The 2009 version of Ohio State’s 2nd biggest rival is not as good as advertised. To date, they have played one quality opponent and lost. Their out-of-conference schedule was about as weak as Pee-Wee Herman before puberty.

The above gaggle of “teams” is an embarrassment to Penn State and the rest of the Big Ten. But with that said, the Nittany Lions dug deep and somehow powered through their OOC schedule in heroic form. The only teams missing from this stellar collection of world beaters were East Poughkeepsie Tech, Baghdad School for the Criminally Insane and Nationwide Insurance’s softball team.

The bottom line is that Penn State scheduling these teams only hurts them against teams like Iowa and Ohio State . Against Iowa, Penn State struggled to move the ball the entire game and Daryll Clark had his worst game of his career. On the other side of the ball Iowa was able to run the ball the entire night finishing with 163 yards on the ground.

If one takes a look at OSU’s/PSU’s common opponents, the results are similar: both teams handled their business on their way to easy wins.

For all the flak that Ohio State gets regarding their offense, they have outscored even mighty Penn State and their dynamic spread HD offense. Penn State does have the nation’s #1 defense, but I’d guess that if Penn State actually had to play good football teams that rank would be different. Even though Ohio State has clearly played the tougher schedule, Ohio State has the 6th best defense in the country. Very impressive.

Daryll Clark, the Penn State quarterback, has been inconsistent when the light has been the brightest on the Nittany Lions. Last year he played poorly against Ohio State [and he didn’t even finish the game -ed], Iowa and USC. This year, against Iowa he was awful. Many people talk about Terrelle Pryor being a weakness for Ohio State, yet somehow Clark gets a free pass.

In big games, Clark has averaged 169 yards passing, less than a TD, almost 2 INT’s, and 48.65% of his passes completed per big game. Not good. With numbers like those I believe Clark should move to wide receiver, at least for big games. This Ohio State defense will be the best defense he has played all year.

Now make no mistake, this Penn State team is a talented one. They will be at home and they will be hungry. Their defense is one of the best in the country and will be facing a very young, inexperienced and inconsistent offense.

The fact is, no one knows how good this Penn State team really is. Year after year, they seem to schedule the weakest opponents under the sun and this year was one of the worst I’ve ever seen from them.

Keys For Each Team

Ohio State Offense:

1. No turnovers — The Buckeyes cannot afford to put their defense in bad positions time after time. Please see Purdue game.
2. At least two Earth shattering plays by Pryor will be needed. Either running or passing, Pryor needs to deliver a couple knockout blows.
3. Get Jordan Hall carries… lots of them.
4. Minimize drive killing penalties.

Penn State Offense:

1. Make sure Joe Paterno’s milk is warm before pregame.
2. Get Royster and Chaz Powell (TE) involved vs. Buckeye LBers in the passing game. Both players are deadly.
3. Prepare Paterno’s “Everybody Poops” station at halftime. Make sure to stock Depends and baby wipes every 25 feet.

Ohio State Defense:

1. PSU runs a pro style offense, very close to what USC does. Just not as good. Don’t change a thing from that game plan.
2. Attack the edges. Ohio States strength comes from its defensive line. Gibson and Williams need huge games.
3. Create turnovers. If Ohio State wins this battle, they win rather easily.

Penn State Defense:

1. Blitz Pryor. Every team OSU has played has loaded up the box and come after Pryor. The OSU offensive line has been…bad at times picking up blitzes and blocking speed rushers.
2. See above.
3. See above.

