or whatever that the Tressel family went to. We need somebody to run, manage the assistants, and develop offensive talent to it’s potential. This person should be recognized nationally as to attract big time offensive recruits.
Tomczak as QB coach gives me a boner. But this offensive coach should be given the reigns carte blanche. A guy like that could install an offensive culture and plan that lasts for a long time after they’ve moved on (Utah, Florida, Boise State, USC) as it gets passed down through assistants.
We’ll see. The cheerleaders at BuckeyePlanet are still talkin’ bout the positives! It’s all good as long as we keep takin’ weekly trips to the nursing homes by players to pass on the Buckeye cheer.
Sometimes I wish some of the reporters in the post game presser would grab their nutsack after one of JT’s rambling pseudo answers and just say: “Coach Tressel, that really didn’t answer my question at all. Could you please give me a straightforward answer that my readers can clearly understand”? And then keep repeating that until he does it.
My how this Tressel love affair has soured. He’s like the bitchy wife who stops fixing herself up and complains of headaches every night.
I wonder if Siciliano got on Monster.com last night.
Vico, well thought out and presented commentary.
First, a tip ‘o the hat to the Purdue coaching staff and players for a great effort. They managed to outcoach and outplay a better (on paper) team, somewhat convincingly.
I think your comments/questions are spot on; what on earth is our staff looking at in practice? This is just totally inexcusable. Then, we really look like asses with all this pre-game braggadoccio(sp) about “offensive explosion” against Purdue. Ex-plosion, im-plosion; whatever.
Fortunately, I wasn’t able to watch the game (no BTN), I followed it on intertubies, so I miseed the in-game “nuances”. I have a question. On defense did we play any man-to-man or blitz? All that I was catching on my computer was a lot of consecutive black lines progressing down the field with captions of “Elliott complete to___ for 6yrds, Elliott complete to ___ for 8 yds, etc. Was Purdue in 7-on-7 drills?
We seem to have a staff that is incapable of seeing, or acknowledging shortfalls, and make no halftime adjustments. The way that Purdue came out and handed us our asses in the 3rrd quarter, it seemed like somebody was making adjustments. At this point, with shambles of an offense, I’m not overly optimistic about success the balance of the season.
Please pardon me for being a little bummed today.
With bringing in an offensive coordinator, you have to weigh risk vs reward. At this point, I see no risk. It can’t get worse. It either stays the same or gets better. It has to be made, but I’m not sure anyone with the position to make those decisions will. Oh well, until then, I expect the same theme.
Ken,
We typically played zone with a large cushion for the nickel and dime passes that Purdue killed us with. If we play man throughout that game and dare Purdue’s receivers to create separation with a corner on their hips, I think Purdue goes 3 and out more than not.
Vico,
OK, thanks (head in hands) for the update. I’m thinking that if we cover, like you suggested, we might have put our D-line in a position for potentially some ‘coverage’ sacks. Hope springs eternal.
Meanwhile, the Browns are in the process of getting it handed to them by the Steelers. Man, it is just going from bad-to-worse this weekend.
I watched the game and the first thing I thought of was Vietnam. You kids probably won’t remember this, but essentially it was a war the U.S. volunteered itself into that served no other purpose but the propaganda effect of “defeating communism”. It too for almost a decade seem to serve no purpose, much like your appendix or current day OSU offense.
Is Tressel this really f-ing arrogant to not recognize that he has the keys to a ferrari, yet continues to fill up with 89 regular unleaded? All this talent sitting on the sidelines like Fragel, Hall, Stoney, Thomas, Small, ballard and we are all forced to watch them rot like a cruel (insert any number here) series of Saw. Is that who calls our plays? Jigsaw? Does he have connections to YSU and Y-town mafia?
What will it take? earthquakes? forest fires in southern ohio? crop circles outside of town that spell out, ” run a f-ing toss sweep douche”….
I love tressel, HE IS THE PERFECT MAN FOR THE PROGRAM, but its time for him to live by the values he exsposed in his book and quit putting his ego/self interests before the team and hire the o-coordinator, o-line coach, and qb coach with you know a actual record developing qb’s…..
good article. I know fans are down on TP but what do you think he would look like playing for, let’s say Kelly at Cinci? The problem is JT and I don’t think he has it in him to fix it. This staff makes no adjustments on both sides of the ball. If I were Pryor, I’d get as far away from this coaching staff as I could because they do not develope qb’s. That is because they have no one offensive scheme and stick with it. Let’s try the spread this series, now let’s go power, now lets go pistol. No wonder this kid is confused. JT shoukd have made a change at Oline coach years ago and he would not. He will not bring in a OC and QB coach that are dynamic and give the keys to them . And this stubbornness will be his waterloo and that is sad.
