Dispatch
OHIO STATE FOOTBALL
Starters on defense still hard to identify
Early games apt to be shakedown cruise
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Ken Gordon
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Three weeks of preseason camp left the Ohio State defensive picture as clear as mud.
The same questions surround the Buckeyes now as they did entering camp: How well can OSU replace nine starters? And who is going to step up and seize starting roles?
This doesn’t necessarily mean the Buckeyes will struggle on defense; it means they’re still struggling to figure out who should play.
At the first game-week news conference of the season, coach Jim Tressel rendered the defensive depth chart irrelevant.
"We’re going to play a number of players," he said of Saturday’s season opener against Northern Illinois. "I think that’s what you do early in the year for a lot of reasons, one of which I think is a lot of guys deserve to play.
"When you look at our depth chart, maybe at the start of the Big Ten schedule, you’ll really see what our depth chart is. I don’t know that there will be great changes, I’m not saying that, I’m saying I think we’ll know."
In other words, Tressel hopes the reason for an unsettled two-deep is because the Buckeyes are too deep.
Even the defensive players themselves aren’t sure who is starting at certain positions.
"I’ve been asking a lot, even in the back end (secondary), ‘Who’s playing?’ " defensive tackle Quinn Pitcock said. "No one knows. Everybody is kind of rotating in and out, no one is really sure."
Fittingly, the only defensive back Pitcock singled out as having caught his eye — freshman Kurt Coleman — is not listed as first- or second-team.
But as Tressel said, check back in three weeks before the Big Ten opener against Penn State. The competitions that were kindled in the spring and raged the past three weeks are still burning bright.
"Jobs are still up for grabs," linebacker John Kerr said. "I believe the fighting is going to go on for a long time; it’s far from over. This is a big game for a lot of guys to see who performs, who’s going to be reliable."
Some spots are more set than others. It’s clear that Pitcock and David Patterson are the tackles. The starting linebacking trio of Kerr, James Laurinaitis and Marcus Freeman is pretty solid for now, and Malcolm Jenkins has one corner spot tightly locked down.
But there are some linebackers pushing hard, such as Tyler Moeller, Ross Homan and Larry Grant. Four players are solidly competing for the two defensive end spots: Jay Richardson, Alex Barrow, Vernon Gholston and Lawrence Wilson.
And the secondary other than Jenkins is the defense’s version of the Wild West.
"It’s wide open right now," Jenkins said. "Everybody has done a great job competing. It’s making it hard for coaches to choose one person. As long as everybody keeps competing and playing well, there will be a rotation for at least two or three games."
That rotation might look like musical chairs Saturday. The music might not stop until the end of September.
"I think you may see a little more substitution when it comes to the back seven, and I think for two reasons," Tressel said. "One, to find out for sure who should be ahead of whom. And secondly, we think we have a decent number of guys that are capable, and we’ll see how they do when they get their opportunities."
[email protected]
Dispatch
COMMENTARY
Tressel left guessing just like rest of us
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
BOB HUNTER
SHARI LEWIS DISPATCH Ohio State coach Jim Tressel answers questions from members of the news media during a luncheon at the Jack Nicklaus Museum.
Before Jim Tressel’s first weekly news conference of the season began, Ohio State spokesman Steve Snapp announced that the "experts" — his description of two OSU assistant coaches — would be available to reporters instead of the coach after practice today.
A smiling Tressel made a joke out of it as soon as he got behind the microphone.
"It’s good to know that I’m not one of the experts ... " he said.
Tressel is Ohio State football expert No. 1, of course, which is only one reason that exchange seemed so ironic. For all of the questions Tressel fielded from reporters yesterday, the ones in the minds of most people are the questions that even he can’t answer. He can tell you what he thinks of Northern Illinois running back Garrett Wolfe, who despite his small stature sounds like a cross between Jim Thorpe and Jim Brown; explain why he admires NIU coach Joe Novak, who sounds a lot like Vince Lombardi; and tell you enough about the Huskies — a "fighting, tough, nasty bunch" — to make you wonder whether it’s a good idea to allow your wife and kids to get within 500 feet of these monsters in the stadium.
Closer to home, Tressel can describe how Ohio State’s inexperienced defensive players "have similar athletic abilities" to the previous ones, relay how much confidence he has in his new kickers, say that freshman running back Chris Wells "looks even quicker" than he did in the spring and conclude that senior quarterback Troy Smith will do "a significant amount" of checking off at the line of scrimmage this season.
What Tressel can’t tell the media or anybody else is whether the No. 1 Buckeyes are going to be as good as poll voters, or even he and his coaches, think they are. No matter how much confidence he has in his young defense, he doesn’t know for sure whether it will let him down this Saturday or next week against Texas. He knows his players are big and strong and fast; that, unfortunately, does not definitively answer the question. Only games can do that.
"I think the next assessment is all about playing football, and playing football over time," he said. "And the thing about, Nate Salley, the thing about Donte Whitner is they were always there. I remember the time when Donte Whitner had a knee surgery and was back in eight days. He was just always there for you. I think the original assessment of height, weight, speed, I think we’re fine, now we’ll find out footballwise and that’s what the season’s for."
But news conferences are for questions, and before the season opener, there are always a lot of them. While experience tells us that Tressel would probably encrypt his response in a smooth, indecipherable lather even if he knew exactly what was going to happen, it’s clear that this is not a coverup.
When the season isn’t even one down old, even the coach is dealing in supposition. He would like to know what’s going to happen even more than the rest of us.
So it is that a reporter asks whether these kickers are more mature than they were a year ago, and Tressel quite honestly says he doesn’t know.
"I don’t know that you know until you get out there and the other jerseys are rushing you and the crowd is full," he said.
What this says is that if he doesn’t know, the expert leaning on the fence in your back yard, the expert on the bar stool next to you and the expert at the office water cooler are mostly talking for their own amusement. There are lots of people who think they have all the answers before the season begins. The more certain they are of their "knowledge" of what lies ahead, the dumber they probably are.
Tressel isn’t even sure what to think of that experienced, explosive offense he has.
"I don’t think we know for sure who we are right now," he said.
A real expert knows that finding out might take a while.
Bob Hunter is a sports columnist for The Dispatch .
[email protected]
