High Buckeye Offense Expectations?

[MistriBuck]

i expect the same thing we've seen the last few years: frustrating and sometimes completely baffling play-calling............with that being said, there is enough talent on this offense, and enough of a willingness by the staff at the end of the year last year to adapt and mix things up that we should be able to put up 28-30/per game............i agree with Taosman, this is not going to be an offensive juggernaut, because, despite how much we love Tressel and want to defend him, running a well oiled offensive powerhouse is just not his strong-suit

i'm not completely condemning JT and his play-calling, just talking realistically...........we have weapons, and they will be utilized, and we will score some points, but i don't think the potential of this offense will be maximized, unfortunately, although the talent alone should be enough to compensate for the lack of scheme

i think, without question Troy Smith will be the key to this offense..........i think a focused Troy Smith earning his job back and keeping his head on straight is the key element to this offense being explosive...........if you want to question that, just go back to the Michigan game and count how many times he nearly single-handedly made something out of nothing, by either scrambling for big yards, or escaping the pocket and buying more time to find open receivers (example, we line up in the I and run that half-assed play action pass on 3rd and 15 and send out 2 receivers, Smith get outside the pocket and throws a pinpoint accurate pass to Ginn for a big gain........this was not our design that made this play happen)

Anyway... Get ready for a lot of spread... I don't mean fun n' gun spread... I mean option spread... both short and vertical passing... using space... Both QB's will have to run some... lots of attacking to perimeter... misdirection running plays, etc.... Shot Ginn is right out of the Urban Meyer Option book... so... I think a lot of thought is going to be given to merely creating space for the WR's and Fast Backs to Work....

actually i hope and pray that you are CORRECT, because if that is the case then it means we are utilizing our talent as it should be utilized and we can expect to put up a lot of points............my fear is that we spend too much time trying to create a power running game, or reverting back to old mindsets that only hamper our offense (e.g. the lovely 3rd and 15 I-formation play action pass, 2 WR's in the route)

 

[cincibuck]

"scUM we were able to run every time we were on our 1, which is the hardest time to do so. In fact we not only ran well, we had big 9-15 yard runs at least once per 3 downs in taht situation."

Yes and no. We had the ball TWICE, first down on the Michigan 2, and setteled for 3 points. My point remains that Ohio State used to run on everybody and we didn't need a spread formation and a very athletic quarterback to do it. You can blame Lydell Ross if you want, but the fact remains we head into the 05 season with a questionable running game and that means a questionable offense.

 

[AKAK]

actually i hope and pray that you are CORRECT, because if that is the case then it means we are utilizing our talent as it should be utilized and we can expect to put up a lot of points............my fear is that we spend too much time trying to create a power running game, or reverting back to old mindsets that only hamper our offense (e.g. the lovely 3rd and 15 I-formation play action pass, 2 WR's in the route)

I hope we don't see that stuff either... and I don't think we will... mostly due to the idea that if you're QB can run... He is best served to be able to scramble with the D spread out too... Also... if we can pass protect... at least better... you'll see that less and less.

(I reserve the right to be proven wrong about the pwoer running game anytime we have a 10 point lead in the 4th quarter... then... yeah... it'll still probably get boring)

 

[bukIpower]

Good Point buckfromscum... OSU did fair pretty well against a top run defense in Penn State. I said that back during the season a while back and got hammered for it so I'll acknowledge that I felt the same way about the PSU game.


If you look at it if Haw/Wells/Pittman can just get 125 yards combined which would be about 41.6 yards each if my math is correct. We can get 75 yards from Smith/Ginn for sure. Which would come out around 200. I don't think we need a GO TO guy desperately. It would be nice and theres no denying that, but I think if we give all our backs and maybe ginn/holmes/smith some carries good things will be bound to happen. Plus that and its alot harder to game plan IF all the players get carries and actually get the ball. They'd have to account for everyone and that's probably the hardest thing to do as a Defensive Coordinator.

Very Excited about our offense! Although I'll wait till after he Iowa Game to actually say anything about us being a nation power on the offensive side of the ball.

 

[Def]

Offense...always the big ? for the bucks. It's great to be able to be able to take our D for granted like we do year in year out. Hopefully the O can get to that point as well.

I think the coaches took way to long to recognize that the strengths of our offense last year was at WR and tailoring an offense to fit that. Maybe I'm too impatient and it just took that long to for the players and coaches to synchronize but imo the coaches should have been able to recognize the strengths before the first game was played or at least started down that track much sooner.

