RB Chris "Beanie" Wells (All B1G, All-American)

[MililaniBuckeye]

Adrian Peterson would like a word with you.

Peterson is faster and shiftier, but I seriously doubt he's as strong as Beanie. How many time have we seen Beanie just flat out abuse a defender with his stiff-arm?

 

[SNIPER26]

I'd say Beanie and AD have pretty similar speed, but Beanie has 20-25 pounds on him...

I think Peterson is faster, but Beanie is obviously bigger. I love watching both so it doesn't really bother me, just saying.

 

[SNIPER26]

Peterson is faster and shiftier, but I seriously doubt he's as strong as Beanie. How many time have we seen Beanie just flat out abuse a defender with his stiff-arm?

Let's ask Chevis Jackson what he thinks of Beanie's stiff arm.

 

[Bleed S & G]

If someone would've gave me those stats before the game started, I'd have bet the house we'd win big. Glad nobody did...

Yeah and you know, it might have been good enough if the 3 turnovers don't happen. Forget about the punt block, forgot about the FG for now.. 3 turnovers in a 2 possession game. Damn.

On another note.. maybe in my drunken memory I'm wrong.. those who had the stomach to watch the replays: did OSU getting away from the running game directly correlate with LSUs stud saftey leaving the game?

Perhaps I'm mistaken as it seems most seem to feel we stopped running because we got down by 3 scores to start the 2nd half.. I recall us getting away from the run very late in the first, early in the 2nd quarter.. Beanie did infact only have 9 carries in the 1st half.. it's not like he had 15 attempts and then we got down and were forced to pass.

Pass on 1st down. Run on 2nd for 2 yards. Pass on 3rd.

Very frustrating as the run has worked in the past 2 NC games, and we've had a lack of run play calls. In the same breath, I wouldn't trade JT for anything of course, and we'll be back again very soon.

 

[shetuck]

i've been saying this in words, so i thought i'd go check the stats and try to put a picture together. Beanie's carries didn't drop off, but rather they were nowhere near as effective after LSU (apparently) made some adjustments in the 2nd quarter. hence the perception among a lot of us that the coaches stopped giving him the ball.

here's a graph that shows Beanie's carries. it pretty much tells the whole story. forgive my negligence in labeling it: the x-axis bars are his carries (20 in all) and the y-axis shows his gain/loss for each carry):

if ESPN's stats are right, we ran about 56 plays on offense, so Beanie's 20 rushes made up almost 36% of our offensive reps. that's a decent proportion, imo. what's interesting, as well, is that they kept going to him after his production obviously dropped off.

another thing i want to note is that while it's true that he was averaging 7.3 ypc overall, if you take away his two biggest runs (the 65 yarder in the 1st quarter and his 29 yarder in the 2nd) he was only averaging 2.8 ypc and he was still getting the call. say what you will about that... maybe i should also chuck out his two worst runs and recalculate.

you may not agree with JT's game plan ito the number of total carries he was planning to give Beanie, but you can't say that "we stopped giving him the ball when he was being so effective".

i'm not pointing any fingers here because i know a lot less about x's and o's than most of you, but i hope this puts some of the second-guessing to rest, because, like JT said, "there's a whole lot of people that don't really have much understanding of what it takes to be good at this game but yet love to have opinions..."

:gobucks3::gobucks4:

 

[Bleed S & G]

Beanie's carries didn't drop off, but rather they were nowhere near as effective after LSU (apparently) made some adjustments in the 2nd quarter. hence the perception among a lot of us that the coaches stopped giving him the ball.

Good post

The argument I would have, or I guess the question I would pose, what downs were the carries on? It seemed Beanie was getting the ball on 1st down and busting off solide runs, and then we started throwing the ball on 1st down in combination with LSUs solid gameplan and adjustments.

 

[GeauxTigers99]

Great data shetuck, I was curious about the actual carries per quarter. I've read many, many posts on how Tressel abandoned the running game/Beanie, and I know that watching the game I had actually commented on the fact that he was still giving Beanie his carries. I think that LSU just adjusted very well, and basically dared Boeckman & the WR's to beat them. Not taking anything away from Beanie, he's a remarkable athlete & a superstar in the making, but it's really, really tough to run on a defense that has sold out to stop the run.

 

[shetuck]

Good post

The argument I would have, or I guess the question I would pose, what downs were the carries on? It seemed Beanie was getting the ball on 1st down and busting off solide runs, and then we started throwing the ball on 1st down in combination with LSUs solid gameplan and adjustments.

all but three of his runs were on 1st or 2nd. here's the breakdown:

OVERALL:
1st down: 12 / 20 (60%)
2nd down: 5 / 20 (25%)
3rd down: 2 / 20 (10%)
4th down: 1 / 20 (5%)

EACH ATTEMPT:
1st Quarter
2nd and 10 at OHST 23 Chris Wells rush for 5 yards to the OhSt 28.
1st and 10 at OHST 35 Chris Wells rush for 65 yards for a TOUCHDOWN. 0 6
1st and 10 at LSU 15 Chris Wells rush for 5 yards to the LSU 10.
1st and 10 at OHST 28 Chris Wells rush for 5 yards to the OhSt 33. 3 10
2nd and 5 at OHST 33 Chris Wells rush for 7 yards to the OhSt 40 for a 1ST down.
2nd and 10 at OHST 40 Chris Wells rush for 2 yards to the OhSt 42.
1st and 10 at OHST 24 Chris Wells rush for 29 yards to the LSU 47 for a 1ST down. 10 10

2nd Quarter
1st and 10 at LSU 28 Chris Wells rush for no gain to the LSU 28, Ohio St penalty 15 yard personal foul accepted.
1st and 10 at OHST 31 Chris Wells rush for no gain to the OhSt 31. 17 10
2nd and 10 at OHST 20 Chris Wells rush for 1 yard to the OhSt 21.

