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2024 tOSU Defense Discussion

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Skull Session: Peacock Strikes Back, Caleb Downs and Lathan Ransom Are Elite Safeties and Matt Rhule Reveals That Big Ten Coaches Have a Group Chat

Ohio State-Michigan State is on Peacock, Caleb Downs and Lathan Ransom are elite safeties and Matt Rhule reveals that Big Ten coaches have a group chat.
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“DON’T SWEAT IT.” One could argue Ohio State has the best running backs, wide receivers, defensive line and defensive backs in college football. Of the defensive backs, Denzel Burke, Davison Igbinosun and Jordan Hancock stand out, but so do Lathan Ransom and Caleb Downs.

Last week, Jim Knowles discussed his safeties in depth, explaining that while neither have incredible numbers after two weeks, both have made a tremendous impact on the backend of the unit.

“They have. We keep pushing and push everybody, striving for perfection,” Knowles said. “Those are two guys — let’s face it — we haven’t had to unleash very much. You’ve seen on those specific examples when we have unleashed them, they move from A to B quickly. I think it’s just a matter of continuing to push, putting some tweaks in and keeping their aggressiveness alive through different calls. We just haven’t had to do it much. When it shows up, it’s pretty cool.”

Two of the examples where Ransom and Downs have shown up are Ransom’s scoop-and-score in the Akron game and Downs’ massive hit in the Western Michigan game.





As Ohio State returns from the bye week and faces more formidable opponents down the road, Knowles said he will ask more of Ransom and Downs. He believes both Buckeyes will be up for the task.

“You know you can go to those two and say, ‘Hey, this week we want to do it this way. By the way, against this, I want you to make this call, OK? Ready, break.’ You know what I mean?” Knowles asked. “When you put in these slight adjustments week to week, it’s not something — you don’t say, ‘Can that guy handle all that?’ You just kind of roll. ‘OK, here’s what we’re gonna do.’ (They respond) ‘OK, got it, coach.’ And that’s it. It certainly makes it easier to make adjustments.”

What a blessing it is to root for a team as talented as Ohio State.
 
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pnuts34 said:
I still don’t understand why this DL can’t get a consistent pass rush with Sawyer and JT. I’m pretty sure OSU played Marshall today and not UGA.
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I might say something that’ll upset some here but here goes.

Until proven otherwise I just think that’s what our DEs are. They’re good defensive ends but they aren’t great. I think they can be great but they’ve been very consistent the last 3+ years now. They’ll come close a lot but just don’t have that first step that’s required to get home. We can win a title with this group and we can even have a top 1-3 defense as well.

However, I think Knowles needs to better position our defensive line for success. I think Knowles defers to Coach Johnson far too much and does way too much standard 4 men rushes. I think Jim needs to start doing more in terms of blitzes and sim pressures to keep the OL guessing.

Maybe then, it’ll give our DEs that split second of indecision to get home since they appear to lack that initial first step that elite DEs tend to have.
 
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I also wanted to say that through 3 games Jim is not doing what he said he would do.

The focus he said was to blitz and to create turnovers. Well where are the blitzes? This is now two games again with no turnovers. Maybe it’s coming in big ten play but it’s time to get aggressive now.

We have first round corners and the best safety in the football. Start manning people up and getting after the QB. There’s no reason to play this soft zone stuff 90% of the time. Our corners should never be 7+ yards off the ball.
 
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Captain Buckeye said:
I also wanted to say that through 3 games Jim is not doing what he said he would do.

The focus he said was to blitz and to create turnovers. Well where are the blitzes? This is now two games again with no turnovers. Maybe it’s coming in big ten play but it’s time to get aggressive now.

We have first round corners and the best safety in the football. Start manning people up and getting after the QB. There’s no reason to play this soft zone stuff 90% of the time. Our corners should never be 7+ yards off the ball.
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Happy with the win and only gave up 7 points, but the lack of pressure was peeving me pretty hard. Really our front 4 should be getting pressure against the likes of Marshall without bringing any blitzes. JT looked lost out there for most of the game and without Tyleik, we seemed pretty dismal up front.

