I write this before listening to much media comments or reading any posts. I want to make an unbiased assessment of what I saw from B-deck, (besides the many many hot women. Warm weather sure brings out the cute girls.)
The atmosphere before the game was similar to any opening game of the season. Anxiousness and excitement. Some predicting us to go undefeated, others saying that there could be 3 or 4 losses. But everyone seemed to agree on one thing...that as Pryor went, the season was going to go. I can't remember a player that meant to much to an Ohio State football team in a long time. Maybe Clarett? In any case, even though I always feel the line play is always most important, Pryor is so special that he could make plays with a High School O-line.
Inside the stadium everybody was very upbeat and classy. Loud applause for Navy several times (almost overdoing it, when 5 new Navy players enter the field to warm up, is a standing ovation really needed?) Alumni band day is always awesome. If the band doesn't fire you up, then I don't know what will? I get chills to the ramp enterence every time I see it. Flyby was pretty awesome. Both teams shaking hands and then running onto the field together was special, not something I want to see happen every week though, but I liked it. Lots of things about Navy made me want this to be a yearly match-up. Classiest team I've ever seen enter the 'Shoe...but more on that later.
The reverse on the kickoff worked well, almost a TD. That was a good start. Offense looked good in the first drive, and was able to slowly but surely march down the field and get a TD. Then Navy came out passing right away...then went to their triple option look. And it worked very well all day. After their first drive I knew that we needed to force turnovers or have Navy make mistakes to stop them. Their fast offensive line played VERY well, and neutralized our defensive line. Quite a different offensive line and offense in general than we will see in the weeks to come. Navy always runs the ball well, every year, they are VERY good at what they do on offense, and I wasn't too surprised by how well they did it.
We came back and drove down for a field goal, but I felt like Pryor started to really look good in this drive. He was on the same page with all his recievers, and he looked MUCH better than last year, and that's scary, because he was pretty damn good last year. I thought Pryor had a great game. I thought the recievers looked GREAT as a whole. Carter is going to be a stud. I'm not sure what happened to Posey, if he's hurt or not, but he looked good. Pryor to Ballard three times was great to see as well. Plus I think Dane Sanzenbacher looked like a go to guy. Always open, and great hands. That's exciting to see. Our running game struggled between the tackles all day. Pitches, options, and screens that got Dan "Boom" Herron and Brandon "Abdual" Saine into open space really let them show their ability. Overall I thought Saine had a better game. Our O-line wasn't consistant in getting a good push in some running plays. I didn't have a problem with the pass protection, although some people seemed to. Personally I think that Pryor sometimes does better under pressure, so i'm not worried.
Pryor continued to amaze me all first half. I wasn't happy when Bauserman came in. Tressel has his reason, but I felt like that wasn't the right time. The offense looks good when Pryor is in there and he's given the play that let him do what he does best. He's turning in to be everything I hoped he would be from when he chose to come to the best damn school in the land.
I felt like we started off slower in the second half, Pryor wasn't quite as sharp and overthrew a few recievers. But I also felt like the defense stepped it up BIG TIME in the second half, until the last 6 minutes of the game. Man oh man were they flying around. If they do that next week, they are going to make some big plays. I'm still not sure if our defense isn't as good as we thought it would be, or if they will play much better against teams that don't run a triple option. The defense is my biggest question mark going into the USC game.
After watching teh offense all game, I felt like our offense looks best when Pryor is in shotgun. I would like to see us run more hurry up, more 5 wide sets, and spread out defenses. I don't know if we have the offense that can just maul people over between the tackles. Maybe i'm wrong, but if it doesn't work against Navy, is it going to work in the Big Ten? But the team is so talented, and we haev so many fast players, I say get them all out there, get the athletes the ball in space, and watch the fun.
I'm not worried about the score...we won and that's all that matters. I think you can hang how close the game was on the end on JT. I don't really think you can blame him for a game being close though. What I feel like you can blame him for is that his team let Navy back in the game and gave them a chance to win. You can't do that. Any D1 school has athletes that can score lots of points real quickly if you let your gaurd down. You kick a field goal and go up 3 scores, and this offense can't pucker up with leads late in the game. Out offense looked completely different in the 4th quarter. It was a bad quarter, and I feel like the reason for it starts with the coaches. When you are up more than halfway through the 4th quarter by 15 points and have the ball in Navy territory, you have to finish, instead of thinking "welp we won, can't wait til USC" which is EXACTLY what happened. But if somebody looks at this game and gets their panties in a bunch because we only won by 4 and think, "Well if we only beat Navy by 4, we can't beat USC", then I have to wonder if they watched the whole game, or the same game I did. This is one where stats and score don't show what really happened. We played like a top 5 team for most of the game against a good Navy team, and then we shut it down. It very well could have lost us the game, and that was a bad thing, but the final score wasn't bad...anytime we have more points than the other team, I consider it good. Lucky for us, Rolle made that INT and it was the most exciting play of the game. It confused those sitting around me wondering how many points it was worth, and what was going on. Am I the only one that knew that it was 2 points and we still get the ball?
After the game Navy sang their Alma Mater, and the whole stadium stood and was quiet and respectful, which was classy. And then even more classy was Navy's team coming and standing behind our players while Carmen Ohio was sung. I wish we would have done that for them, but I'm sure Tressel will next time. If I were Tressel I would find out if I was playing a team that sung their Alma Mater after games, and go show respect to the other school like Navy did.
I like what I was from the game. I really don't care how much we win by. I feel like we looked a lot better than we did last year against YSU and Ohio. I feel like this game was nothing like the Ohio game last year. That was close throughout...this one was not. I feel like Navy played as well as they could, and it still wasn't good enough, and Navy will go to their 7th staright bowl this year, so they are no cupcake. For the brief time I did have the radio on after the game, I heard somebody say, "Ohio State was a 2 point conversion away from becoming Michigan." To me that is the stupidest thing i've ever heard. Obviously they are refering to losing to App St. Navy is not App St. Not even close. I look forward to following them throughout the season. I will definitely root for them from now on. And as I said before, I hope we can play them many more times. I'd much rather play Navy every year than a D1AA school.
USC is next. Navy is much better than San Jose State. And I have a feeling next weeks game is going to be a high scoring and close game. It's gonna be a good game. Go Bucks!!! Glad football is back! I have yet to find anything in life that is better than seeing the Buckeyes play in The 'Shoe.