Like others have said, the strength should be the same this year (granted the weaknesses not nearly so weak). Hopefully, the coaches play to the strengths of the players like they said they would do, but I have my doubts. If they can score 30 points per game it's almost given that we'll be in the NT hunt imo. I think we have the personel to just that.

 

[crazybuckfan40]

You guys are forgetting two important things when talking about the power running game.

Dionte Johnson - He is an upgrade at the fb position in terms of blocking then what we had last year. He can knock the backers on their ass.

Ryan Hamby - We really need to him to block, b/c if he can seal the end our backs can get outside and use their speed.

I still don't think that the o-line has been the whole problem the last two years. It was lack of a rb with vision and average blocking from te, o-line, and fb. We should be upgraded in 3 out of the four areas and hopefully hamby can come through.

Also remember how many players teams have been putting in the box. They can't do that anymore.

 

[martinss01]

tressel didn't get to the position he is at by being an idiot. he isn't going to go against his greatest strengths just because he is headstrong and likes power running games. tressel is going to lead with his strength which comes in the form of an experienced qb, be it smith or zwick, and the most dangerous wr core in the nation.

he isn't going to blindly go into a nc year leading with an unproven run blocking line followed by our current rb core. pittman seems like a good back. but he has yet to prove he can handle the load nor has he ever been given the chance to do so. there is a reason we converted joe to a tb from fb. if pittman were the man he would have simply stepped up ala MoC. wells? haw? neither are proven in anyway shape and or form. to alter an offense such as ours to cater to a completely unproven back is increadibly foolish.

we will play miami mostly in the i to try and find a tb and to mask our intents for texas. but unless one of them is MoC 2 the revenge we will be right back in the shot ginn for the texas game with or without smith in the lineup.

people draw far to many conclusions from the 02 team. when you look at the offense it becomes painfully clear why we relied so heavily on our defense and special teams. we didn't have a flippin offense! take MoC out of the game and we were good for what? 15 points per game? counting the 7 the d put up? our o-line then was no better than it is now. without MoC we couldn't run for squat. krenzel was field general not a qb. the only wr we had on the team was jenkins. gamble was ok at wr, but he wasn't what i would call "special". and with krenzel at qb, he was never going to get the ball enough to make any real impact which is why he was moved to d. we had a tough blue collar defense and exceptional special teams. i think if you would have given tressel the option of just punting the ball away on 1st down he would have about half the time. i can't believe we played the offense we did because tressel doesn't like scoring points or because he has such a massive woody for ball control offenses. i think he played to the strength of the team. and in 02 the offense was a liability, not a strength. so he played offense to not loose the game and to take advantage of the opponents mistakes. mistake free smart football. tressel knew we flat out didn't have the talent on offense to come back from 14 down and win against a good team. you can call 02 a ball control offense all you like. sad facts are we never had the ball long enough to merit such a designation...

we don't have that problem anymore. our offense is full of talent that can score anytime they touch the ball. if tressel comes out and tries to play ball control all year long one of those tb's had best be a flat out stud. if not... pink slips all around will be in order. i love tressel but there is no way you can be so inflexible and turn your back on something so effective for something so totally and completely unproven. thats just insane.

cliff notes: conservative ball control against miami to establish a starter at tb, to see how improved the line is, and to confuse texas. shot ginn and wide open offense against texas. i fully expect to see the same offense that played scum and oosu alot this season.

 

[brutus2002]

I agree with Martinss01 there is no way Tressel is gonna be stupid enough to go away from what worked for him the last half of the season. The guy has not won 5 NC's by being an idiot. We all know he wants a strong running game but IMO he isn't gonna go away from the offense he has now until the game is in hand.

I guarantee Lyons, Ginn, and Gonzales will all get better over the summer. I guess that means our WR's will get better.

We lost Mike Kne on the O-line but have more than enough talent coming back. I guarantee we will be as good if not better than we ended the year on the O-line

TE's will get better with the addition of Roy Hall. I'm sure Nicol will improve...they didn't lose anybody how can they get worse. IMO the TE's can only get better.

RB's cannot get worse than last year. I'm confident that the RB's will perform better than last year.

Why in the hell are we gonna struggle on offense? I guess people are banking on Tressel being incompitent...I'm not. IMO the offense is gonna be a hell of alot better from the beginning.