Edit: We gave up 14. Not ok.
 
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@BB73 posted this in the Mack Brown thread:
BB73 said:
I posted this in the games thread.

James Madison played Gardner-Webb in their previous game and had zero points at the half.

They scored 53 in the first half against the Tar Herls.
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I brought it here because, as usual, I'm taking this down a statistical rabbit hole.

A quirk in scheduling allows us to use this illustrate what happened in both Chapel Hill and Columbus yesterday. Charlotte and James Madison have both played Gardner-Webb and North Carolina (and, oddly enough, each other).

Charlotte had a higher pass efficiency against Gardner-Webb than against North Carolina
James Madison had a higher PE against North Carolina than against Gardner-Webb

Based on the games played all the way around, by far the biggest outliers are James Madison's QB's (Alonza Barnett III) passing efficiency in the Gardner-Webb game (low) and the North Carolina game (high).

In other words, Alonza Barnett III, in spite of a stupid strong arm, is very streaky. He was ice cold against the FCS Runnin' Bulldogs and crazy hot against the Tarheels. It happens.

While the similarity with the game in Columbus ends there (NC is below average on pass defense), that similarity remains.

The opposing quarterback got hot. It happens.

Was it a disappointing performance? Absolutely

Was it also vanilla defense and a hot opposing quarterback? Without a doubt

Could things have been done that would have made it harder for Marshall's hot QB? Like many of you, I strongly believe so.

But here is the next question that you ought to be asking yourself: Is Jim Knowles as smart about football as I am?

I do sincerely hope that for everyone on this board that is a purely rhetorical question.

The point is best illustrated by continuing this thought experiment with more questions:

Given that JK knows more than we do, is it possible that he had a reason to leave things as they were?
Isn't it possible that he and Day knew that the Buckeyes would win by multiple touchdowns regardless, and it was best to leave the defense as it was, for any of a number of reasons?
Isn't it possible that, in order to put their players in the best position to succeed for the season, it was best to leave them in a situation in this game where they had to struggle a little?

If you were to help a butterfly out of its cocoon, its would be unable to fly. Its wings need the struggle of extricating itself in order to fully develop.

If you don't struggle, you don't grow. Sometimes that struggle has to be allowed to happen.

Do I know for sure this has happened? Of course not. But I know that it has happened, because coaches that have gone on to become authors after their coaching careers have written about this very thing. That's where I first read the butterfly metaphor that I used above, though I don't remember which coach wrote it.

TLDR version: I screamed and yelled all day yesterday too. But yesterday does not mean the defense is broken, nor does it mean that we are utterly screwed without TW (though I said that out loud yesterday). It just might mean that the Buckeye defense still has some growing to do in order to stretch their wings.
 
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Right now OSU sits at #2 in total defense but is it...strange to be disappointed in the defense so far despite the lofty rankings and stats? I was hoping this would be closer to 2019 but so far they feel like a slightly lesser version of last year's, which was still very good. Was just hoping to see generational and I haven't seen that yet. Maybe my expectations were too high.
 
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RB07OSU said:
Happy with the win and only gave up 7 points, but the lack of pressure was peeving me pretty hard. Really our front 4 should be getting pressure against the likes of Marshall without bringing any blitzes. JT looked lost out there for most of the game and without Tyleik, we seemed pretty dismal up front.

Edit: We gave up 14. Not ok.
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I think any good defensive line will have troubles if it’s just a straight 4 man rush with typical rush lanes.

I tend to think LJ is saying “we got this. We’ll take care of it ourselves” and Knowles as a result isn’t calling blitz packages etc like he did for his time at Ok State.

IMO we are just wildly predictable upfront. Maybe Jim was vanilla on purpose but I am starting to think we’re going to be similar to last year where we rarely blitz.

If we aren’t going to blitz okay but it’ll be hard to create turnovers and negative plays. We can still be a top 1-3 defense regardless but with the corners we have there’s no reason to be so vanilla.
 
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