I have a bit of an uninformed question. I see a lot of people who have a frustration with the number of runs JT had in the Indiana game. Many have blamed this on Beck/Warinner, and say that the same happened in the MSU game last year, that it wouldn't happen if Herman were still here. But I recall quite a lot of frustration with the way Herman supposedly called the B1G CG against MSU a couple of years ago. The big complaint in that game was that there was an over-reliance on Braxton Miller running the football. Too many QB runs, not enough Hyde. Same w/Beck and Warinner last year against MSU, too many QB runs not enough Elliott.

So this is my question for the more savvy football minds among us: is there a possibility that the heavy QB run games are less a component of the play-calling/OC at the helm (because these complaints came up in the Herman years just as much as they have the Beck/Warinner years), and moreso a result of how certain teams play the option game? Meyer has made it clear that the option is an essential component of the way his offense works, and as we all know it is the QB's job to determine whether to keep or give the ball to the RB depending on how the defense (usually the DE) plays him. Is it possible that certain teams train their DEs to tee off on the RB against OSU with the philosophy that they would rather Barrett (or Miller in years passed) runs for 5, 6, 7 yards at a clip but takes a bit of beating over the length of the game than let OSU beat them up inside the tackles with their road-grading OL for 60 minutes?

I feel a better football mind than I might be able to answer this question. I understand that we would all like more bubble screens, short passes, outside sweeps, very few if any direct QB draws, etc., but I do think this would explain why in certain games OSU is overly-reliant on the QB to make gains. At least moreso than putting it on the OCs, as Herman was just as much critiqued for this methodology as Beck/Warinner have been (remember those silly "Fire Herman" threads? I do).

Tl;dr version: The way I understand it, OSU's offense is built around the read option. I don't believe I've seen them run a play that doesn't have an option component to it (outside of designed passes/QB draws). The read is contingent on reading the DE. If a team is content with pursuing the RB on every snap at the cost of letting the QB get his yards, wouldn't it make sense that the QB would have 3x the run attempts that the RB does? Or am I oversimplifying here?