It’s Ugly, But it’s a Near-Healthy Ugly
After having largely avoided the injury bug the past few seasons, the Buckeyes have taken their lumps in 2008. Beanie’s injury, while not season-ending, was the biggest setback, but there have been many others. Whether you value their contributions or not, both Rehring and Person have missed games due to injury and two of the three prized freshmen linemen are out for the year.
Tight ends Jake Ballard and Rory Nicol were shelved at the same time and both Robiskie and Saine have carried lingering preseason injuries with them. Boom and Sanzenbacher were each rocked for concussion at Wisconsin and while Dane played against Penn State, Boom hasn’t seen the field in a month.
Dual hundies would be niceThe defense hasn’t been hit as hard, but hasn’t escaped unharmed either. Wilson is gone and Chekwa and Jenkins have both battled minor injuries as of late.
If there’s any good news, it’s that coming off of the bye week, the Buckeyes are quite possibly as healthy as they’ve been since the opener.
While the depth chart released for the Northwestern game doesn’t look that much different than what was released for Penn State, the fact that the team is rested and some personnel decisions have narrowed has me feeling optimistic heading to Evanston.
The Wildcats are certainly better than the team that was blitzed 58-7 on a beautiful September Saturday last season and Ohio State still has plenty of things to figure out — like consistent offensive line play — but they’ve also had two weeks to stew over a gut-wrenching home loss to the Nittany Lions.
The offense is also due (again). Lost in all of this agonizing over the play of the offense has been the fact that Pryor has been pretty accurate throwing the ball this season. Some of his balls still look like freshman throws, but not once this season has he failed to complete less than 60% of his throws in a game. Against Penn State, Pryor had his finest game of the season, completing 16 of 25 for 226 yards. Take away the three spikes to stop the clock and he’s 16/22 or good enough for a 72% completion percentage. I’m not sure what it says that his three best games in that sense are against USC (78%), Purdue (71%) and Penn State, but completing the majority of your attempts will never be frowned upon.
Pryor’s backfield mate is one of those backs that performs better when given adequate rest. Beanie has that heading into Northwestern and you should expect big things out of him. Especially with Boom back and hopefully the pistol along with it.
On special teams, a small tweak that’s going to pay a big dividend at any moment has been featuring Lamaar Thomas on kick returns. Penn State got the memo and kicked away from him late in the game two weeks ago, but would any of you be surprised if he got his first this weekend?
The defense has been playing as well as any unit in the conference lately and when the offense puts things together, the results are in line with what we saw in East Lansing. If that happens again Saturday, which I fully expect, the score could get out of hound (EDIT 4/4/08 1734ET: like “out of hand” but much radder) quickly again. However, if the offense comes out of this break, still sputtering, the Buckeyes are going to be in for a real fight to make it into a New Year’s Day bowl.
i’m pretty optimistic about this game, this is exactly the kind of team we usually take apart and unless pryor decides to go into a shell for the rest of the season (which i doubt), i think we’ll be fine
Should we be scared of NW’s backup QB? Dude put on a Vince Young costume last Saturday for Halloween weekend, or at least he sure as hell played the part.
I’d like to see the score get out of hound quickly just to find out what exactly out of hound means.
flip getting out of hound is what you write when you blog from your iPhone… It’s actually more severe than gettng out of hand … God help those who we get out of hound on
The beanie-hop is out of hound
so i just went to that link on the right, about mcguffie transferring… anyone notice how their ohio state countdown is already set for next year, since they know they’re not gonna beat us this year? Hopefully we can get out of hound on them too
Found this intellectual dialogue on, where else, a m*ch*g*n blog… about the McGuffie transfer rumor…
Anonymous said…
Let me guess, a Michigan State or Ohio State board started this?
That’s an original, solid source guys.
McGuffies a great kid and we need his talent and jumping ability.
Minor is so fucking stupid he thinks the pylon is part of the endzone.
Mon Nov 03, 11:00:00 PM EST
Anonymous said…
The pylon IS part of the endzone you dumbass.
Tue Nov 04, 07:03:00 AM EST
Did we ever figure out what the caps and bold text mean in the depth chart?
Baba Booey, Baba Booey
i just had some leftover sushi and my stomach is out of hound.
Haha! I saw Jason’s grammatical error hours ago but decided not to fix since everyone’s comments are so hilarious. Seriously, you guys are out of hound. As we proclaim at least once weekly, it wouldn’t be 11W without some grammatical out-of-hound-ness.
As usual, the NW offense is rather good, and the defense is woeful. We should win this by 40. We’ll probably win it by 20.
Id be elated with a 20 point victory, but dont hold your breath. My range is more in the 10-13 point victory. *Cheers* to me being wrong about that
And now that we are playing 3 consecutive noon start games, my saturdays are officially shot. The early games ALWAYS ruin my saturday nights, seeing as how I start drinking RedBull&Vodka’s @ 11…..ugh
noon games just mean that i cant go out and have any fun friday night, which is clearly out of hound if you ask me.
Out of hound needs to be a tag.
My gf having to clean the toilet bowl on sunday mornings is in her own words “Out of Hound”
While NU’s D looks substantially stouter than previous squads, I still think we will be ok pounding the ball to set up the TP PA/read/option and pouncing on their potential mistakes. Just like the past two years: jump up early with turnovers and quick TD’s, sit on ball, repeat, back on bus. If the D can’t show up big this weekend and keep Kafka/Bacher in check, I will not be super enthused about stopping the Juice the following week.
Defense must be out of hound!
Juice is STILL afraid of Laurinaitis…..he talks about that hit in 06 in every interview he does….man I’d be afraid of that neck too
The neck actually has 30 tackles this season.
the neck by itself has more tackles for loss than nader does on the season. thats out of hound.
Buckeyes fans really deserve a Big 12-like Offensive display from this team. We’ve seen and expect great defensive play. Time for the O to show.
I expect a very, very tough game in Evanston. Here’s hoping I’m wrong – again.
I have now trademarked “out of hound” and you suckas all owe me some coin.
Get me my in-browser grammar check!
Jason:
You want coin for the use of your trademark? Well, you can’t get blood out of hound. OOPS! I mean, out of a turnip.
Jason, I’m a law student, specializing in intellectual property. If you are in need of any legal advice (DISCLAIMER: I am not yet a lawyer who has passed the bar and therefore am not allowed to give “legal advice” or practice law), you should hit me up, before this infringement and trademark dilution gets out of ….well you get the point.