Was Ohio State Properly Prepared For Virginia Tech?

By Tim Shoemaker on September 8, 2014 at 4:00 pm
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Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer stood on the sidelines as the Buckeyes took the field for their first offensive series Saturday against Virginia Tech when he realized he was going up against something he hadn't seen before.

"That is the first time I've seen that kind of defense in maybe our coaching career where they were all within six yards," Meyer said Monday during his weekly press conference. "The start of the game I remember on the headset and I said, 'Wow, I've never seen them do that.'"

With Ohio State replacing four starters on its offensive line, losing its top receiver and running back from a year ago and playing without back-to-back Big Ten Player of the Year Braxton Miller, Virginia Tech opted to run a 46 Bear, Cover 0 defense.

Basically, the Hokies stacked everyone in the box to take away Ohio State's running game and dared the Buckeye receivers to get open, one-on-one against the corners. Longtime Virginia Tech defensive coordinator Bud Foster felt his team had the advantage on the outside and put in a specific gameplan for Ohio State, while mixing in the Hokies' traditional zone blitzes.

Was it a risk? Meyer thinks so.

"They felt good about — I don't want to speak for them — but after watching the films a bunch of times, they felt their match‑ups at corner were better, and they had a freshman quarterback and new offensive line," he said. "Before we get a play started, we were going to be in the backfield. Pretty gutsy, but I don't know if you do that against last year's team. You'd have to ask their coach, I don't know that."

While it may have been a risky decision for the Hokies, it certainly paid off. But it also begs the question of should the Buckeyes have been prepared for something like this to happen? Conventional wisdom would say there shouldn't be any surprises at this level of play.

"That’s part of an early game in the season, because this is not the first time that’s ever happened to me. It happens typically a lot during the first part of the year, it really comes down to how far of a departure do they go from what you’ve already seen on film," Ohio State co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach Chris Ash said. "If it’s a drastic departure like it sounds like they might’ve been definitively, that makes it a little bit more of a challenge. If it’s just little wrinkles here and there and you’ve got to adjust throughout the course of the game, then it’s not that big of a challenge. When they go completely away from what they may have done or even shown and you haven’t necessarily seen that from another team in a long time, it makes it more of a challenge on game day."

The way the Buckeyes chose to counter Virginia Tech's defense was by trying to attack it downfield. There were only a handful of slants and screen passes to get the ball out quick and counter the Hokies' pressure.

That plan had limited success as redshirt freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett only completed two deep balls on the day — one to Devin Smith and the other to Dontre Wilson — and neither went for a score.

“Coach Foster did a great job because they hadn’t shown a lot of that at all. You didn’t see a lot of that at all, maybe two snaps the week prior against William & Mary, that was it," running backs coach Stan Drayton said. "We prepared for a totally different system of defense and when they came out like that, we had mechanisms and answers for that. ..But to honestly say we prepared a lot for that, I would be lying to you. We had some answers and during the course of every game you have to make a midstream adjustment and how well you make those adjustments are very telling to the maturity of your football team a lot of times.”

The youth of a football team is something that's tough for a coaching staff to control. The team's preparation, however, is something they can.

"This one we got exposed a little bit," Meyer said. "They played the traditional 4‑3 defense, man three is what we prepared for and that's not what they gave us, so we were exposed a little bit."

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