Last year's team was very young. They started slow cuz everyone was new, and a lot of guys that needed to be replaced were still starting.
In 02, tOSU came out like a rocket. People quickly forgot about the offensive explosions and huge point totals in the first half of '02 before Clarett got hurt. We were putting up big numbers, and it wasn't merely due to turnovers.
I don't think we are going to come out crawling like we did last year. Our only positions that are being replaced are RB (Pittman will do fine), 1 OL (Boone or one of the returning guys will fill this void fine), 1 DB (see other thread; but we've got lots of experience to fill a boundary tackler position), 1 DE (the hardest to fill, but we've got a few guys that should do alright).
We'll miss Nuge and Turano (even tho he wasn't always great) for sure.
But expect to see a Texas team quite surprised by the defensive skill and speed by the bucks. Likewise, the longhorn "defense" will have a lot of trouble slowing down our trio of speedsters at WR. Remember this is a team that couldn't slow down OkState/UM to save their lives.
The fact that they gave up 5 straight 50 yard run backs is exciting to me as a buckeye fan. Give Ginn one shot like that and its a TD guaranteed.