Prediction time! This week, we’re giving away another copy of Busted: The Rise and Fall of Art Schlichterto the closest prediction of the final score of the OSU/Penn State game. (Vegas is currently favoring Penn State by 5)

In addition to the final score, let’s consider a few other things on which to prognosticate:

Who has the bigger offensive impact on the game (total yards and TDs): Pryor or Clark?
As an aside, does Clark even make it to the end of the game (unlike last year)?
Does JoePa make another 1st half 55-yard dash?
Which defense gives up more rushing yards?

el Kaiser’s predictions:
OSU: 24 PSU: 20
Pryor outgains Clark and Clark survives brutal beatings by Maximus and Nathan Williams.
We’re at Beaver Stadium, so I’m assuming they’ve installed facilities nearby for the feeble JoePa
OSU has regularly shut down previously unstoppable PSU RBs, so I say PSU gives up more yards after Pryor breaks off a couple big ones.

Well…there are 3 games left…

Just three more games of potential offensive play-calling ridicule, certain offensive execution angst, probable instant replay tomfoolery, elation toward a stellar defense, and quite honestly a quick glance at a watch to say “Wha’ Happened?”

I have often referred to a great orator and scholar on the not so recently demised DeathCabforWoody who uttered a quote that can be referenced in almost everything we do in life…

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”

~Michael Tyson esq.

The above said “punch in the face” occurred after turnover number four in the Purdue game. There were questions of a certain quarterback’s intelligence, ability and overall courage. I, myself, questioned some of these character flaws/qualities in the make-up of Terrelle Pryor. There was plenty of vitriol waiting to be spewed all over my pad on that frustrating and crap-tabulous Saturday. I had contemplated posting early that week, but needed to take a step back and let this thing play out a little bit before making a irrational statements fresh off of the Purdue debacle.

Now it is the Thursday after the NM State game and the spotlight is still on the Pryor. He is a little banged up and is facing a stout (fat) Penn State team that has been eating creampuffs all year at an alarming rate.

I wont lie to you guys (and the 2 ladies that read this blog, including mi madre). Penn State week is the equivalent of Hate Week on EDSBS for me. I cant stand UM, but I respect the hell out of them. I absolutely loathe everything about Penn State and it’s fanbase that you possibly could. From the urine bag incidents in 2005 to the beer can throwing mothertrucker in 2007. Every time my beloved school visits that effing hellhole of a university in the middle of a cornfield, something ridiculous is bound to happen. I have no idea what it might be this time, but I am sure it will be disregarded as general tomfoolery by those pesky whippersnapper Penn State fans and alumni (Ya know…they got Joe Paterno over there, so everything that happens out there is ok, because dagummit…JoePa is such a cute and ornery old man…dont look over there at that visiting fan being accosted…look at JoePa…hey have some of this overrated ice cream)

The game itself is pretty simple. Get pressure on Clark and keep the OSU turnover machine (Pryor) from imploding and OSU wins. Easier said than done…but it can be done. OSU’s defense is spectacular this year and pressure mixed with Clark (…amazing that everyone rags on Pryor for his lack of composure with pressure, but the 18th year senior Clark gets a pass) equals a recipe for victory…especially since Devlin isnt there to save them this year (lol…lol…).

OSU has a great defense…Penn State has a good consistent offense with a bunch of new receivers and offensive linemen.

PSU has a good defense…OSU has an x-factor offense that can be explosivo or very Purdue game-ish.

I dont know who is going to win…I hope that TP can shut people up for a week until he is matched up against the real human turnover machine in the Big10…Stanzi.

What I do know is that something will happen before, during or after game to unsuspecting OSU fans through actions of the Penn State faithful (urine, full beer cans, spitting, seesawing, gargoyling..and these are the in-stadium activities). It is like October baseball in New York…you can just feel it in the air. Godspeed to any traveling Buckeye fans.

Btw…In proper football news (that maybe 5% of the reading audience will understand and appreciate), Liverpool has decided that it would no longer like to be competitive with the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal this season. Goodbye Premier League Title (Suck it Barclays)…so long Champions League Knockout Stages…who needs trophies…

YNBA

It’s Penn State week! Let’s all point and <Nelson Laugh>HA HA</Nelson Laugh> at Daryll Clark during the waning moments of the Iowa loss.

