I said this over on bucknuts so I might as well say it here with the people that tend to understand football a little bit more.
What can we do? Our offensive line is horrible as a unit. We can't runblock, and we can't pass block, we could get the greatest offensive minds in to our booth and they could not come up with a way to run an effective offense with this being the case.
There is not any problem with our skill players, (maybe the TB but it is impossible to tell with the lack of blocking), or our offensive scheme. It is the fact that on offense we can not win up front. Bishop was either holding or getting tossed around like a rag doll all night long. Step was obviously still playing hurt, and the other players were not consistantly winning their battles.
There is not offensive scheme that works when you can't win the battles up front.
There are only two solutions, the offensive line has to wake up and start playing better, or we should bench the Sr.'s that are not performing well enough for us to have a chance at winning, and play the underclassmen. They sure couldn't play any worse!
The scheme itself is sound. It is designed to win football games, when you can't do much offensively (in our case because of our offensive line). Instead you turn it over to your defense and special teams (our strengths) and try to put them in a situation where they make the big mistake. In my opinion this is the Genuis of JT, despite a poor offense, he finds a way to give us a chance to win football games.
The key to the scheme is you must be sound on special teams, and you can't make the big mistake. We made the big mistakes, and we were not sound on special teams. I think asdodge said it best in one of his posts on bucknuts when he said we got out tresseled. That is what happened. We got beat by a team that was better than us on that night. They played our game and beat us at it. Something that is not easy to do.
Are we doomed forever to have this vanilla offense? No I don't believe so. I think that once we see a better offensive line come to Columbus in new recruits we will see a much different story when it comes to the plays that we are currently seeing, and some new wrinkles that fans seem to be begging for. Right now it is a talent thing I believe. If not then we need a new OL coach, not a new OC (I know they are the same person, but the play of the offensive line is a bigger concern than the playcalling)
Our strength still will remain our defense (if all goes well, and we want to keep winning championships) That is what we will need to keep in mind going forward as well. Run and gun teams look impressive, but never win without defense, the more the defense is emphasised, the more we will win football games.
Keep in mind this is JT's 3rd season. He has beaten scUM twice, with a third likely this season, he has won a Big Ten Championship, was close his first season, has been close to winning all of his games (field goal kicking was the diference in almost all of his first season losses, and this was not a bad loss), and he has won a National Championship. I really believe that he deserves the benefit of the doubt. I also believe that we still have an excellent shot at a Rose Bowl, and Big Ten championship this season.
Those are my thoughts.
Beat IOWA