 

[MistriBuck]

Maybe I'm too impatient and it just took that long to for the players and coaches to synchronize but imo the coaches should have been able to recognize the strengths before the first game was played or at least started down that track much soon(er)

i agree, and when you couple that with our inability to effectively scheme against a defense and take advantage of their weaknesses and counter what they are throwing at us, it leads to very guarded optimism

You guys are forgetting two important things when talking about the power running game.

good points, Dionte Johnson will be huge in helping to provide a power running game, but again, i really hope they don't focus too much on this aspect of the offense, as it simply won't be our strength, unless of course we have a comfortable lead in the 4th

he isn't going to blindly go into a nc year leading with an unproven run blocking line followed by our current rb core.

how quickly people forget...........in '02, how much were people RAVING about Jenkins, Vance, Gamble, etc.? when Clarett was hurt, how often did we try to force a running game with a largely unproductive O-line and RB's...........'03, how great did we think Jenkins, Carter, Holmes, an occasional Gamble, and Bam Childress, Hartsock were?............and did we not have a very heady Sr. QB to lead the offense?...........how often did we continually run into 8-9 man fronts with our terribly ineffective RB's?

point is, the staff has gone away from our strenghts in the past, and tried to pound a square peg into a round hole, driving us all crazy...........i'm going to have to see Tressel truly play to his strengths and TRULY build an offense around his strengths before i believe it.........the proof is in the pudding, just because he says he plays to his strengths, and there are those that will defense him as an infallable genious, doesn't make it so...........if you can convince me that our talent level on offense was in the bottom 10% of the country the last 2 years than i'll buy into your argument that he's played to our strengths

listen, i hope and pray and beg that we continue with what we saw at the end of last year and we develop this style of offense around our talents...........i'm just guardedly optimistic about it based on the past.............NEED I REMIND everyone about the playcalling against Kansas St., and how excited everybody was??? and then at the start of last year we were all saying: what the hell happened? where is the play-calling we saw against K-State???

we will play miami mostly in the i to try and find a tb and to mask our intents for texas

ahhhhhh, my favorite buckeye message board theory has re-surfaced............Tressel will play a vanilla and woe-fully ineffective offense against Miami so to not show his cards to future opponents and to confuse them..........just like NCState last year........not only did we continually try to pound the ball into 9 man fronts to mask the wide open offense that was to be unveiled later in the year, but he wanted our guys to face adversity and learn to run the ball against 8-9 man fronts to make us a better team.........are you the one that said these things last year?

 

[brutus2002]

I don't think Tressel needs to hide anything because everybody knows Ginn is coming and they can't stop him. Tressel will use Ginn as a decoy as much as possible. Tressel knows that nobody can completely stop Ginn.
Another thing to consider is our return teams are much better than in the past. The 2005 squad will get excellent field position by returns or people kicking away from Ginn.

Our RB's and TE's didn't do squat for us the majority of last year. If both positions contribute more than last year that will be a big improvement from last year.

 

[BucksinFL]

No I didn't pull my hair out when CK went back. I usually just started saying WOSAHHH WOSAHHH.....

Anyways, Good post 40. I agree completely and its nice to see someone start talk'n about actual football formations cuz it shows you know alot bout football.

I share the excitement, but I also am a little worried. Only reason I'm worried is because I don't want to see JT try to make this a running team. Now I believe Tressel will for sure stick with what was working last year (atleast I hope). I'm not perdicting a juggernaught of an offense like Boise or Lousiville but I don't think an offense like what California did is too far off. I hope and pray that we just don't go back to our old ways thats all.

Craig Krenzel was about as accurate a Russian economist.

 

[Taosman]

Building Character by Design?

Does anyone believe that JT tries to "build character through forcing adversity"?

Would running continually into a 8-9 man front be by design? Beyond just play calling?

 

[MistriBuck]

Does anyone believe that JT tries to "build character through forcing adversity"?

i kid you not, after we beat NC St. last year and were in the top 5, and people were questioning our play-calling, there were those in the "JT is God" camp that came up with such ridiculous theories to support our offensive production and play-calling.........included in these theories was the notion that he buttoned down the offense so we didn't show our entire playbook to future opponents......and if you haven't figured it out, i find that to be hysterical

 

[MililaniBuckeye]

I think Mili's point... and maybe I'm wrong... is that we're an awful long way from being able to just line up and run on people. (Also, the assuptions about Haw's abilities are somewhat premature... considering his --well-- let's say limited game experience)...

...

Now.. that personnel might be in place (coached up) by fall... but what I see is a whole hell of a lot of speed.... and when you have speed, you need to make your opponent defend in space... this isn't my preference.. but it is what it is...

