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Random thoughts...

- the interior OL got abused on passing plays. Before tonight, the OL was much worse in run blocking. I've never seen Mangold look so foolish on a couple of plays. Give credit to Hawthorne. Much like OSU's DL against Miami, he was unblockable that night.

- the OL is not a pitiful unit, but they are hardly even average. Our backs have no vision. You could put an NFL OL in, and Hall would still tiptoe to the line before missing the hole, and Lydell would still leave after his 5th carry with some sort of injury.

- The play action fakes have to go. Krenzel never did a good job of faking the handoff to being with, let alone on 3rd and long. This is probably what SDSU meant when they said OSU's plays were slow developing. They are.

- Drew Carter's hands continue to impress more and more every game. That combined with his measurables will make NFL scouts drool. He is not the same player that dropped 3-4 passes in the Spring Game.

- You have to wonder if Coach Tressel would ever yank Krenzel in favor of SM for a series or two. I don't think he ever would. Krenzel just wasn't getting it done last night... seemed tentative, afraid of making a mistake, absolutely no zip on any of his 15-20 yard passes.

- When Hartsock and Hamby were getting balls thrown their way, I thought the offense would be fine. PSU's backup TE abused Wisconsin all game long. I thought Hartsock and Hamby would have a lot of success. We just never went back to them in the second half.

- BJ Sander has impressed me more than anybody else this year. His shanks are limited to about one every 2-3 games and has almost never even come close to getting it blocked. Steve Moore and Tyler Everett made a great play to down the ball at the goalline.

- I really wonder if Bollman has to go. We already know he's not actualy calling offensive plays. His only real duty is OL coach, and that unit has seemed to regress every year. I wonder what he looks for in OL recruits, because it seems like he has more input on OL recruiting than any other assistant coach has on their area.

- Reynolds has to be suspended for a minimum of 3-4 games. While a lot of bad things happen at the bottom of the pile, he seemed to lose control of himself for a couple seconds. No place for that on this team, and I hope Coach Tressel makes it known.

- I knew we had to lose sometime this season. It's better now than later. We're projected to be 6 or 7 in the first BCS poll. Still a lot of time to make up ground. Interesting scenario: If OSU were to squeak into the BCS champ. game as the #2, and Wisconsin also wins out, OSU would prabably be ranked higher while having lost to them. Another quirk of the BCS I guess.
 
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Did Gamble really get beat?

Maybe somebody with replay capabilites can help me out here...

When I saw the replay of the long TD, to me it looked like OSU was playing standard cover 2. It seemed as if Gamble was supposed to have the short zone, with Allen playing deep. Was Allen lined up on a receiver when the play started?

I can't believe Gamble would bite that hard on a simple fake unless he was supposed to have a safety helping him in deep coverage.
 
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They were playing cover 2 but the safeties were cheating up all night to help stop the run. LV is right, they didn't feel Wisconsin would throw the ball and cheated up even more. Gamble has been jumping those out routes all year and he finally got burned, it just couldn't have happened at a worse time. The best corners get beat, he'll learn from it and move on.
 
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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
 
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My obversations on the game are pretty much what EVERYBODY, and that is Kirk Lafrenz included.
Right now we have very little get off the ball ability on the OL we were punched in the mouth all night.
Can anybody tell me how many times we ran the ball in the 4th quarter? I don't rember more than 5.
We need to do something to get the 9 out of the box that are getting stacked on us right now and will be the rest of the year, my suggestion is put in a 3 receiver set with Jenkins, Carter, and Gamble, there are very few teams out there that can cover them along with Hartstock.
The defensive line played good but I don't think up to the stuff that everybody expected them too.
The middle linebacker play dissappointed me to some extent Saturday, put Renyolds in the middle with Carpenter and Hawk on the outsides, seems to be the best option right now.
Speaking of Renyolds, he got caught. Ask any RB,WR, and QB where do they want to be the least at the bottom of a pile. Heck Jack Lambert would gnawl on peoples ankles in the pile. It is dirty but it happens, I hope there is a consequence and that it is in perspective.
Gamble made a bad move that has been happening all year but not "beaten" on yet. It was bound to happen hopefully it is the last time.
Now that all the negative we can still go to Pasadena by winning out. If things go right then maybe we will wind up in N'awlins. It is not the end of the world as we have found out today when the sun came up.
 
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Post game thoughts . . .

Well, I would like to stand and applaud for the great winning streak and of course the National Championship.

As for the game itself, I can not say I am surprised at all. We were not going to win them all with no running game and bland pass plays. I got a little excited with the double option and the pitch underneath to Hartsock, very creative playcall. I expected quite a few wrinkles like that in the game and that was the only one I saw. Once again, Ross leaving with an injury hurt us, he was running fairly (as compared to previous games) well. Hall is not the RB we need but he is the best we have IMO. He does not have good balance and lacks the ability to run with a low center of gravity. He would be better served to shrink his doby and leave very little to see and hit but he does run upright and waits for something to become very obvious as far as a hole goes.

Defense played lights out as far as I am concerned. I am tired of hearing that we lost to a 3rd string TB. He was a good RB and would be starting almost anywhere else based on his past few games. He followed his blocks and they blocked fairly well. The FB was killing us, he did some great ISO blocks and really lead the play well, I miss those days when our FB did that. Pagac is not the answer at MLB. he missed way too many plays in a game that we needed him in. I don't know who would be the answer, but Pagac is not it. Carpenter is going to be a good one. He attacks the blockers very well and has a knack for being in the right place at the right time. I really like him. Hawk played his normal game. There were more than a few defenders trying for the kill shot instead of wrapping up, not happy about that. We need to get back to tackling first and stripping the ball later.

I reserve comment on the Reynolds bit for now. Not really sure what to think, but I will say I was disgusted by the act itself.

Where we go from here is going to say alot about our team and coaches. We have a very tough ball game this week against a very similar team to the one that just beat us. They will be physical and will try to run the ball. I just hope the weather will be nicer, that has to kill our offense when it rains like that.
 
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I still think we should open the offense up just a tad, but the point that the poor OL play puts us in a hole is correct. Giving the younger OL more PT can't hurt (I think some have been playing more lately already). It's amazing how highly everyone thought of this OL at the start of the season and yet they've turned out to be so extremely inconsistent.

I know this offense is capable of being at least decent (the Washington game). There is no reason why we shouldn't put up 20+ points a game. If we can do that, we won't be beat, at least by anyone else in conference.
 
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I was in northern Kentucky Saturday night, five miles from the boarder and was very happy when they said those in Ohio and Wisconsin would be switched over. Yes, it's not technically Ohio, but close enough. I was furious when I had to miss the beginning of the game and they continued to stay with ND/Pitt even after the game was over. My VCR in Ohio caught the rest of the unmemorable events of that night I originally missed.
 
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