Three Preseason Storylines: Defensive Line

The battle is won and lost in the trenches. Case in point we rewind back to the year 2007. Urban Meyer and his Florida Gators defensive line tore through the Buckeyes like they were stuck in cement. We remember the outcome so lets fast forward to 2014 and the Urban Meyer Buckeyes. Six and a half years later and Urban has a defensive line that is as talented as that team that broke our hearts. Lets look at the three storylines..

1. Depth New defensive line coach Larry Johnson says “You like to play eight to nine guys, who feel can go in and contribute in the course of a game.”

Depth is something that the Buckeyes have even with suspensions to Noah Spence (2 games) and Tracy Sprinkle (1 Game). Senior stud Michael Bennett will lead the way with sophomore Joey Bosa, junior Adolphus Washington, senior Steve Miller as your probable starters. Rotating in junior Chris Carter, junior Tommy Schutt, senior Rashad Fraszier, freshmen Jaylin Holmes and Tyquan Lewis.

2.Match-ups Pick your poison on who you want to double team. Pick one and one of the other three will hurt you. This has the chance and capability to be the best defensive front in all of college football. These wrecking balls are going to create so much havoc and chaos for opposing offensive lines and quarterbacks its going to be a joy to watch this season.

Last season the Buckeye front line was ninth in the nation in rush defense only allowing 109.4 yards per game. The combination of Bosa, Spence, Bennett, and Washington had 24 sacks with Washington only having two of those something he needs to improve on.

3.Coaching Who would have thought that with the loss of Mike Vrable going to the NFL that the Buckeyes might actually get a better coach. That’s what Ohio State seems to do. Thanks to Penn State spurning Larry Johnson Sr for their head coaching job again Urban came in and made one heck of a hire. Many of the kids on the team already were familiar with Johnson and wanted to play for him at Penn State but chose to play for Meyer and now they have the best of both worlds.

This defensive line is going to be the start of the Silver Bullets returning to the Grid Iron on Saturdays and I for one am so excited to watch them play.

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