Exactly what I was hinting at. We weren't anywhere near a smash-mouth type running team. We may not be this year either. However, I think our subatomic particle speed at the wideouts will keep defenses back a bit, and that, along with an improved OL and a bigger faster RB in Haw, will allow us to run much more effectively across the field than we have over the last few years. Aside from when Clarett was running in 2002, no defense has respected our running game.

 

[martinss01]

how quickly people forget...........in '02, how much were people RAVING about Jenkins, Vance, Gamble, etc.? when Clarett was hurt, how often did we try to force a running game with a largely unproductive O-line and RB's...........'03, how great did we think Jenkins, Carter, Holmes, an occasional Gamble, and Bam Childress, Hartsock were?............and did we not have a very heady Sr. QB to lead the offense?...........how often did we continually run into 8-9 man fronts with our terribly ineffective RB's?

first things first. i have always said jenkins was the ONLY wr we had. vance imo was never anything worth discussing and gamble was average. i loved hartsock but the problem was krenzel was NOT a passer. he was a smart tough kid who occasionally threw the ball. and occasionally some of those passes were actually good :p. sadly without MoC we didn't have a tb. my optimism going into 03 was that we couldn't possibly be worse than 02 since everyone was coming back. we lost the one guy i didn't think we possibly could in a way that still blows my mind and oddly enough we became markedly worse... go figure.

you can put 8-9 guys in the box if the opposing team has an average line, below average throwing qb, and 1 wr... when that is your offense suddenly running the ball 3 times for a total gain of 2 yrds and punting doesn't seem like such a bad idea.

point is, the staff has gone away from our strenghts in the past, and tried to pound a square peg into a round hole, driving us all crazy...........i'm going to have to see Tressel truly play to his strengths and TRULY build an offense around his strengths before i believe it.........the proof is in the pudding, just because he says he plays to his strengths, and there are those that will defense him as an infallable genious, doesn't make it so...........if you can convince me that our talent level on offense was in the bottom 10% of the country the last 2 years than i'll buy into your argument that he's played to our strengths

i see what yoru saying. my response is that in 02, 03, and most of 04 there wasn't a strength on offense to play to... who was the strength exactly? the line? surely not! the qb? krenzel was smart and athletic... he ran the ball well... he didn't do stupid things... and that was about it.. the wr's? all 1 of them? the joys of flydell and the non existant cast of supporters at tb (MoC in 02 excluded)? shall i laugh hysterically now or wait till later? tressel inherited a mess from coop. the fact that we won the nc in 02 is a testament to tressel's ability to mold a large lump o shit into something rather appealing and a damnation to coop for having so much more throughout the years and doing so much less. there is no way you can argue that 02 was more talented than 98 as a whole. well, you can i suppose. but im going to laugh at you. probably alot.

i do share your conscern though. is tressel willing to open up the playbook during the regular season? because the shot ginn didn't really become a house hold name until the scum game. so was that part of a natural progression to a legit offense or just something for the "special" games? i could fully understand arguements from both sides on that one. we'll see very shortly... if thats the case tressel could be in trouble employment wise.

ahhhhhh, my favorite buckeye message board theory has re-surfaced............Tressel will play a vanilla and woe-fully ineffective offense against Miami so to not show his cards to future opponents and to confuse them..........just like NCState last year........not only did we continually try to pound the ball into 9 man fronts to mask the wide open offense that was to be unveiled later in the year, but he wanted our guys to face adversity and learn to run the ball against 8-9 man fronts to make us a better team.........are you the one that said these things last year?

understand i do see your point. i think we will play vanilla for the sake of picking a tailback and as an easy way to work on simple fundamentals. id be shocked if we didn't see spread looks 30% of the game. secondly, our personel is radically different now. holmes alone trumps the wr core in 02/03 (<--slight exaggeration). we honestly thought flydell would be good at some point. and even when it became painfully obvious he wasn't. its not like we had joe germaine, david boston, and dee miller sittin around twiddling their thumbs beggin coach for the ball. we really flat out didn't have a viable offensive threat. we didn't have such a threat until the latter half of the 04 season.

i think its really early to start condeming tressel for being anti offense when he really hasn't had any talent on offense to work with. this year will be his most talented offense to date. and it is an offense that flies in the face of everything people think tressel is all about. if tressel comes out throwing we know he is the coach we all believe him to be. if he wants to play ball control heavy on the defense and light on getting the ball to ginn/holmes/gonzo... tressel will be on borrowed time in columbus. personally i just can't believe tressel has had the success he has had to date by not knowing how to win. but we will all know very soon...