In his Ohio State debut, freshman running back J.K. Dobbins had 29 carries for a season-high 181 yards rushing.
Since that game, however, the most carries he’s had in any single game is just 14. The topic of his touches has been ongoing this season, and ramped up even more after carrying the ball just six times in last Saturday’s loss at Iowa.
Meyer has stated in the past that he wants to work Dobbins more, but despite this desire, the freshman tailback has only averaged 10 rushes per game in Ohio State’s last five conference games.
Meyer said this week that he has had conversations with offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson about getting more touches for Dobbins.
How does that conversation go?
“‘I want to see J.K. touch the ball,'” Meyer said simply.
Dobbins is leading the Big Ten with a 7.7-yard-per-carry average, which is a half-yard better than anybody else in the conference. Only handing him the ball 10 times per game would seem to be a poor usage of the Buckeyes’ most dynamic player.
This is why the increased conversation about getting him more involved.
“I wouldn’t say just J.K. as much as it’s just tailback runs in general,” Wilson said on Wednesday. “But again, we spread it out, like for example, J.T. statistically has the most rushes last game, but there were four – I went back and looked – we had four designed quarterback runs where there’s no option but him.”
There were 30 run plays called last Saturday, but the Iowa defense made sure that Dobbins’ touches were very limited.
“When you’re doing the run-pass option or the run-read option, right now sometimes they’re forcing him to keep the ball because they don’t want J.K. to keep the ball,” Wilson said. “So that being said, schematically we’ve got to find some ways to get hats on those guys, so our running back can be the one to run it. And at the end of the day, we haven’t done it the last two weeks.”
Since the day Urban Meyer arrived, the Buckeyes have run a power spread offense, and that’s not going to change. The spread will remain, which is why the offense has to have different ways to combat a defense, and the quarterback reading one defender is a way for the offense to even things out.
Asked if he needed to work in some straight hand-offs, Wilson admitted that he did, but also that he needs to put the offense in the best position to move the ball.
“Yes, and at the same time, every defense that you’re playing is outnumbering you,” he said. “And either the quarterback or the run-pass option equates that. So for example this week, if you’re just going to try and just hand it to the tailback over and over and over with base runs, because every time you add an offensive player, they add one more guy into the core. And that being said, that’s the gist of the spread offense.
“Now again, we’ve got to work hard and my time through the years at other places when the quarterback could not run – our quarterback can run here. When the quarterback cannot run, how do you still find running game? We’ve had to do that over time, and we tried it last week. We had some things in last week, we just didn’t get to it and we didn’t execute well. We had 140 yards at halftime I think rushing, and so we were on track to have a good game, but we had those three three-and-outs in the third quarter and by the time the fourth quarter started, we’re down 28 and we’re in the two-minute offense. The game got away from us with a bad third quarter with execution and play calling and turnovers.”
The Buckeyes ran the ball well in the first half last week, but when you look at the box score and see six carries for 51 yards from your best player, that’s not an acceptable game plan. Wilson expects to change that this week, but warns that you can’t just pound the ball on a Michigan State defense that is third-best in the nation in stopping the run (87.0 yards allowed per game).
“Oh, he’s got to get it,” Wilson said of Dobbins. “So we’ll sit there and slam that back in there and they’ll have those 12 guys with butcher knives up in there this week. We’ll get third-and-8 really quick. They’ll tee off with their nickel package and pin their ears back.”
Wilson’s job this week is to find ways to effectively run the ball against a defense that has only allowed one opponent (Notre Dame) to average more than 3.2 yards per carry.
The Ohio State offense is going to continue to utilize the read option and the run-pass option, so they will need to find ways to keep Dobbins from being taken out of the game. They won’t be forcing anything, however.
“So, okay, do we go to ’12 package’ and put big tight ends in there, but we like that speed and that spread stuff,” Wilson explained. “Again, when you spread it out, you get into either the run-pass option or the read-option. We’ll fight hard to get him going. He’s been great and going forward we’ve got to get him carries. We’ve got to. But I don’t think we can force it either. We can’t be stubborn about it.”