3rd Quarter
1st and 10 at OHST 28 Chris Wells rush for 3 yards to the OhSt 31. 31 10
1st and 10 at LSU 48 Chris Wells rush for no gain to the LSU 48.
1st and 10 at LSU 11 Chris Wells rush for 4 yards to the LSU 7. 31 10
2nd and 6 at LSU 7 Chris Wells rush for 5 yards to the LSU 2.
3rd and 1 at LSU 2 Chris Wells rush for a loss of 3 yards to the LSU 5.

4th Quater
1st and 10 at OHST 20 Chris Wells rush for 2 yards to the OhSt 22. 31 17
1st and 10 at OHST 39 Chris Wells rush for 11 yards to the 50 yard line for a 1ST down.
1st and 10 at OHST 20 Chris Wells rush for 3 yards to the OhSt 23. 31 17
3rd and 1 at OHST 29 Chris Wells rush for no gain to the OhSt 29.
4th and 1 at OHST 29 Chris Wells rush for 2 yards to the OhSt 31 for a 1ST down.

 

[BengalsAndBucks]

another thing i want to note is that while it's true that he was averaging 7.3 ypc overall, if you take away his two biggest runs (the 65 yarder in the 1st quarter and his 29 yarder in the 2nd) he was only averaging 2.8 ypc and he was still getting the call. say what you will about that... maybe i should also chuck out his two worst runs and recalculate.

Sure, and if you throw out two of LSU's touchdown catches the game was tie. But they made those catches and Beanie made those runs, and what makes him a great back is that he can bust off those runs at any time. I realize what you were trying to say here, but I just don't know that it means as much as it looks like it means.

 

[DaddyBigBucks]

Who knows what Beanie's 2nd half would have looked like if we had pounded the ball relentlessly.

 

[shetuck]

Don't know about that. I was sitting at the Skybar in Columbus watching the game, and I could predict around three quarters of JT's offensive plays calls. Execution killed us, but it's not like playcalling was spectacular. It needs a lot of improvement. IMO JT needs to hire someone to do the playcalling.

edit: let me clarify by saying I could predict generally, run or pass. I don't know enough about x's and o's to make more accurate predictions.

freakin' nostradamus you are...

 

[rocketman]

Who knows what Beanie's 2nd half would have looked like if we had pounded the ball relentlessly.

I honestly don't think it would have made one bit of a difference to the outcome of the game. It probably would have been over quicker. Down 3 TD's in the 2nd half, with their defense selling out to stop the run knowing there isn't a passing game to back it up... Beanie is a tremendous weapon but there's only so much he can do.

(But damn it, I can't help but wonder if he would've caught fire if he'd been given the opportunity...)

 

[DaddyBigBucks]

I honestly don't think it would have made one bit of a difference to the outcome of the game. It probably would have been over quicker. Down 3 TD's in the 2nd half, with their defense selling out to stop the run knowing there isn't a passing game to back it up... Beanie is a tremendous weapon but there's only so much he can do.

(But damn it, I can't help but wonder if he would've caught fire if he'd been given the opportunity...)

Do you really think that it was "Down 3 TD's in the 2nd half" that I was talking about?

That's rhetorical by the way.

Look, the fact is that I would like to have seen what would have happened if we'd tried a different approach. And that's all it is.

Others might be suggesting that a different approach would have won the game. I doubt it. There were just too many different things that cost us the game. To suggest that changing one of them would have made all the difference is over-simplification; and it was not my point.

The main reason we lost is that; this year, in this game, LSU was better. We'll be better next year. We have every reason to expect that we will improve as much as any team in the final top 10 from this year to next. Next year is the best shot we will have had in a long time. For a team a year away from peaking to win it all would have been gravy.

But if I can't get gravy, I would have liked seeing a little more Beanie. That's all.

 

[BrutusBobcat]

You also have to consider the down and distance situations. If you always run Wells on 1st and 10, then the D is going to sell out for that. I thought Tressel did a nice job of mixing in play action to keep LSU off it's heels in d/d situations that could be run or pass.

Other d/d situations that you're not going to run the tailback are in any 3rd and long, by which I mean anything more than 3rd and 4.

I don't take any issue with the mix that Tressel used. The main reason why Wells didn't get more carries is that we just didn't get that many snaps. According to an earlier poster in this thread, he carried the ball on 36% of our plays. That's quite a bit, yet it was only 20 carries. Of those carries, according to the chart, 50% (10) of them were for 3 yards or less. Those 10 carries are most likely going to leave you with a d/d that is less conducive to a TB run (ie. 2nd and 8, 3rd and 6, etc.)

The main issue wasn't that Tressel didn't call Wells' number often enough, it's that either we were in a bad down and distance or didn't have the ball. The former is due to both the short or stopped runs and dropped/missed passes, and the latter is due to turnovers mainly.

Playcalling didn't lose this game; lack of consistent execution did. That, and LSU's defense both played well and was called well. Bo Pelini deserves a lot of credit for what he built there and how he coached his final game.

 

[craigblitz]

2nd down: 5 / 20 (25%)

Would have to break down every 2nd down scenerio there is but I would tend to think if we were looking to get 3rd and short most of the time those stats would be a lot higher... But my initial reaction is this is way too low to be succesful on third down.