OPENER | LORD OF NEGLIGENCE
On 4th & 1, Ohio State lined up in a Punt Safe formation designed to guard against 4th & long trickery. MSU easily converted.
I will regret publishing this, but I cannot keep it to myself: Here's how you beat Ohio State in 2023.
Wait. You know what, let's tuck the winning blueprint into a classic Situational text wall so
Connor Stalions - hey Connor, what's up - has to work a little harder to find it (rulebook clarification: pulling intel from blog posts about bourbon is
not an NCAA violation or even poor sportsmanship). So, Nick Siciliano, remember him?
He was affectionately referred to as Jim Tressel's barista both prior to and especially after Tatgate went down. Siciliano was legitimately the Buckeyes' video coordinator, serving as shadow QB coach while QB whisperer Joe Daniels was receiving cancer treatments.
Tressel made this humanitarian arrangement so that Daniels' position would still be available for him when he was well enough to return to coaching, which sadly
he did not. Siciliano had no relevant experience coaching or coaching quarterbacks. That's not whom you place in charge of what Tressel called
the most important job in Ohio.
Siciliano's lacking qualifications
is not a convenient 20/20 hindsight take, but it was a ruse from the outset. Tressel coached the most important position in Ohio during Daniels' medical leave. He looked after Terrelle Pryor himself and would do the same for Braxton Miller. Siciliano was the "QB coach" according to the media guide only.
But then suddenly, Tressel was no longer with the university. Siciliano through no fault of his own found himself exposed, in charge of a QB room serving his new supervisor Luke Fickell, a former nose tackle and defense/special teams (sigh) expert.
Anyway, Siciliano is out of the coaching profession. How it ended wasn't his fault.
The typical Ohio State special teams play under Fleming: An accumulation of mistakes which squander points, momentum or field position.
I think about Siciliano whenever Ohio State's special teams are on the field, wishing there was some comforting explanation for
why this is happening. There is none, and I have Parker Fleming fatigue - both from having
written about his performance already and from still being subjected to it every Saturday.
His origin story diverts from Siciliano's. Fleming isn't a cover for Day to coach his favorite unit.
Fleming was a grad assistant on Urban Meyer's first two Ohio State teams. After the porous 2013 Buckeye defense cost the Buckeyes the B1G championship and a shot at the BCS title, Meyer
"promoted" defensive coordinator Everitt Withers off to James Madison. Fleming went with him to advance his experience.
Two years later, Fleming followed Withers again to Texas State, where he was fired in 2018 following three seasons and just seven wins. He has not had another head coaching position since, bouncing from program to program taking classic journeyman assistant roles.
As for Fleming, once Withers ran out of jobs for him, he returned to Ohio State in 2018, Meyer's final season. He left a grad student and returned as a quality control assistant.
And he's been looking after the Buckeyes' special teams ever since, culpable in
miscommunication after
miscommunication after
miscommunication. What began as Quality Control is now a full-blown coordinatorship, which comes with off-campus
recruiting obligations.
Here's Ohio State currently attempting what Tressel called
the most important play in football:
Make sure you watch until the camera finds Day's reaction shot from the sideline. Note the player running onto the field late to join what's already an illegal formation. This unit has been incoherent since Fleming was put in charge of it.
Ohio State's special teams are an exercise in exhausting amateur hour nonsense too stupid to be real and yet happening e v e r y s i n g l e w e e k. The offense is cresting toward its final form, the defense continues to be one of if not the nation's nastiest - and special teams consistently fail to do the stuff they teach on Day One of Special Teams School.
And a little, annoying, repetitive reminder - most programs don't even have a dedicated special teams coordinator. The Buckeyes are paying an FTE for a function which has performed better than
this for the better part of 125 years without dedicated headcount. We're witnessing history. HR is just kind of watching it happen.
Hopefully Mr. Stalions got as bored reading this as I got writing it and tapped out a few paragraphs above. Okay, shhhhh here's how you beat Ohio State this season:
- Line up in punting formation on 1st down
- Run any non-punt play for positive yardage
- Just keep doing this until points are achieved
- Line up for a 2-point conversion
- (this will draw a timeout from the Buckeyes, as they have not lined up properly or on time for a 2-point conversion literally once since Fleming took over the unit)
- Continue to operate the offense in punting formation
- Ohio State's defense will end the game with an NCAA record zero snaps played
- Score one more point than Ohio State's offense and print your shirts
The longer a team can keep Ohio State's special teams on the field, the better shot it has against the Buckeyes. No one has scored more than 17 on the OSU defense this season, so the path of least resistance is the way. Keep the third unit active. Let's make this our little secret.
It's finally U of M week! No, not that one!
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