2025 Cotton Bowl: #2 tOSU vs #10 Miami-FL, Wed 12/31 7:30 ET at JerryWorld

[Thump]

@Thump

 

[Captain Buckeye]

Regarding Ohio State’s pass protection, the impression I got against Indiana wasn’t that the players were getting beat badly in one vs one situations (outside of possibly RG, who was probably playing injured and is getting a new starter and seemingly can’t get much worse), it was Indiana doing things in the back 7 to confuse Sayin and make him hold the ball too long, allowing the stunting rush to get home.

Sayin said during interviews yesterday that he felt he was holding the ball too long.

This was helped by Indiana having extra weeks to prepare a scheme specifically to mess with Sayin, and hurt (from Ohio State’s perspective) by the complete trash fire of a week Ohio State had combined with receivers who weren’t 100%.

I don’t think the OL situation is as bad as it feels right now, despite Miami’s DL clearly being good.

I think healthy receivers, a better scheme (more time to prepare plus more focused coaches), a more locked in Sayin (who isn’t losing time to the awards circuit), and an opponent who hasn’t been exclusively preparing for a month, are all factors that will give the offense the ability to look much, much better than their last performance despite a significant challenge for the OL in pass protection.

It was a variety of things. IUs front was very active with a lot of stunts and their back 7 was very good. They’re a very zone heavy team.

To make it worse it seemed we were calling a lot of deep shots which led to Julian holding the ball.

Miami really relies on their skill to win one on one. Not a lot of stunts from the reports I’ve heard and also while a mix coverage team they’re more so a man coverage team.

There’s clearly a style of defense that gives us issues and always has. That style is almost exclusively zone, make us work down the field, and then suffocate us into field goals (which we often miss).

This Miami team is not great with turnovers (OSU has 6 INT, Miami with 10), they’re one of the more undisciplined teams in terms of penalties (98th compared to 18th for OSU), and they play a style of defense/offense we do well against.

Miami either is going to have to be clearly the best team up front or they’re going to need OSU to melt down to win. Considering I think it’s about even up front they’re going to need OSU to implode to win.

 

[Captain Buckeye]

Can’t wait for this game but the more I think about things. The more I think this..

They’re on par with AM and Notre Dame. Won both but could’ve easily lost. Very evenly matched games.

They’re not at our level though. They need a lot of things to go right to win on 12/31. They can win but the margins are small.

This is a team that lost to Louisville and SMU in the same season in a terrible ACC.

 

[GaTechBuckeye]

they’re one of the more undisciplined teams in terms of penalties (98th compared to 18th for OSU)

This is partly skewed by officiating tendencies from conference to conference. With the likelihood that we'll draw an SEC crew for this game, we should expect penalties to be called more aggressively than we're used to in Big Ten games. SEC and ACC refs are not shy about throwing flags

 

[buckeyemania11]

This is partly skewed by officiating tendencies from conference to conference. With the likelihood that we'll draw an SEC crew for this game, we should expect penalties to be called more aggressively than we're used to in Big Ten games. SEC and ACC refs are not shy about throwing flags

So they'll actually call holding on Miami???

 

[dragurd]

This is partly skewed by officiating tendencies from conference to conference. With the likelihood that we'll draw an SEC crew for this game, we should expect penalties to be called more aggressively than we're used to in Big Ten games. SEC and ACC refs are not shy about throwing flags

Ehh you say that but the SEC seems to let them play physical and in general they hate targeting lol