Football
Stopping the Run, not Barkley is Blueprint for OSU Defense
By Brandon CastelPut Matt Barkley on his butt early and often.
It seems like a simple enough game plan for the Ohio State defense as they prepare to face the true freshman quarterback in the first road start, and second career start, of his brief USC tenure.
Defensive Coordinator Jim Heacock “I think it would hurt him, the only problem is doing it,” OSU Defensive Coordinator Jim Heacock said Wednesday.
“Football is physical and the more you can hit someone the better, but at this level of competition, I think these guys have all been hit before.
“I’d just like to get back there and hit him, let alone sack him,” Heacock said.
The concept of pressuring a rookie quarterback is nothing new for Heacock, who used a similar game plan to affect then-freshman Colt McCoy during the Buckeyes’ 24-7 victory over Texas back in 2006. Doing the same to Barkley Saturday in the Horseshoe sounds simple enough until Heacock turns on the film of the Trojans.
“The thing that they do a good job of, and the thing they’ve done a good job of, is they protect him,” Heacock said.
“They’ve got a good offensive line and they’re going to keep some guys in to protect him and they do a good job of giving him some things that he’s good at and things that he can do.”
Playing in his first ever game as a Trojan, Barkley completed 15-of-19 for 233 yards and a touchdown as USC annihilated San Jose State 56-3 in their season-opener last Saturday. It wasn’t quite the 338-yard, three-touchdown performance Mark Sanchez had against Virginia in last year’s season opener, but USC Head Coach Pete Carroll did a good job of putting Barkley in good situations.
“They did a lot of boot,” Heacock said.
“They keep him on the move, so as well as keeping some people in to protect they’re going to get him out on the edge and have a couple receivers out there and protect with the rest.”
How could the Trojans possibly put 56 points on the board with what sounds like an ultra-conservative approach on offense that saw very few pass attempts of more than 15 yards?
It’s quite simple really, at least for USC: make opposing defenses stack eight or nine players in the box.
Whenever a team can rack up 342 yards and six touchdowns on the ground, they can pretty much assume the play-action pass will be open all afternoon long.
And it truly was, all afternoon long, against the Spartans.
“It’s like any other offense, if you can get the run established, which they’ve been able to do, it puts a lot of stress on you for the play-action passes,” Heacock said. “So I guess that’s where it starts.”
In fact, one might argue that it’s really where things both start and stop with USC.
Unlike Urban Meyer at Florida, this is not an offense based on funky formations or gimmick plays. It is really about as straightforward an offense as there is, and one that says ‘here is what we’re going to do, now try and stop it.’ In reality, it’s what OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel wishes his offense could be like in Columbus.
And with all the great quarterbacks to play for the Trojans under Pete Carroll, it is their ability to run the football that opens everything up for the passing attack.
“They’re very talented and they make guys miss, you better be swarming people over there,” Heacock said.
USC Running Back Joe McKnight
Photo by Dan Harker“It start with (Joe McKnight), he is special with the ball in his hands and then they have a nice little play-action pass they play off of it so you better not put 10 guys up in the box.”
If there is a blueprint for beating the Trojans under Carroll – and there isn’t much of one for a coach that has gone 89-15 in nine seasons – it has to be stopping the run first.
A year ago, Oregon State held USC to 21 points in their colossal upset of the Trojans because they were able to contain the run game. Sanchez threw for three touchdowns in that game in Corvallis, but USC managed just 86 yards on 22 carries in the 27-21 loss.
In 2007, it was Stanford who knocked off the might Trojans by limiting them to just 95 yards on 38 carries in their 24-23 upset in Los Angeles, while Oregon limited them to 3.1 yards per carry in their 24-17 victory just three weeks later.
The Beavers also pulled the feat back in 2006 by holding USC to 86 yards on 27 carries in a 33-31 upset, and who could forget UCLA’s monumental 13-9 win over the Trojans on the final weekend of the 2006 regular-season where they held USC to a stunning 55 yards rushing on 29 carries (an average of just 1.9 yards per carry).
In fact, in their five losses (Oregon State, UCLA, Stanford, Oregon, Oregon State) since falling to Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl, USC has averaged just 84.6 rushing yards per game and 2.8 yards per carry. It’s no wonder, then, that coach Carroll is hoping to establish McKnight and his vaunted rushing attack Saturday night in the ‘Shoe.
“We’ve got to make sure we can take care of the football and if we can run, boy that would really be an added advantage for us,” he said.
If the Buckeyes allow USC to control the game on the ground, it will be open season on their defensive backs with Barkley and the play-action pass much like it was with Sanchez in last year’s 35-3 USC win. If, however, they can find a way to limit the damage, especially the big plays, in the running game, it would change the game dramatically. USC would no longer be able to protect Barkley with seven guys, opening the door for Thad Gibson and the OSU pass rush to put the fate of the game squarely in the hands of USC’s young freshman quarterback, something Carroll cannot be hoping to see Saturday.
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