I feel bad for Fickell. I can tell by looking at him on the sideline that he cares so much. This is his dream job and he's a Buckeye through and through. But he's not ready. The play that will stand out to me tonight is the third down and 13 in the third quarter when we were in Nebraska territory, with Bauserman in the game and the momentum to Nebraska. Where the ball was marked, it would be a 49 yard field goal and Basil had been spot on all game. For some reason totally unknown to me, we throw the ball 30+ yards into the endzone resulting in an incomplete pass, then decide to punt on fourth down.
If you, as the coach, know you aren't going to kick a 49-yard field goal, on third down you must decide to run the ball or at least try a screen in an attempt to get about 5 yards to get into field goal range. Three points in that situation makes it a two possession game and changes the momentum. What happened instead was poor management.
There's also just no excuse for Guiton not having been prepared to come in as the backup going into this game. We'd seen enough from Bauserman, who is doing his best but isn't capable, weeks ago.
This has been a tough season and an especially tough week with star players that we planned on having back being suspended even longer. Then Miller goes down in his coming-out game, putting us in an even tighter spot.
But that's when decision making from the staff needs to come through and make a difference in a game like this. Unfortunately, all the decisions made at the end of the game were the wrong ones.
It's too bad how this has all played out. Fickell is going to be a really good head coach one day. But Ohio State can't have head coaches learning on the job. We need and can get coaches that are ready to shine now.
I don't ever remember a season this difficult.
