"A win is a win," you say.
"But the defense is the worst I've seen in my lifetime," he says.
The truth is, you and your Buckeye BFF are both on to something.
Yes, Ohio State is 7-0, but never has a win felt more like a loss than Saturday night, when OSU surrendered 22 fourth quarter points to the Hoosiers, turning a two or three score win into a nail-biter.
Defensively, this team is struggling, and that's putting it mildly. The Buckeyes rank 33rd nationally in rushing defense, which is not terrible, but the unit is 103rd in passing defense, which is kind of is terrible.
What's weird about the pass defense is that the Buckeyes haven't been burned deep too many times this year. It's more a function of receivers getting yards after catch thanks to less-than-stellar tackling out of Ohio State's linebackers and defensive backs.
We know Urban Meyer is concerned about the defense—you could see him mouth the words "We are awful," in the closing minutes Saturday night—and he was behind the move of Zach Boren from fullback to linebacker. Whether he'll be able to make inroads this season or he'll make a bigger change in the offseason is yet to be seen.
I do know that I enjoy being 7-0, yet still worry about this defense.
BCS HURR HURR. The BCS standings came out last night—I'm telling you this, because as a fan of a team on probation, you may have missed it—and Jim Delany's power conference doesn't have a single team in the top 25. For a comparison, the Big East has three teams in the standings. The Big East. The. Big. East.
Alabama is your clear-cut #1 in the standings—the gap between the Crimson Tide and the #2 team, Florida, is greater than the gap between Florida and #5 Notre Dame—and the rankings are front-loaded with SEC schools, with five in the top 11.
Ohio State, currently 7th in the AP poll and doing well in the computer polls, is not included in the Harris or USA Today polls, but if they were eligible, they'd probably slot in around sixth.
THE STATE OF FOOTBALL. Seven months after landing four teams in the Sweet Sixteen of the NCAA Basketball Tournament, teams from the state of Ohio are rolling in football.
Three of those four Sweet Sixteen teams are undefeated: Ohio State at 7-0, Ohio at 7-0 and Cincinnati at 5-0. Things are going so well that the Bobcats, ranked No. 25 in the latest AP poll, find themselves in the rankings for the first time since 1968.
Oh, Toledo is 6-1 and Kent State—in their second season under former Ohio State assistant Darrell Hazell—is now 5-1.
We own the fall.
My new favorite player: South Carolina kicker Landon ArdREVENGE TOUR 2012. Ohio State will get a crack at five of the seven teams that handed them defeats in 2012 and Urban Meyer's squad has already served up frigid leftovers to Michigan State and Nebraska. This weekend, they'll try to go three-for-three when they welcome Purdue to Columbus.
After a 3-1 start, which included a close, three-point loss to Notre Dame in South Bend, Danny Hope's Boilermakers were a fashionable choice to reach the Big Ten championship game. Indeed, Kirk Herbstreit had them going to Pasadena.
And then the wheels fell off. Two weeks ago, Michigan went into West Lafayette and pantsed Purdue, 44-13. The Wolverines outrushed Purdue, 304-56, and held a staggering edge in time of possession, 36:11 to 23:49.
Saturday, sputtering Wisconsin got well again, riding Montee Ball's 251 yards and three touchdowns to 38-14 road win. Again, Purdue surrendered massive amounts of yardage on the ground (467!!) and was clobbered in time of possession (38:42 to 21:18).
Not surprisingly, Purdue fans have had enough and are mounting the #FIREHOPE bandwagon with a quickness:
No words necessary #Purdue twitter.com/carminjc/statu…
— mike carmin (@carminjc) October 13, 2012
Purdue is wobbling, and they haven't beaten the Buckeyes in back-to-back games since 1960 and 1967, but the Boilermakers have been nothing short of a thorn in Ohio State's side lately, winning four of the last six meetings in Ross-Ade Stadium (Purdue Harbor, never forget). Thankfully, this matchup will take place in Columbus.
HELMET STICKERS UPDATE. We're three weeks into life with helmet stickers and based on feedback and the improvement in discourse on the site, they seem to be working. Things are going so well that tech heavyweight Ars Technica was like, "Hey, 11W, what's that you have there? We're going to try that." Not really, but it's still cool to see larger operations validate what we're doing here.
When we announced helmet stickers, I said that we had tools in place to prevent abuse and already we have had to ding several users for launching personal vendettas against other users – and by launching personal vendettas, I mean downvoting every comment made by a given user, good or bad. We even had to take corrective action against the Creed fan that systematically downvoted every comment in this thread. You can run, but you can't hide, Creed fan that's abusing our system.
While we believe the system is working, that doesn't mean we won't work to improve it. One of the things we'll be adding soon is the ability to see comment scores, whether you have the ability to vote or not. We may also consider adding voting to forum topics and blog posts.
Finally, we want to implement a rewards program. Like Marlboro Miles, but without the cancer. Right now, we are planning to give away a t-shirt from our store for achieving N helmet stickers. We'll figure out what N is, but we also need to determine other rewards. If you have any suggestions for rewards, please let us know in the comments.
ETC. Suggested Twitter follows for Purdue week... Tennessee fans have a message for Derek Dooley... Reason #148 why Kentucky football is terrible... Devoe Torrence pinched over the weekend... The 4th quarter of the last two Red River Shootouts has been Crimson and seats... Felix Baumgartner: Boss.
