So I am going to try to give a sober assessment of how OSU did this year so far in terms of pass offense, run offense, pass defense, run defense and special teams
Pass Offense - B minus
We finished 14th Nationally, 12th among P5 schools and 2nd on the B10 in Pass Eff Offense which to me would generally be a solid B grade but we did rank 39th in least sacks allowed nationally which was 20th among the P5 and 5th in conference which brings it down to B minus
Rush Offense - C minus
Henderson alone had a solid year, but he missed a 1/3rd of the season again with injuries. But nearly everyone else ran quite poorly with YPC averages well below 4.0. Hence we ranked 72nd nationally in YPC. 43rd in the P5 and 6th in conference. So even though Henderson was solid, the overall results were very inconsistent and was especially weak in the biggest games. I could easily entertain a D+ here.
Total Offense - Since about 2/3rds of our yards came thru the air and we had issues all year in the redzone (54th nationally) and in 3rd down conversion at times, I think a fair offensive grade is about C, maybe a C+, with a ton of the issues being inconsistent OL play all year
Run Defense - B+ - ranked 21st nationally in YPC, 14th in P5 but 5th in conference. The fact that most B10 teams were terrible offensively this season and we ranked 84th in TFL lowers this from an A.
Pass Defense - A - ranked 2nd in Pass Eff D. Only things keeping it from being an A+ is the lack of sacks and creating TO's
Overall defense - A minus - no doubt that except for 1 final drive by UM our defense was very good, however it is hard to ignore the lack of sacks, TFL or TO's
Special Teams
Place Kicking - B - made 83% of FG's but did miss 1 XP. Solid if not quite elite.
Punting/Coverage - C minus - although in general Mirco was fine when he punted we did rank 60th nationally in net punting in part due to some quite short punts and ranking 117th in PR yards allowed.
KO coverage - B minus - Even with 2 KO's OB this year we still ranked in the top 40 for KO return yards allowed.
KO returns - D - ranked 70th in KOR yards, 45th in the P5 and 7th in conference, not good at all
Punt Rets - F - we only attempted 16 returns in 12 games and ranked 107th nationally at 4.56/ret, That was 9th worst in P5
Intangibles - given all the penalties, screw ups, alingment issues, no fake fake punts etc it is hard to give this are anything other than an F
Overall - Alhtough tempted to give an overall F here, given that the basics of kicking FG's, punting and not kicking OB were all at least decent I will go with a D.
Overall grade - Offense was a C+, Defense and A and Special Teams a D, and weighing O and D heavier than SPT, I will go with an overall Grade of C+ to B-
