Urban Meyer loves when his offense erupts for a huge play throughout the course of a game. Touchdowns of the explosive variety are vital to Ohio State's success and have been ever since Meyer's been head coach.
But how good are the Buckeyes are preventing them?
College football's changing landscape is in part due to various offensive advancements, tweaks and simply better athletes toting the ball on Saturday afternoons. Points are being scored in droves all across the country, though some Big Ten schools — Michigan, Wisconsin and Northwestern — sit in the top-10 nationally of scoring defense.
Ohio State resides at 21st through six games, allowing an average of 17.3 points per game in its six victories. Backbreaking plays were the team's biggest issue in 2013, when the Buckeye offense set school records and Braxton Miller won his second consecutive Silver Football. The defense was exposed in the season finale at Michigan, Big Ten Championship Game against Michigan State and then again at the Orange Bowl against Clemson.
To fix it, Meyer hired Chris Ash from Arkansas and Larry Johnson from Penn State. The 2014 defense took a leap forward by the time the post-season rolled around, largely shutting down three Heisman Trophy finalists in successive games against Wisconsin (Melvin Gordon), Alabama (Amari Cooper) and Oregon (Marcus Mariota).
Still, though, Ohio State yielded a mess of explosive plays (36) — ones that went for at least 20 yards — in 2014.
Running quarterbacks in Indiana's Zander Diamont and Maryland's Perry Hills burnt Ohio State's defense in the first half of the 2015 regular season. Virginia Tech's Sam Rogers, Western Michigan's Daniel Braverman, as well as Maryland's D.J. Moore all posted touchdown catches of at least 50 yards against Ohio State. The huge plays are still not absent. They may never be.
"They had some Q runs, but that really hurt us," Meyer said Monday, specifically of Maryland. "The long one (by Hills) was a scramble. The defensive line got out of position, and he took off and ran straight ahead."
Hills' substantial rushes when he got outside the pocket and scrambled for a first down sit fresh in the minds of Ohio State fans, players and coaches. Many think the Buckeyes are allowing more big plays than they did last year, but the numbers disprove that notion, at least from an average per game standpoint:
| Year | 20+ | 30+ | 40+ | 50+ | 60+ | 70+ | 80+ | 90+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | 36 | 21 | 16 | 12 | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 2015-16 | 10 | 8 | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 |
| Per Game | 20+ | 30+ | 40+ | 50+ | 60+ | 70+ | 80+ | 90+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | 2.40 | 1.40 | 1.07 | 0.80 | 0.47 | 0.27 | 0.13 | 0.07 |
| 2015-16 | 1.67 | 1.33 | 0.83 | 0.83 | 0.33 | 0.33 | 0 | 0 |
| TDs Allowed | 20+ | 30+ | 40+ | 50+ | 60+ | 70+ | 80+ | 90+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014-15 | 11 | 9 | 7 | 7 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 2015-16 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
Naturally, the numbers for 2015 are through only six games, whereas the Buckeyes played 15 games in 2014 and won the national championship. Still, the early returns are positive for a unit in its second year of Ash's press-quarters scheme, at least when it comes to the average number of explosive plays allowed so far this season.
Hills put up 170 rushing yards and Diamont 98 — including a 79-yard touchdown — in relief of an injured Nate Sudfield. That is inexcusable, Ash said Monday.
"The last two weeks, against Indiana, the backup quarterback came in and got a 70-some yard run. We had a missed tackle and lost leverage on that one. It had nothing to do with the scheme," Ash said. "Last week, the quarterback had like 150 yards on quarterback scrambles. He’d drop back to pass, there’s nothing there, then he’d pull off and run. He had some speed and we’ve gotta do a better job of containing the quarterback."
In the first six games of 2014, Ohio State's defense gave up touchdown plays of 60, 83, 78 yards, all in one game. Cincinnati's Chris Moore blew past coverage en route to a career day at Ohio Stadium, the fourth game of the season. Two other plays went for at least 60 yards against the defense in the first half of the 2014 regular season, for a total of five in the first six games. So far in 2015, the big rushes to Diamont and Hills are the lone plays Ohio State's allowed of the 60- plus yard variety.
"The last two weeks have been rough with these athletic quarterbacks and they've played really well," junior defensive end Joey Bosa said Monday. "I think you take away a couple plays, and we're playing really, really good defense."
Ohio State currently allows an average of 300.2 yards per game, good for 19th in the country and fifth in the Big Ten. The unit played stout early in the season against weaker opponents, but the struggles against Indiana and Maryland — two mid to low level Big Ten squads — certainly have the coaching staff's attention.
If the big plays do get removed, though, then numbers look a lot better, the wins are more lopsided and we likely wouldn't be having this conversation.
"There’s nothing that’s happened to us so far this year that’s not correctable," Ash said. "Against Indiana, the quarterback got out for 70 yards, we missed a tackle, had guys there and missed a tackle and the guy outran us, he was fast.
"This past week, the quarterback scrambled a lot. They put in a new quarterback. We thought we had an idea of who was going to be the quarterback, but they put in some new plays to feature the quarterback run game that we hadn’t necessarily been ready for or seen on film, so that caught us off guard a little bit," he added. "It wasn’t even that, it was the quarterback scrambles, when he’d drop back to pass and there was nothing there he pulled it down and ran. Those are the things that got us this past week. It’s disappointing, it makes you sick. Statistically, it looks bad, but it’s nothing that’s not correctable."
Ohio State hosts Penn State Saturday and quarterback Christian Hackenberg, who's tabbed NFL Draft analysts as a potential first-round pick. He's a pocket passer in every sense of the word, so the worry about him making big plays with his feet is not as high as was in recent weeks for the Buckeyes.
But Ohio State is fully aware it needs to do better at preventing explosive plays on defense, even if the numbers show its been better early in 2015 than in 2014.
"We just know we have to get better just in case we face another quarterback like we did Saturday in the future," safety Tyvis Powell said. "We have to have a better answer for it."
