buckeyeboy;711404; said:
Wow. I have no idea what to say. While I don't think our players did a good job of executing, I think our coaching staff needs to take a long look in the mirror b/c it seems like they've taken things for granted lately, both in preparing for Florida and in the recruiting department.
In one sense, you hesitate to say something like this because a) this coaching staff has been great all year and throughout the Tressel era, and b) it's difficult to isolate the effects of coaching in any specific instance. On any given play, we can tell when a football player drops a ball, misses a tackle, blows an assignment, etc. -- it's pretty tough to say it's obviously the coach's fault when we have a bad offensive series or miss out on a top notch recruit.
However, it seems like something's wrong here. This recruiting season, by Ohio State standards, has been pretty disappointing -- not disastrous, but certainly nothing to brag about. If we don't land Heyward, we won't have a single DT in this class, which was our #1 position of need. That's inexcusable for a program with OSU's resources, especially considering we were 12-0 and national championship-bound for the climax of the recruiting season. What happens now that we got embarrassed on national TV?
And this game was obviously terrible. We got so outplayed it's hard to put any one thing down. Losing Ginn hurt us on offense, certainly -- he's been our only real field-stretcher this year, allowing Gonzalez, Robiskie and Hartline to work more underneath. But we never established the run and when we tried to pass Florida was all over Troy rushing just 4. We never came out of the zone on D that couldn't stop the underneath game (though the D played much better in the second half).
I hope this isn't the beginning of a downtrend in OSU football. This is just one game, and there's no shame in reaching the pinnacle of college football and coming up just short. Maybe this defeat gives our coaches and players motivation for next year. Maybe the disappointment of the loss and not playing makes Ginn come back. But right now, with what's been happening in recruiting and then this Hall of Shame performance, I just have a terrible taste in my mouth. And pretty much nothing will be able to wash it away until next September. That's a long time to sit on a defeat like this. The bottom line is that JT and the rest of the staff have the coaching challenge of their life ahead of them this offseason. The players and coaches MUST move past this much quicker than I'm guessing most regular posters on this board will, or the hangover could last for years.