Vico, you may already know this but, you are being quoted and your illustration reproduced on Dr. Saturday. Does this mean you hit the Big Time??
Ooooh, a reference on the Doc’s blog. Neat. But yeah, when I say that our offense is “average at best and lousy at their average”, I mean very much that the best effort I can expect of them is one that would be an average effort for anyone else of consequence and that the average effort I can expect of our offense, well, sucks.
That’s it, Vico, you’ve hit the bigtime. Just don’t forget us ‘little people’ on your way to the top, or out of Alabama…
I think that your performance range for our offense is about right; when we’re hitting on eight cylinders, the offense is probably so-so, when it isn’t, you’re seeing what you’re seeing now.
I’m a bit more rational now, IMO, than I was over the weekend, but I think our O-ills are self reinforcing. Let’s work on the premise that we have a QB with ball security, throwing mechanics and anything-else-you-want-to-add issues. Coupled with a fairly young, and somewhat ill/injured offensive line. Under most circumstance, a line that is a work-in-process would have some challenges each week, but when it’s combined with a QB who is a minimal threat at best as a passer, not much good will come of it. The opponents will crowd the line of scrimmage, twist, stunt, whatever, and the O-line performance suffers greatly. This just negatively feeds into QB who thinks he is a pocket QB, or worse yet, one the coaches think is a pocket QB, and the entire offense goes haywire. Meanwhile, the defense is getting gassed, since they are on the field way more than they should, and less than good results happen there as well.
I think at this point, (again) creating an uptempo offense where TP has plays that can get him to the edge with a pass-run option might settle things down offensively. Hell, roll the pocket a little bit to help pass protection. Who here is old enough to remember Hank Stram’s innovative ‘rolling pocket’ when he coached the Kansas City Chiefs? This isn’t leading edge technology we’re talking about.
OK, time to focus on Minny and NMS. We’ve got a couple weeks to get our stuff straightened out before the schedule really gets tough.
Ken, that’s pretty much where I’m at right now. Though I’d add that in addition to our D being on the field for really long stretches of time, that our coaches are unable to adjust to what the opposing offense is throwing at them (the same can be said of all of the coaching staff, in fact).
E, that’s a good point, I hadn’t though of that. The D-unit, like any other unit, does need some in-game sitdown time with photos/whiteboard to make the adjustments on the fly. I think there’s something to that…
“OK, time to focus on Minny and NMS. We’ve got a couple weeks to get our stuff straightened out before the schedule really gets tough.”
Surely, you jest. NMS will be a cake walk, but Minnesota should have Ohio State shaking in their boots.
“Surely, you jest. NMS will be a cake walk, but Minnesota should have Ohio State shaking in their boots.”
Don’t call me Shirley. I doubt it; Minnesota’s offense is almost as screwed up as ours. Take Decker out of the offense, they’ve got nothin’.
Pardon me, I’ve just had a bit of crankiness relapse. I strolled over to ‘The O-Zone’ for some tidbits.
“I didn’t think I did a very good job of getting them to really understand the challenge we had,” Tressel said.
This strikes me as game preparation FAIL. Nice job, coaches.
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“Jimmy Cordle, we tried to get him into the game Saturday and he just isn’t quite ready. It’s one thing being able to be able to go through a practice tempo and it’s another thing to be able to do it on a Saturday.”
So, evidently, our practice tempo is a bit adagio compared to “game speed”. This strikes me as game preparation FAIL.
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“Do we have any immediate plans that we’ve sat down and said, okay, now we’re going to put Joe in at this point in time or we’re going to commit ourselves to putting him in the game, haven’t had that discussion,” Tressel said Tuesday at his weekly luncheon press conference.
OK, so I’m assuming that in Situation A (starting QB is injured), there has been some discussion of putting in backup QB. If, per Tressel’s statement above, in Situation B where starting QB is injuring the team, there is no discussion to put in backup QB.
Jesusjumpingchrist, I have absolutely no faith in our heads-up-our-asses coaching staff. WTF is going on at the WHAC?!