Urban Meyer takes part in his weekly call-in show on Thursday. He will look back a bit on the win over Michigan, but will also spend plenty of time previewing Saturday’s matchup in the Big Ten Championship Game against the Wisconsin Badgers. Refresh for updates.
+ Ohio State has had two assistants offered head coaching jobs and an assistant turned down a coordinator job already this year. All three have chosen to stay at Ohio State.
+ “This is a possession-type game” for Wisconsin. They won’t go fast. They will run the clock and they usually have manageable situations on third down.
+ Ohio State has played Top 10 defenses in Michigan and Penn State, and now Wisconsin is yet another. Michigan’s defense is so multiple and constant with complicated blitzes. Wisconsin has just two defensive structures, so it’s easier to know where they’re at. But on the other hand, they are so good at what they do because they’re so well coached in that defense and they have very good players.
+ Preparing for a left-handed quarterback will require some differences from the Ohio State defense. Meyer didn’t want to speak too much on it and would prefer to leave it to the defensive coaches, though he’s not sure they would share anything with anybody about it. You don’t prepare too much differently. You don’t want to overthink it, you just want to be reactionary on the field.
+ The OSU defense will have to do a great job of defeating blocks. They worked hard on that this week. UW RB Taylor breaks high tackles, so they need to tackle him low.
+ Wisconsin is an excellent team. “Typical Wisconsin.” Gigantic on offense and defense. “Where the hell do they get these guys.” They don’t blitz a lot, but when they do they’re very good.
+ This was the third time he’s won up at Michigan Stadium. This one was a knock-down drag-out fight. The greatest way to show respect for this rivalry is to prepare well.
+ It’s hard to say the offensive line isn’t the most-improved unit on the team.
+ Dwayne Haskins’ 22-yard run was part of the hidden yardage which makes OSU’s offense so difficult to defend. Meyer says they love to play against QBs who can’t run.
+ Kenny Guiton “The Legend” was one of the greatest backups of all time and prepared without practice reps because Braxton Miller needed as many reps as possible due to being in a new offense. Dwayne Haskins isn’t quite as mature as Guiton because Guiton was older, but he has grown up a lot recently. They use Guiton’s example all the time with their quarterbacks.
+ The nature of rivalry games is that there are a series of plays that generally decide the winner or loser.
+ The players who played their best last week also had great weeks of practice.
+ J.T. Barrett has been cleared to play, so he will play on Saturday.
+ Now is not the time to reflect back on Barrett’s career. There will be plenty of time to do that, but now it’s about the Big Ten Championship Game.
+ Confidence is an amazing thing for a young player like Dwayne Haskins. Meyer could see the confidence of Haskins’ teammates grow throughout the Michigan game.
+ The fresher team won last week. That’s a credit to the rotation on the defensive line.
+ The Buckeye receivers can do whatever is asked. There are times when they need to be productive, other times they need to be blockers. They can do it all, and they can still make key grabs when needed, as Austin Mack showed last week.
Big game…excellent opponent…if they amputated his right arm I would be less concerned!
Well, color me surprised. A couple remarks:
1) I hate for JT that his injury has become a sort of sideshow (the odd way it happened in Michigan, the continued focus on it). He’s had a great career and deserves a better coda than this.
2) Assuming Meyer isn’t lying and the plan is actually to start Haskins, JT’s presence as starter MAY compel the offensive brain trust to call a more straight up game than they’ve been doing against good teams lately- kind of like the plan for Dwayne Haskins. It could actually turn to OSU’s favor, IF they lose the qb runs and parallel passing plays under the circumstances of course.
3) I cannot emphasize this enough. All the romanticizing about JT “deserving” to start is hogwash IF he is truly unable to play at full capacity and just being a gamer. We can’t have a 70% JT out there Saturday, it won’t be good enough. I used to work with someone who took pride in not calling in sick. Instead he would come in crimson with fever and get everybody else sick. Was that person being a “gamer”, or just putting everyone else at risk to suffer the same illness? Its not a direct parallel but you get the point.
Didn’t Mo C have similar surgery in 2002 and didn’t miss a game
Certainly not a doctor, but Les Miles on BTN indicated that if such surgery is done correctly, an athlete can recover very quickly and play the next weekend. With the close ties Urban Meyer has with all his players, and especially JTB, he would not risk him if the doctors did not say he is ok to play. Hopefully, there are no camera men around on the sidelines. Still can’t believe that occurred.
I’m seeing decent consistency from the players, but not the coaches. At times the defense looks great and at times “like a clown show” to borrow a Meyer-ism. Offense is never quite a clown show but somedays they’re the Buckeyes and some days they’re Purdon’t before Brohm got there. The pass offense is the worst offender and it’s so unlike Kevin Wilson that it really bears asking what on earth is going on all week in preparation because Wilson offenses ate the best teams for lunch on game day and we’re seeing the offense disappear against the best and only some of that has been on player execution this year, quite a lot has been crossing routes disappear, a lack of pop-passes over the top of the blitz to a flaring RB are non-existent, etc.
Spot on, Andrew. I think the coaching has resembled a “clown show” this season for sure. If Meyer is going to toss that kind of slop at his players, he should eat some too.
JT is playing and he had surgery? Dear Lord!
Probably just a small scope to remove a piece of the cartilage that was jamming his knee up. They probably did it with just a couple holes. He can play. Probably give him a big dose of cortizone before the game or whatever anti-inflamatory they use now a days. He will be fine.