Our Honor Defend

There’s still shooty hoops ongoing. In fact, the Big Ten tournament continues today as the #1 seed Ohio State Buckeyes get a rubber match with the Wolvereenies (Noon ET, ESPN)¹. Nevertheless, the football-starved should delight in the fact that a Thursday 6AM workout was open to the media.  Local media outlets and media outlets specializing in Ohio State athletics took up the offer from the coaching staff and, as such, we get a fascinating look into the work being done this early into the calendar year, complete with video.

I don’t claim to be a fitness expert, so I can’t really speak to any possibility that what you’re seeing in the video is something new, or some a twist on normal workouts aimed at maximizing fitness for the upcoming fall.  The layman in me on these matters can say, with certainty, that I got tired just looking at it.  More to the matter of “who looked good and who didn’t”, here’s what I’ve been able to gather in what I watched and so on.

• Terrelle Pryor was not favoring the leg on which he recently had surgery.  However, you can tell in further video of him in this workout that he was positively gassed.  This makes sense, after all.  The procedures on the leg have not allowed him to do conditioning drills and maintain endurance.  It showed.  Not a biggie, but worth noting.
• I think Jaamal Berry was wearing a brace of some kind on his right ankle.  It was either some kind of brace or a bulky sock.
• Tyler Moeller was in and running well, actually.  This surprised me as I was expecting him to be showing some of the same fatigue that Pryor showed, but this appeared to come only at the very end of the workout.  FWIW, Moeller was running with the safeties.
• Jake Stoneburner owned the long hair look (see above).  On this, I wholeheartedly approve.  Ken Guiton has a bit of a ‘fro going.  Marcus Hall was rocking the mohawk and Donnie Evege was looking spectacular, as always, with his mane.  This concludes the hair commentary part of this post.
• Chimdi Chekwa and Andrew Sweat are the only other players (other than Pryor) that were doing sideline stuff while everyone else went through the routines.  I know Sweat is coming off surgery (as his roommate Pryor).  Chekwa appears to have some kind of minor injury, as I don’t recall him going into surgery after the season.
• Most of the offensive linemen stood out to me in what I was able to watch.  They all look noticeably leaner and seemed to run very well.  The obvious exception appears to be Justin Boren.  It’s not that he’s unhealthy, just that his frame is what it is.
• Devon Torrence universally stood out as a workout warrior.  I think he was paired with Donnie Evege on the piggyback drills and, together, they both were working it.
• Cam Heyward seems to be taking his role as a senior leader seriously.  He was very visibly the pack leader of the defensive line in drills and seriously chewed out Keith Wells for doing a drill incorrectly.
• There was a tug-of-war drill between Adam Bellamy and John Simon where, poor Adam Bellamy, he just didn’t stand a chance at winning that.  John Simon is an anthropomorphized mule.  Pulling people around is kind of a natural function.

The Spring Game is a little over six weeks away.  Hopefully even just 10 minutes of watching the Buckeye football players piggyback each other and chase each other through circle-eights got you that much more excited.

1. So I can’t watch… balls… [↩]