When you schedule a game with an opponent like New Mexico State, especially in the middle of the season, you can really only hope to accomplish a few things. You obviously need to win, convincingly. You have the chance to try out a few new wrinkles in your play calling. You must avoid injury of key players and you have to take the opportunity to get playing time for as many players as you can.

The only real winner of a match-up like this is obviously the athletic department of New Mexico State. They get paid and their football team gets to pay the price. Ohio State gains nothing from thumping them. Perhaps the New Mexico State athletes get a chance to taste of playing in an environment such as the Horseshoe, playing against elite athletes like Thaddeus Gibson and Terrelle Pryor. Ask New Mexico State QB #9 Jeff Fleming how much fun that is.

So we come out of Saturday’s game accomplishing most of the goals this game offered. If Aaron Pettrey had escaped unscathed, we’d say things went according to plan. But the way he’s been kicking the ball, maybe his injury was a blessing in disguise, a chance to work out any kinks he may have let sneak in to his technique.

Everything on defense went just about perfect. Only allowing two first downs was domination. The longest play from scrimmage was a 13 yard scramble by the aforementioned quarterback, Fleming. The defense also took the ball away three times, once in the endzone for a score. Holding a Division 1A school to under 100 yards of offense earns this Buckeye unit that rotated in a lot of reserves a million Buckeye Leaves.

The offense was Favre-like (it looked like they were just having fun). The trick play was fun to watch, I don’t care what those dunderheads on the radio say about it. Why not try something different? We’ve been saying Pryor should be a wide receiver (never meaning it, of course) and he was actually Posey’s first option. We should be happy, right? Of course, Posey looked him off to go deep to Sanzenbacher. Ironic.

Everything wasn’t perfect on offense. It was apparent that the Aggies were determined to stop the run and had moderate success at first. Of course the Buckeye line wore them out and there are just too many athletes to through at them. They were overpowered and overmatched. Seriously, how many backs carried the rock for Ohio State? Six? Eight? That was impressive.

One thing in the passing game I noticed was that the receivers seem to be out of sync at times with Pryor’s passing. It seems like they are used to his balls being under thrown and are have been slowing down on their deep routes. Couple this with Pryor’s passes appearing to be better thrown is causing for lots of missed opportunities. Almost as if a little trust has been lost. Let’s hope they get back on the same page.

All of that leads us to the next three weeks. Murderer’s row, if by murderers you mean a couple of slap fighting pansies and whatever abomination of a team Michigan is going to field on the 21st.

I’m heading to the ‘Shoe here in a minute to see the game in person (yay for lame Alumni Tickets!) but am planning on watching the rest of the slate of games when I get back. I’ve got the in-game chat embedded after the jump.

Feel free to drop a note in the comments on any of the games today, or anything else that’s on your mind.

[Read more…]

I wonder what it’s like to be a football player at a school like New Mexico State. New Mexico isn’t exactly a hotbed of high school football (a good friend of mine told me some interesting stories of his days on his high school football in the middle-of-nowhere New Mexico. They were passionate but not necessarily talented). So you’re not exactly the cream of the crop. But at the same time, you are playing division 1A football and you are living the dream, whether you win or not. Still, it can’t be fun playing on a bad team gearing up to play one of the best programs in the country.

Lambs to the slaughter.

I used to scoff at ranking schools on an academic scale. I went to Ohio State to study electrical engineering and always laughed at the idea that someone’s education at, say, MIT, could be any better than what I was getting. I mean seriously, were they learning nuances of Ohm’s Law that we didn’t get? I’m pretty sure there wasn’t much left to interpretation. Same goes for pretty much everything else. Math and physics are pretty much set in stone. They weren’t operating under a different set of assumptions. The equations are the same on OSU graph paper as on MIT’s graph paper. But while Ohio State’s EE department was ranked in the top 30, MIT was consistently one or two. I didn’t get it.

