I have a theory I’ve been thinking about. The click bait headline is that Brian Hartline is too demanding of his wide receivers.
I think this manifests itself in two ways.
First, the shallow rotation. This has been a back burner discussion for several years which I think came more to the fore this season. As Hartline was taken away from the receiver room, I think he had less time to grow the trust he needed in the backups to develop a better rotation, even compared to previous seasons.
Second, and I think this only became a problem this season as he took over play calling responsibilities, his play calling indicates a lack of trust in his wide receivers, especially with run blocking, which, surprise surprise, manifests itself most severely in the red zone and short yardage plays, which have been a massive problem all season.
In my head, the coaching room conversation goes something like this:
Hartline: “The receivers aren’t perfectly executing their run blocks on every single play (to the theory that he’s too demanding of the WRs), we can’t depend on them in short yardage. Bailey, are your guys ready to go?”
Bailey: “Hell yeah, let’s ride!”
Day: “It looks like the TEs are grading out higher than the WRs (I am assuming the position coaches are responsible for giving out the championship grades here, going back to the main thrust of the theory) in run blocking, I guess we’re going to keep going with three and four TE sets in short yardage and the red zone.”
Hartline: “Good, my guys are bad at run blocking.”
Bailey: “Great, my guys are the greatest ever at everything. Can we put five TEs on the field at the same time?”
Hartline as WR coach with a different person at OC who can override his perfectionism and still use the WRs heavily in all situations has been a great formula for Ohio State.
Hartline as the WR coach and OC with no one to override his perfectionism has, in my opinion, led to the baffling over reliance on TEs this season.
I am hopeful that this will be resolved in the post season with Day taking over more of the play call responsibilities, and longer term with the replacement hires.
Maybe I’m always the Buckeye optimist, but replacing Hartline as the best WR coach in the country is impossible, but replacing Hartline as the WR/OC has room for improvement, even as the WR room might take a hit.
Now I’m really going off the deep end here, I think Hartline’s run of insane WR recruiting was winding down in the age of NIL anyways, as each school can only budget for so many truly elite players per position group and Hartline (or anybody else) isn’t going to be stacking them 4-5 deep per class anymore regardless of how good they are at recruiting.
Again, I think the WR room will likely take a hit, but all of these things mitigate how big that hit will be in my always overly optimistic opinion.
Day has been hitting his coaching hires out of the park, and with the right hires this offseason, I again think he has the chance to improve the overall picture on offense despite the loss of Hartline.
