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Game Thread That Team Up North @ Ohio State - 11/24/18, The '62' Game, Revenge Revoked

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Buckeye86 said:
I actually feel maybe almost confident going into this week.

1. Regardless of the level of the competition (TCU, Penn State, Minnesota, Maryland), this team has been punched in the mouth over and over (sometimes to a lot of the time by themselves), and they have responded to the tune of 10-1 despite being down in the second half... a lot.

2. That game against Maryland was just an absolute cluster in terms of mental mistakes and being downright unlucky... the chances of that happening again have to be pretty low. Now, I get that the chances of nothing bad happening are basically zero with this team, but they had to have gotten some of it out of their system, right? (And also, see number 1 again.)

3. It feels like any half decent OC can and does confuse the hell out of our defense and makes them look bad for stretches... sometimes long stretches.

Maryland basically found a game breaking hack for our D in the first half that we were inexplicably slow to adjust to. Show an unbalanced formation or motion to an unbalanced formation and then run away from it when we over adjusted... hell, even the freaking announcers pinpointed exactly what the issue was.

In the second half we started slanting the dline away from the unbalanced side and absolutely shut this down (why the hell did it take until the second half to do this?). Then, Maryland started motioning multiple times so our dline didn’t know which why to slant and it went back to a pretty even matchup.

This was on top of the usual mental breakdowns and missed assignments we’ve all come to expect, but the Maryland staff coached circles around our D staff for 75% of the game.

Now, ttun’s offensive staff is competent and I expect them to motion 20 times before every snap to confuse our D, but Harbaugh is pretty stubborn in their ways and they do what they do. I do not think they are going to find a game breaking hack for our D like Maryland did and will basically just do what they always do under Harbaugh, and I feel a little bit better about that... maybe?

And if they do try to do what Maryland did, we should have the fix a lot sooner, right? Right!?

Either way, ttun doesn’t really have any game breakers and basically everyone hangs with them for at least a half. Ohio State has better depth than everyone else and hopefully won’t grind down in the second half like what ttun does to pull away from everyone else.

4. If you go back and look at ttun’s biggest wins, MSU is really fucking awful on offense with a really fucking bad QB. Wisconsin is pretty awful with a really fucking bad QB. Penn State has a decent QB but no playmakers to support him.

I think Ohio State has the QB and the athletes to at least conceptualy give the Michigan D problems.

We also have the offensive coaching staff to put together a plan that I am hopeful about being confident in... pretty please can Meyer just stop calling read options with Haskins in short yardage?

We actually had some success against Maryland with it so I expect the answer to be a resounding ‘no’ and I will continue to bash my face into a wall when we run Haskins on read option on 3rd and 1 again.

5. I feel that the biggest problem with this team has been focus and execution all season. We have been waiting and waiting for them to put it together... well, there are no more excuses, this is The Game.

I am cautiously optimistic we will see a team executing at a level we haven’t seen since Penn State... that is to say, motivated and high level a good majority of the time but still with the occasional really bad lapse on D.

6. Underdogs. At home. Urban Meyer.

If ttun walks in feeling confident and arrogant- it seems likely- my inner lifelong Ohioan is relishing the opportunity to punch them in the fucking mouth as hard as we possibly can. This is what Ohio State football is about and I am cautiously optimistic here. Again, this team is talented as hell, with motivation and fire I think they can do some special things.

I have no doubt it will be a dog fight, but see #1.
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7. Harbaugh pucker. Just generally, but even more so with a potential B1G Championship game berth and trip to the CFP Fucker will be would tighter than a girdle on a minister's daughter
 
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Buckeyeskickbuttocks said:
7. Harbaugh pucker. Just generally, but even more so with a potential B1G Championship game berth and trip to the CFP Fucker will be would tighter than a girdle on a minister's daughter
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Exactly, this goes back to my thought that they aren’t going to do anything super creative to exploit our exploitable D. I suspect they will just be basic as hell because of the Harbaugh pucker.
 
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Buckeye86 said:
If ttun walks in feeling confident and arrogant- it seems likely- my inner lifelong Ohioan is relishing the opportunity to punch them in the fucking mouth as hard as we possibly can.
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Buckeye86 said:
Exactly, this goes back to my thought that they aren’t going to do anything super creative to exploit our exploitable D. I suspect they will just be basic as hell because of the Harbaugh pucker.
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Unfortunately, I don't know that it matters how creative they are. With this defense, there are enough holes that can be exploited with nothing more than good execution.
 
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Fungo Squiggly said:
Unfortunately, I don't know that it matters how creative they are. With this defense, there are enough holes that can be exploited with nothing more than good execution.
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We’ve shut decent offenses down for long stretches of games at various points this season. Usually after half time with adjustments.

I’m not confident in the D by any means, I just think that Michigan being vanilla evens things out a little bit- we will without a doubt need our offense executing extremely well to have a chance.
 
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buckeyboy said:
I hope Schiano uses the same defense against sparty. Zone with the backers playing off the D line worked pretty well and I think could be very effective against ttun.
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Mississippi Jesus is a good enough QB to pick them apart if they start that bail coverage stuff to get the DB's more involved in the run defense.

The problem is that the OSU defense struggles with gap soundness/run fits and tackling.

Jimmy is going to come out with a bunch of extra TE's which creates more gaps to be accounted for. Then he will do a lot of pre snap shifting to increase the odds of confusing the defense even more.

Net result is that even though the tsun skill players aren't overly dynamic, they don't really have to be.

5 different players in 11 games have individually rushed for 150+ yards against the OSU defense. It could easily be 6 this Saturday if the back 7 doesn't make some sort of miraculous improvement (which has happened in the history of The Game).
 
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When was the last game the Buckeyes were the underdog?

and ya gotta wonder.. what things has neither team used... that was purely hidden.. for THIS game

How much Martell will we see
 
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NJ-Buckeye said:
When was the last game the Buckeyes were the underdog?
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Last one I can recall where OSU was an underdog at home in The Game was 2004*.

Home underdog I can recall was vs Iowa in '85*

Let's hope for similar outcomes.


* I am discounting the Cooper years. Who fucking knows from '88-'94. I have blocked them from my memory.
 
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