-The difference today was Dwayne Haskins. Man did he completely shred this defense. Man, I am still having a hard time believing that that just happened. Never did I think I would be wanting a Michigan-OSU game to "hurry up and end" like I did with about 7-8 minutes left. Very Rich Rod like.
-Lets start at the top. Ohio State prepared to win this game, and they coached and executed their plan really, really well.
-Earlier in the week, I thought 3 things were very important. The first 2 being most important - get pressure on Haskins, and call an aggressive game offensively. Last was scoring TD's, rather than FG's. It's not like these were highly intelligent points, pretty much everyone would agree. Unfortunately, we were bad (at best) in all 3 areas.
-I'm shocked that we couldn't pressure Haskins at all. I'm not sure if I even saw 1 qb pressure. It's hard to believe. I expected to see us get pressure like OSU did - fairly consistent, and thus forcing Haskins to make quicker decisions. I'm not an X's and O's guy, but I thought we would see much more blitzing in the 2nd half. It's like we just sat back and let them dictate how things would go while they were on offense. This was just a terrible game plan from our defensive coaches.
-If this wasn't a referendum on Jim's offensive approach (call it whatever you want - conservative, man ball, possession offense, whatever), then I'm not sure what is. And understand my context here - I say this as it relates to beating elite type teams. This approach can beat Wisconsin at home, PSU at home, and MSU on the road - but we simply will not beat an elite team with this approach. The execution was not good, but the staff continued to get in the way of a team that seemed to be fighting themselves. The commitment to the run game is hard to understand. We continually set ourselves up for a 3rd down conversion every sequence of downs, because we can't throw twice in a row. The token runs for 1-2 yards killed us today, and put us in way too many predictable 3rd downs.
-Once we went aggressive (after going down 3 scores), we really moved the ball well. Jim missed the fact that this was turning into a high scoring game - rather than adapt and adjust, he continued to force his offensive plan today. Nearly every throw downfield was A) completed B) OSU penalized or C) underthrown. Yet we stuck to the short patterns and runs, for the most part. We have more than enough playmakers to push the ball down field. But we refuse to, unless the game situation 100% calls for it.
-I can't imagine a worse outcome. OSU couldn't have played better, and we couldn't have played much worse.
-Shea Patterson would not be drafted in the upcoming draft, IMO. That was not a good performance, many balls underthrown, etc. That isn't to say he won't leave, but I'd be very surprised to see him get drafted.
-I'll end with this. I said this when JT went down last year - Haskins presents a very unique challenge in that he can really sling it. Haskins is gone to the NFL (IMO), and the "typical" OSU qb doesn't scare me with Don Brown here. Just look at what JT did the last 2 years. Tate Martell is a solid QB, but very, very beatable. My point is this - those saying "we will never beat OSU" are just wrong, IMO. Look at the last 3 years, and this is the outlier. And it's because of Haskins. He came in last year with OSU down, and led them to the win. And he embarrassed us this year.
This was as much me "venting" as it was sharing my thoughts. Such a disappointing day.
-Lets start at the top. Ohio State prepared to win this game, and they coached and executed their plan really, really well.
-Earlier in the week, I thought 3 things were very important. The first 2 being most important - get pressure on Haskins, and call an aggressive game offensively. Last was scoring TD's, rather than FG's. It's not like these were highly intelligent points, pretty much everyone would agree. Unfortunately, we were bad (at best) in all 3 areas.
-I'm shocked that we couldn't pressure Haskins at all. I'm not sure if I even saw 1 qb pressure. It's hard to believe. I expected to see us get pressure like OSU did - fairly consistent, and thus forcing Haskins to make quicker decisions. I'm not an X's and O's guy, but I thought we would see much more blitzing in the 2nd half. It's like we just sat back and let them dictate how things would go while they were on offense. This was just a terrible game plan from our defensive coaches.
-If this wasn't a referendum on Jim's offensive approach (call it whatever you want - conservative, man ball, possession offense, whatever), then I'm not sure what is. And understand my context here - I say this as it relates to beating elite type teams. This approach can beat Wisconsin at home, PSU at home, and MSU on the road - but we simply will not beat an elite team with this approach. The execution was not good, but the staff continued to get in the way of a team that seemed to be fighting themselves. The commitment to the run game is hard to understand. We continually set ourselves up for a 3rd down conversion every sequence of downs, because we can't throw twice in a row. The token runs for 1-2 yards killed us today, and put us in way too many predictable 3rd downs.
-Once we went aggressive (after going down 3 scores), we really moved the ball well. Jim missed the fact that this was turning into a high scoring game - rather than adapt and adjust, he continued to force his offensive plan today. Nearly every throw downfield was A) completed B) OSU penalized or C) underthrown. Yet we stuck to the short patterns and runs, for the most part. We have more than enough playmakers to push the ball down field. But we refuse to, unless the game situation 100% calls for it.
-I can't imagine a worse outcome. OSU couldn't have played better, and we couldn't have played much worse.
-Shea Patterson would not be drafted in the upcoming draft, IMO. That was not a good performance, many balls underthrown, etc. That isn't to say he won't leave, but I'd be very surprised to see him get drafted.
-I'll end with this. I said this when JT went down last year - Haskins presents a very unique challenge in that he can really sling it. Haskins is gone to the NFL (IMO), and the "typical" OSU qb doesn't scare me with Don Brown here. Just look at what JT did the last 2 years. Tate Martell is a solid QB, but very, very beatable. My point is this - those saying "we will never beat OSU" are just wrong, IMO. Look at the last 3 years, and this is the outlier. And it's because of Haskins. He came in last year with OSU down, and led them to the win. And he embarrassed us this year.
This was as much me "venting" as it was sharing my thoughts. Such a disappointing day.