Then, I went to my first academic conference where a lot of the presentations were done by MIT and then later I interviewed at Lincoln Labs at MIT it became clear what the difference was. It wasn’t one single thing, either. It was a combination of the people, the opportunities, but more than anything, it was the facilities. Some of the things we had in our labs were twenty year hand-me-downs while MIT had bleeding edge equipment. It was suddenly all very clear.

All that is to say that Ohio State is college football’s MIT. It’s on a different level. New Mexico State is not a very good team. They don’t have the facilities that Ohio State has at its disposal. They don’t have top athletes. Things come easy to OSU. New Mexico State has to fight for everything it has (which isn’t much).

So there’s no breakdown, no match-ups, no hidden strategies. This is a straight-forward game where Ohio State will dominate New Mexico State with extreme prejudice in every facet of the game. We’ve already looked at the statistics. This is a tune-up, a walk through. This isn’t even a scrimmage. This is a massacre.

Vegas is giving New Mexico State 44 points. I have no idea what to even propose for predictions. And since we’re gearing up for three intriguing games to close the season (with some really cool give-aways to boot) that for this week, we’ll just ask for your predictions for the final score. And how much time is left in the third quarter when Joe Bauserman plays.

el Kaiser’s predictions:
OSU: 42 NMSU: 0
Bauserman comes in at the 8-minute mark of the third quarter and leads two scoring drives.

sportsMonkey’s predictions:
OSU: 52 NMSU: 3
Defense plays well enough for a shutout but is likely to be betrayed again by the offense turning the ball over in their own red zone. Pryor will play through the 3rd, and perhaps even a series in the 4th if the Bucks have the ball at the start of the quarter. High points because I think the defense and/or special teams will score (or at least set up several scores on short drives).

Yes, Virginia, this could get ugly.

That 72% Red Zone conversion sticks in my craw something fierce. Other thoughts?

(el Kaiser here. This post is the first of MotSaG’s newest contributor, Johnny Utah (aka Kade from the comments). Have a read and welcome Johnny as our newest member.)

Terrelle Pryor is not a wide receiver, a strong safety or a defensive end. Terrelle Pryor is a quarterback. He will remain a quarterback until his career at THE Ohio State University is finished. Pryor may end up playing another position at the next level like players before him. He can worry about that after he is handed his 4th pair of gold pants.

Pryor is the victim of out of this world expectations brought on by a fan base that is known for being not only the best fans in the country, but often times the worst fans in the country. On many recruiting lists, he was the #1 recruit in the nation after putting up staggering numbers in high school and leading his team to back to back State Championship games. He was a man among boys. He was Superman — at least in the eyes of many Buckeye fans.

After an impressive freshman year, Pryor’s sophomore season has been a very inconsistent one. With a sharp increase in turnovers from his freshman year, Pryor’s detractors have included everyone from skeptical Ohio State fans, to the ever so dreamy [I know, right? – ed] Kirk Herbstreit to just about every other annoying talking head in college football.

Pryor, like every other player in college football (Tim Tebow included) certainly has things that he needs to improve on:

• Pryor needs to look off receivers, as he continually locks onto them. Watching him throughout the year, he locks onto a single receiver, will pat the ball multiple times and fire away. For obvious reasons, this can be disastrous. Pryor seems to easily fall in love with the prettiest girl at the dance — in this case, Posey. Pryor needs to be a Casanova and spread the love around or at least make it look like he is going to spread the love.
• Throw the ball away. Yes, when you are pressured it’s okay to put away the red cape, remove the “S” on your chest and simply throw the magic bean away.
• See open receiver – throw ball. He seems to wait far too long to throw the ball to open receivers. A receiver will not get more open than when he breaks his route. When a receiver creates separation, the ball needs to be thrown on time because the covering defender will only close that separation gap and be able to make a play on the ball. This has happened far too often. It has cost Pryor interceptions, completions and big plays. Just read and react — too much thinking is a bad thing sometimes.
• Poise during pressure. In situations when Pryor is pressured, his mechanics completely break down and he rarely delivers an accurate ball. He needs to stand in the pocket and make the throw. Pryor’s throwing mechanics are already inconsistent.
• This may seem like a small thing, but he needs to carry out his fakes each and every time. On the zone read option, after handing off, he needs to continue like he has the ball. This will help keep the backside DE/OLB from tackling OSU’s RB and will also open him up for big plays down the road.
• When he runs, he needs to run more north/south. Hit the running lanes quicker and harder. This is something that he could learn from Tim Tebow. He is bigger, stronger and much faster than Tebow. If Pryor did this he would be lethal.
• Most importantly, Pryor needs to control his emotions and his attitude during games and play football.

