Our Honor Defend

I posed a couple questions about a week ago in order to gauge how Buckeye fans, at least the dozen or so that read this blog, are feeling in light of the Rose Bowl victory over Oregon and the corollary end to the 2009 season.

A week later, I’m back to sift through the responses received and offer a few thoughts of my own.

Bloggers: Fear the Elf
Commenters: browniebuck, poop, Ken, MaliBuckeye, chibucks, matt in cleveland, Brandon, El Caballo de Sangre, Todd (not Boeckman)

01. Be honest: what did you enjoy the most about winning the Rose Bowl? A) Getting over our bowl skid and sending the seniors out as winners? B) Knowing that every analyst on TV predicting this game was not only wrong, but loudly wrong? or C) Winning the Rose Bowl, the doggone Grandaddy of Them All, for only the third time after the 1968 national championship team?

There was some variation here, which is usually what I look for when I ask these questions.  Unanimity in response usually means I asked a painfully uninteresting question with a single obvious response.

First, there was some kind of relief among Buckeye fans that our mini-bowl skid is now over, and it ended with a high profile victory (Pac 10 champion, in the Rose Bowl, a BCS game).  Previously, the Buckeyes had lost 3 straight bowl games after rushing to a 4-1 postseason start under Jim Tressel.  Losing two national titles is one thing, but the loss to Texas in Glendale took on extra significance.  While only a 3 game skid, the graduating seniors on that team were left without a bowl victory to their own.  To be fair, Malcolm Jenkins was a nickelback and James Laurinaitis entered the fray for the injured Bobby Carpenter in a 2005 season the culminated with a victory over Notre Dame in Tempe.  However, these 3 year starters fell short at the end of these 3 seasons.  In 2009, the Buckeyes ran the risk of graduating an entire senior class without a bowl victory, but the season fortunately culminated on a better note.  FTE answers that this was the greatest relief, “by a wide margin”.  El Caballo, poop, Ken and Brandon agree.

Others enjoyed the significant egg on the face of everyone who thought they had this game figured out.  I’m sure you’ve seen the scrip for this game: big, slow, unathletic lumbering team from the Midwest gets carved up by the noveau spread stylings of Oregon.  Oh, and speed blah blah blah.  Well, it didn’t happen that way.  The real speed on the field was the speed by which Ohio State’s defensive line carved up Oregon’s front 5 (oh, and Oregon’s special teams, to be fair).  Being in Los Angeles for 3 weeks of vacay, I got the very real drift watching the Fox Sports affiliates out there that the locals thought they had this game in the bag.  Mali, a Pasadena native himself, immensely enjoyed the humble pie his relatives in Oregon were served to begin the new year.  Chibucks adds that the victory will coerce some respect out of every analyst who was so loudly wrong about this game.  He also adds, which I sadly rue but knew would come even before the Rose Bowl, that since the Pac 10 had a very meek showing in the bowl season, the level of respect afforded will always be qualified by a group of people.

Still others are enjoying the Rose Bowl victory because, well, it’s the damn Rose Bowl.  The worst thing the BCS has done for me is make the Rose Bowl a bit of a consolation prize.  USC detested going there while Ohio State fans of a newer generation may think of a greater bond with the desert in Arizona than the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in Southern California.  Now, the Rose Bowl may be thought of as an indication of “good, but not good enough”.  Whatever the case, this 2009 team gives Ohio State it’s 7th win in the Grandaddy, no small feat considering Ohio State’s heartbreaking shortcomings there in the 1970s and previous association with national championship seasons.  Buckeye fans will always have their eyes set on a bigger prize than the Rose Bowl Game, under the existing setup, will allow.  Nevertheless, it’s a still a special victory that the likes of browniebuck and matt in cleveland will cherish.

02. Which loss sucked more? USC or Purdue? Why?

There’s some variation on the response to this question too, a fairly good indicator that I’m not boring you all with questions.  The correct answer here is that both sucked and we could’ve done without them, but, alas, there are disagreements about which loss sucked more.

The problem with the loss to USC is that Ohio State effectively dominated “the best offensive line Dick Tomey has ever seen” for 56 minutes, but put forward one of the most embarrassing displays of offensive football.  We gifted USC’s first TD with Pryor’s inexplicable interception to begin the game, and even that TD probably should not have counted.  Further, we were on the doorstep twice in the first half and struggled to get the one TD we got.  Unfortunately, the defense was not able to atone for the offense’s sins for the full 60 minutes and Ohio State’s final drive was so outrageous that USC, in all their hubris, left Duron Carter uncovered knowing full well Pryor wouldn’t look beyond Sanzy and Posey.  The result: a loss that corroborated the most idiotic chatter you could conjure about Ohio State football and, as we found out, a loss to a middle of the road Pac 10 team.   Chibucks is right when he says we were better than them; we are better than them.  We just wanted the opportunity.  FTE notes that now Petey skates off to the NFL having dropped Ohio State twice on his way out.  Having last beaten USC in the 1974 Rose Bowl, we’re not sure if/when the opportunity will come again to put one in the win column against the bandwagon team from the bandwagon city.  Poop and matt in cleveland note that this loss is depressing precisely because so much emphasis was afforded to it.  Pryor was supposed to have his breakout moment.  USC’s freshman QB ended up getting it instead (for handing the ball off to Joe McKnight).

