I'm not going to pretend to know more than I do, which isn't much. But there are some things that past OSU coaches have said about holding things back that should always be in the back of our minds.
Chief among these, and I don't remember who said it, is that in order to break a tendency you have to establish a tendency. I don't know how much our current coaches do this, but the coach who said it certainly did it. Other coaches may not have said it, but late in the year it was pretty clear that they did it.
Did you notice that I said
I don't know how much our current coaches do this? I should have said I don't know
IF they do this. So the point of this post is not to say that anyone else is wrong. What I will say though is that there are a great many people, both in the media and on this board, that are way too sure of things that they clearly don't know much about.
Most of us have seen this for decades (centuries in
@BB73 's case): Someone will say, "We do X too much. We should do Y instead." Then, when the coach breaks the tendency that he so firmly established, it works. The person who said the above then struts about like a rooster taking credit for the sunrise. People usually let them take their victory lap. Then when they return from their victory lap they wonder why all of the pats on the back they get make their arm hurt. (To those of you from that state up north, I'm implying that the only person patting them on the back is themselves)
There are other reasons that coaches hold things back apart from establishing tendencies. I'm not going to enumerate them, partly because I would be sure to miss a fair few things, but mostly because those things are not the point.
I don't mind people talking Xs and Os. I do it myself from time to time. Talking Xs and Ox is not the problem. Telling people that you have answers that our current coaches don't have: that's a problem. While it's happened in the past, I doubt anyone here currently would explicitly say that they are smarter than our current HC and coordinators. What does happen, more often in the media, but also sometimes here, is that people will say things that make the implication unmistakable.
Talk Xs and Os. Criticize coaching decisions (the coaches themselves have done that lately). But when posting on this board, realize that you are posting on this board and that no one who posts on this board knows as much about football as people who coach FBS football for a living. Also realize that many of the people who do coach FBS football for a living get taken to school by Ryan Day and Kevin Wilson on a weekly basis. You are not smarter than them. You do not know things they don't.
Most of this is directed at people in the media though. As I've said elsewhere recently, part of sports media is made up of the sweepings of the coaching industry. While many of them are more knowledgeable than most fans, it is hilarious to see them criticize the guys at the top of an industry that they would still be in if they were sufficiently competent.
