THE SITUATIONAL: None of This is True
By
Ramzy Nasrallah on December 18, 2024 at 1:15 pm
@ramzy
© Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean & Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
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Ohio State hired two-time national championship winning coach Urban Meyer 13 years ago. A vocal minority of Buckeye fans had concerns.
First among them was his style of play. However effective it may have been in Gainesville,
the spread betrayed Ohio State's legacy and fight song lyrics. The elder wing was fearful the Buckeyes would pivot to some trendy warm-weather 7-on-7 variant. We would forget who we were!
Power spread with Braxton Miller and Carlos Hyde behind a ferocious OL erased their anxiety. Going 12-0 with a postseason ban as the destination was also pacifying.
This is fine.
Second, Urban's Florida Gators were
famously messy off the field, save for the Heisman pastor he had at quarterback for four seasons. Jim Tressel had just threaded the needle for building rosters containing dudes you would want as sons-in-law with guys who have a precise number of screws loose. Complementary football.
That optimized mix of saints and heathens served Ohio State well. Meyer's starting quarterback for most of his Columbus tenure - one of those son-in-law guys, ironically -
picked up an OVI during a bye weekend. Non-football related trouble involving
one of his assistants ultimately got him suspended in his final season.
Otherwise, Meyer's rosters were boy scout troops by comparison to what he had in Gainesville. Outcomes overwhelmed the hiccups and concerns.
This is fine, we'll keep this.
Third, and it was a poorly kept secret - Urban burns dangerously hot. He
sent himself to the ER at Florida and into premature retirement. There was little reason to believe he could be the Knute Rockniest version of himself in Columbus without stepping into predictable health hazards.
Day's winning percentage is almost the same as Meyer's when you look at their records, similar to how lead is almost gold when you look at the periodic table.
Of course his shelf life was under constant assault. It was still a de-risked head coaching hire. Buckeye fans got a gruesome firsthand look at what his Gators could do.
It turned out Ohio State's style of play didn't matter at all, just as long as it accompanied a committed identity with triumphant results.
Tresselball was often maddening, but the success was undeniable. We had seen how John Cooper's teams looked like they were playing a different sport in September and October than they downshifted into each November.
That was not okay. It would never be okay. That level of
good enough was unacceptable. Thirteen years of debating what
good enough looked like was solved by Tressel and confirmed by Meyer.
The closest the Buckeyes came to a troubling identity shift post-Coop was during the middle of Meyer's tenure, when he fell in love with the numbers advantage presented by the quarterback running the ball. He brought in a brave and innovative young offensive coach who turned that conservative predictability around quickly.
Urban's play-calling turtling cost his teams a couple of Michigan State games, but the Buckeyes still beat Michigan every single year and went to Indianapolis almost every season. That made it forgivable. Outcomes
uber alles, but please figure out who you are because we want to enjoy watching this, too.
Ohio State had been an unmysterious, relentlessly demanding fan base for over a century - but we actually learned something new about ourselves during the Meyer Era:
Just Win The Game. Secure opportunities every type of title. Acquire jewelry. Run the conference. The rest is just details.
Regression of style points was permissible if the trophy cases were still being expanded. Woody did a fair bit of that too, but the style-of-play catalog back then was limited.
That realization over the past decade created a wider berth for his successor, who had no head coaching experience but quickly transformed Meyer's security blanket offense in a single season.
And now we are here, four seasons removed from any jewelry or conference title game appearances. The raison d'être for Ryan Day's ascendance has since dissolved. Innovation, as a brand, has been replaced with trepidation.
It's Cooperish, from the Septembers to the Novembers.
If Ohio State chooses to play to its strengths instead of doing its opponents unsolicited favors, the Buckeyes should be able to advance through the tournament.
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), when opponents had 2.6 yards per game more in penalties than OSU. Notably OSU had 21 more penalty yards per game than its opponents in 2021 (59.2 YPG to 38.2 YPG) and 19.6 more penalty yards per game in 2018 (75.4 YPG to 55.8 YPG).