That’s not to say the loss to Purdue wasn’t sucktitude of greater or equal value.  Playing before a bipartisan crowd in West Lafayette, the offensive line was shredded by a Purdue team on a significant losing slide (including a loss to Northern Illinois), the defense got soft and was exploited by Joey Elliott and Ohio State turned the ball over enough times to last a season.  When it was all over, what would’ve been a season with a conference record Big Ten road game winning streak was dashed, taking with it the “Ohio State only loses to BCS teams” meme.  Some of the respondents think the loss to USC was more forgivable than the loss to Purdue.  Browniebuck says Purdue, especially a Purdue team on as bad of a slide as they were, is one that will always be in the “should win” column.  Brandon concurs.  USC may be schematically limited with a freshman QB and losing the defense from hell they had in 2008, but we should at least out-athlete Purdue with the most simplistic gameplan.  The nature of the two losses may also be construed differently.  Ken thinks the Purdue game was a bigger clusterfuck from everyone involved than the USC game.

I think El Caballo and FTE, while both arguing that the USC loss was worse, make persuasive points.  Purdue may have been a “wake up call”.  In hindsight, the loss to USC served no purpose other than to commence discussion on the “grisly demise of Tressel Ball“.  The Purdue game was instrumentally embarrassing.  The USC game was just embarrassing.

03. Yes, Pryor needs to continue his improvement for Ohio State to make a run at a national title.  The sun also sets in the west, water is wet, Geddy Lee is the best bass player ever c’mon (NSFW) and the sky is blue.  What other player (or position) needs to significantly step up in order for the Buckeyes to be playing for all the marbles?

A note about Geddy Lee: If Dave the Lighting Guy says it, it must be true.  Ergo, unicorns are kick ass, Depeche Mode is a sweet band and Geddy Lee, best bass player, ever. C’mon.

A lot of options here and it seems that a few are going right for the offensive line.  Offensive tackle was a bit of a rotating door in 2009.  Andy Miller, Mike Adams, Jimmy Cordle, Marcus Hall and JB Shugarts were all plugged in and out.  The Buckeyes seemed to settle on Cordle at LT and Shugarts at RT (the arrangement for the Rose Bowl), but that’s by no means indicative of stability at the position.  We all (sadly) remember Ryan Kerrigan paying rent to reside in our backfield.  Similar squatting came from O’Brien Schofield among others.  Browniebuck, TnB, Ken, chibucks, and matt in cleveland all went right in this direction.  The fun thing is, by season’s end, I think the offensive line held their own.  The 3 Bs in the interior all return.  Byrant Browning played so much better at right guard than at right tackle *cringe*.  Michael Brewster concluded his second year as a starter.  Minus some gaffes in pass protection, I think Brewster has done well and I look forward to continued improvement from him and left guard Justin Boren.  Consistency at both tackle positions is greatly desired and, well, we may be a way from it.  Preliminary speculation has JB Shugarts on the move to left tackle and Marcus Hall starting the offseason in a good position to claim right tackle.  Seantrel Henderson, should he arrive in Columbus, may complicate this picture (in a good way).  This is important because the interior of the line has demonstrated great performance at run-blocking, but are not as proficient at pass-blocking.  However, opposing defenses will try to take that away with run blitzes, put Ohio State behind down and distance and blitz liberally to get to Pryor.  Protection off the edges (on Pryor’s blindside especially) will go a long way to making Ohio State’s offense more than one-dimensional.

Others identified the running back position, and I’m glad they did.  The offensive line heard it from winter to summer in 2009, but came out and performed fairly well given the circumstances (defenses sending more bodies than they could handle).  Last year, I think we were all pressing the panic button at this time.  Now, I think we just want them to take it to the next level.  It’s the tailbacks that disappointed this year.  Football is a team effort, as we know.  While the 2008 season demonstrated that good football fans will always look to the line of scrimmage to see what’s happening there, I think this past season demonstrated that a good tailback can make everything look better.  In 2008, we had an offensive line that was not worthy of Beanie.  In 2009, I think we had a tailback tandem that could’ve done more for their offensive line.  El Caballo picked up on this.  The problem I see with the tailbacks is mostly in their vision.  I think Herron and Saine could do a much better job reading what’s in front of them rather than plowing forward, into blockers or defenders, for a menial gain.  When this happens, the common perception may be that the offensive line is not getting a push and is getting dominated up front.  In reality, the tailbacks could do a better job reading where the hole is, reading Zach Boren crushing a defender and opening the C gap for a big gain.  Proper vision would allow a back like Saine to demonstrate the open-field explosiveness many wanted from him coming out of Piqua.  To this extent, it may be Doc Tressel, and not Jim Bollman, that is the assistant coach on the clock.  Fortunately, the Buckeyes have plenty of options and I hope they’ll use them all in order to find the best fit.

