In The Back Of Our Minds, we Saw This Coming

Yes ladies and gentleman it is Monday morning after the first Ohio State loss in over a year. As if Monday’s aren’t hard enough, we now have to go a whole week thinking about the disaster that was this past Saturday, and pray to God that we are able to turn it around for this coming Saturday when we play TTUN at the Big House.

Lets be honest though, all year long the buckeye coaching staff has tried to convince us that everything is fine, the offense is running smoothly and that they were in control of about every game they were in even though our eyes were telling us that was not the case. Well unfortunately for everyone involved the theory that everything was fine came crashing down Saturday against Michigan State when the Buckeyes lost 17-14 in a game where the offense literally looked completely helpless. Only achieving 5 first downs the whole game, being held to under 200 yards of total offense and ,worst of all, only giving our Heisman Trophy candidate running back 2 carries in the second half, 11 total in the game.

The question at the end of all of those disgusting numbers is, how on God’s green earth can a team with the likes of JT Barrett, Braxton Miller, Zeke Elliot and Michael Thomas be completely shut down? Bottom line is the coaching. All year long fans have clambered about the vanilla play calling and lack of explosive plays from a team that could be considered the most talented and explosive team in Ohio State history, but week after week, game after game, all we were seeing was the same thing over and over. I ,as I’m sure most fans, kept telling myself “we are just playing down to our competition and the coaching staff will have us ready to play when it matters” but unfortunately that was not the case. Before I go any further though I want to be clear, Urban Meyer is the best coach in College football, hands down no questions asked in my opinion. This loss is obviously on his shoulders because he is their head coach, but the blame lies squarely on Tim Beck and Ed Warinner the co -offensive coordinators. Once Tom Herman left to take the head coaching job at the University of Huston Ed was promoted and Tim was brought in from Nebraska to fill the void. Well that void was too big and too full apparently because things have looked awful since.

The real question  is this, where do we go from here? Well like I said earlier, we have to find a way to go to Ann Arbor and win a game just to see where we stand when the dust settles. If MSU beats Penn State next week then they are in the Big Ten Championship Game. If they get beat then we still have a glimmer of hope. Bottom line is if we lose another game this year and the offense looked anything like it did this Saturday then there is a good chance that Tim Beck will be looking for a new job and Ed will simply be worried about his offensive linemen and not the play calling. Let’s all just make sure we say our Hail Mary’s to the Football Gods and pray that we beat TTUN next week or it’s going to be a LONG 12 months till we see them again! Buckeye Pride!

Comments

  1. While the pre-game planning has appeared all season to be too conservative, almost timid, given the level of talent this team has on offense, it is the seeming inability to adjust in-game that is an even bigger issue. It seems that the offensive coordinator position has been a responsibility run by “committee.”

    Those involved in coordinating the offense, especially DURING the game, have competing responsibilities and authorities that detract from the task at hand . . . effectively running the offense during the game. Some one person needs to be the offensive coordinator, with all the responsibility and authority to coach the offense. The offensive position coaches report to him. The dedicated offensive coordinator runs the offense. Completely. When you have multiple people with multiple responsibilities exercising multiple authorities both before, but especially during, the game, you get poor execution.

    Given the talent on this team, the offense should have been scoring 2 touchdowns more per game than it has been and gaining 100-250+ more yards of total offense per game. That is what has been consistent about this year’s offense, its lack of production. That is my humble opinion.

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