We all know that Pryor can do many things to improve his game and be more consistent. With that said, Pryor is often times not helped by other factors. The game of football is of course the ultimate team game.

First and foremost, Pryor struggles the most when the offensive line breaks down. The unfortunate thing for Pryor is that this offensive line is very young and like Pryor, still learning. It’s very difficult for any QB to be effective when running for their life. The Purdue game is a great example of that. Pryor had defenders in his face on a consistent basis and it cost OSU. Many blamed the Purdue loss solely on Pryor, but if you look deeper, the offensive line was very much to blame.

Very much related to the issues on the offensive line is the fact that OSU’s running game is not nearly as productive as it was last year. Pryor excelled last year using play-action passing off a super star running back and veteran offensive line. I’m not saying last years offensive line was award winning, but it was clearly better than this year’s model. This year’s line was pushed around by Navy for God’s sake! When teams aren’t afraid of the running game, play-action doesn’t work. It makes it more difficult to create separation as a wideout and only adds LBs and secondary to defend the pass.

Youth on the offense — it’s staggering when you look at the offensive depth chart and see just how many underclassmen are starting for the Buckeyes. (See table at the right)

7 of the 11 starters on offense are either freshmen or sophomores. Jordan Hall may be starting for a concussed Brandon Saine this week vs. mighty New Mexico State. 3 of 5 linemen are sophomores and there is 1 – count ’em – 1 senior starter on offense: Jake Ballard. The entire offense is a work in progress, not just Terrelle Pryor. The rest of the offense is learning just as Pryor is learning. People act as if Pryor is the only player on the OSU offense that is making mistakes. What they don’t seem to realize or don’t want to realize is that these other young players are making mistakes too; players dropping passes and running the wrong routes, linemen missing blocks, running backs missing blitz pickups and not reading running lanes properly.

All of these things contribute to Pryor’s inconsistency.

Many people have compared Pryor to Vince Young. Terrelle is not Vince and never will be. Terrelle Pryor will never be anyone but Terrelle Pryor. He is already a very special player and he is only 20 years old. People seem to forget that he is a true sophomore, a college student and still very much a kid.

That “kid,” for all his flaws and inconsistencies this year has 2 of the top 9 total yards by an Ohio State player in their history, both coming this year.

372 vs. Toledo

343 vs. Minnesota

This coming from a quarterback that some fans and talking heads want moved to wide receiver. Pryor is a very special player and can do things that no other player in college football can do. I remember watching the OSU at PSU game from 2005, the game that OSU lost 17-10. Troy Smith was playing poorly and was ruthlessly being heckled by some guy at the party. He said that Troy Smith was not a quarterback, but an athlete playing quarterback. A year later Troy Smith was busy winning the Heisman and guiding Ohio State to the National Title game. I often wonder if that guy heckling Smith was ever fitted for a helmet, because he was clearly challenged mentally.

If you are a skeptic of Pryor’s, please keep in mind that the kid is young, the team is young. He will continue to improve. If you are already a fan of Pryor’s as I am, sit back and enjoy the ride, because Terrelle Pryor is one of the most gifted and unique athletes that has ever played the position of quarterback.