Others considered by the crowd included the wide receivers and the secondary.  Jermale Hines will likely get a starting position in the secondary.  What I think we would like from him is some leadership on the defense.  Likewise, the receivers will want to step it up and dispel the notion that Ohio State can’t have a productive pass offense.  Future is bright here, of course.

04. Fill in the blank for the following: If the Buckeyes are playing for a national title in Glendale, it’s because ____________________.  If the Buckeyes are not playing for a national title come bowl time, we’ll look to ____________________ as reason why.  The single biggest barrier on our schedule to an undefeated campaign is ____________________ and ____________________, a team not normally at the top of the heap, may be a potential upset.

This was an open-ended question with multiple components and I want to be brief. In the first part, we know that Ohio State will have to go undefeated because we know that the SEC has an automatic birthright for a national championship opportunity and we can’t assume that the Big 12 or Boise State will make it easy for us. To do that, several of you identified the offensive line and Pryor as important pieces. If their respective Rose Bowl performances were flukes, we know Ohio State will fall short regardless of how good the defense may be in 2010.  In hindsight, I don’t think that question was as deep as I intended.

There was a lot of variation on the second part of that question.  Myself, I think Wisconsin is the big road test.  As a college student in the early to mid 2000s, I’ll always think of Camp Randall as the Big Ten’s Hell on Earth stadium.  Wisconsin, in Camp Randall, terrifies me much more than Wisconsin anywhere else.  This year, they’re returning more pieces than Iowa, the other scary also-ran from the 2009 season, and will likely have this game circled on their calendar given th bizarre nature of the loss in the Horseshoe in 2009.  This, more than Miami or Penn State at home, I have as the toughest game on our schedule in 2010.  This seemed to be the common choice, but there was some variation.  Some flipped Iowa and Wisconsin in the third and fourth parts of the question above.  FTE has Miami as the top team on the schedule.

Meanwhile, the fourth part was a little difficult to answer given the top-heavy nature we typically afford to the Big Ten and the ambiguities in the questions.  As mentioned earlier, some flipped Wisconsin and Iowa in their answers contingent on how they viewed both programs broadly speaking.  FTE has Michigan as the potential upset, as did El Kabong.  TnB added Minnesota who, under Tim Brewster, I struggle to take seriously.  Purdue seems like the natural fit in this question.  They’re the only Big Ten program I can’t get a read on precisely because the staff there finished only their first year.  Further, there may be some momentum in West Lafayette heading into 2010 under the new head coach and, dare I say, they did kind of beat us in 2009

Lame.

05. The following are my opinions, but they lead to my point. I think Nathan Williams was the breakout player of 2008, turning in an impressive freshman season. Likewise, Dave may not have been our guy in 2009, but true freshman Zach Boren stood out to me in 2009, especially in planting Sean Lee into the turf in hopes that he may take root in Beaver Stadium through the winter. This time next year, who will we talk about as breakout players on either side of the ball? It doesn’t have to be a freshman, as players like Orhian Johnson, and Travis Howard are in the mix.

Lot of options here and people chose accordingly. Browniebuck wants Mike Adams to become a self-fulfilling prophecy and hopes that his junior campaign will be the time it gets done. The linebacker picture came up her. Specifically, whoever gets Austin Spitler’s vacated spot (likely Etienne Sabino) will probably be a breakout performer, says FTE, poop, Brandon and El Kabong. Others like James Jackson, Jake Stoneburner and John Simon, already a bit of a breakout in 2009, were mentioned as well.

As for me, my hunch is Orhian Johnson will shine on the defense in 2010, fulfilling my prophecy of yesteryear when I called him a shooting guard in the secondary. On offense, the name I keep hearing in the ol’ rumor mills is Chris Fields, as Brandon also deduced.

Lest we forget: there’s also the Donnie.

Extra Credit

Who’s the greater American? Ricky Stanzi or J Leman? The evidence for Ricky Stanzi (Exhibits A, B, C) and, of course, the case for J Leman below.

Trick question: Leman and Stanzi are one, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Oh, and Yoyd Bridges es más macho. Es obvio que Yoyd Bridges es más macho…

Steve McCroskey thinks you picked the wrong week to quit drinking and Leman and Stanzi think you’d go out and buy a 6-pack if you really loved America.