OHIO STATE FOOTBALL
Teamwork already showing for Buckeyes
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Doug Lesmerises
Plain Dealer Reporter
Columbus- Ted Ginn Jr. sprinted in and grabbed a leg - a lineman's leg.
Monday morning was the sixth of nine 6 a.m. workouts Ohio State's football team will undertake this winter, building up to the start of spring practice on March 30. On the turf inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, several players had already been excused to dump their, ahem, exhaustion in the restroom, though one coach made a player finish his windsprint set first.
The drill where players carry teammates 50 yards on their backs had been completed. And now the wheelbarrow drill was in trouble.
Legs in the air, 275-pound lineman Jay Richardson was about to face-plant.
One and then two teammates were unable to hold him up. So in rushed Ginn. The Buckeyes, sweating through gray T-shirts, cheered as Richardson walked on his hands and Ginn held on.
Teamwork. Leadership. Triceps. All were developing during this hourlong session before the team goes to voluntary workouts for two weeks during finals and spring break. But on a team that lost 14 of 24 starters from a 10-2 Fiesta Bowl champion, something else already was developing with nary a shoulder pad nor football in sight.
The competition is already on.
"All this is a gut-check, that's it," said linebacker John Kerr, who will find himself in the most ferocious competition for the three spots vacated by Hawk, Schlegel and Carpenter. "They want to see who's going to be able to go through pain and still perform at a high level."
On the first line when the linebackers ran their short sprints, Kerr, a St. Ignatius grad who will be a senior in the fall, could turn his head one way and see sophomore James Laurinaitis. Look in the other direction and he found sophomore Marcus Freeman, who redshirted with an injury last year, and junior Curtis Terry from Glenville.
Not running all the drills with the linebackers was Mike D'Andrea, the senior from Avon Lake who didn't push it after a knee injury kept him out nearly all of last season. "I want to be smart about it," D'Andrea said. "I'm here for spring ball and fall ball, that's the big thing."
D'Andrea has already spoken with defensive coordinator Jim Heacock about possibly assuming Carpenter's hybrid linebacker/defensive end role, which he'd done briefly in the past. He'll happily fit in anywhere. But he, too, already knows the fight is on.
"You're always going to be seeing who your competition is," D'Andrea said.
Defensive lineman Quinn Pitcock, another player who didn't do the full drills while claiming he'd be fine for spring, watched closely as well.
"You don't have to look for the people competing," he said. "They stick out.
You have to look for the guys that may not be competing, that may have a negative attitude that day, and push them an extra mile. The guys that are doing everything right, they'll always stick out."
The most noticeable absence from the drills was running back Antonio Pittman, the Buckeyes' leading rusher in 2005, who was there and dressed and took part in the calisthenics warm-up. Asked about Pittman's status, coach Jim Tressel gave no indication of a serious problem.
"He's just got some muscle aches," Tressel said. "I don't know if it's that 1,300-yard ache, but he's fine."
Skeete back:
Kicker Jonathan Skeete, who was removed from the team after an arrest for marijuana trafficking in May and later pleaded guilty to one charge of felony drug trafficking, is with the team as a walk-on candidate.
"He's trying out," Tressel said. "He was readmitted to the university, therefore he should get any right of any other student."
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