"We're undefeated, but not as undefeated as we'd like to be..."
I'm frustrated. Many of us are. We went from experiencing unimaginable joy to being forced to pull out our hair and bite our collar like a crazy person while we watch our team struggling to put away, or hell, even just escape, the likes of MAC teams and Indiana. INDIANA?!?!? We're talking about a school that has a commemorative plaque celebrating the last time they beat us, which was basically an off year for us. It's truly hard to grasp.
We have recently spent time seriously discussing among ourselves if this is the best team in the history of this school, which has no shortage of candidates for all-time great teams. The level of talent on this team is simply unheard of, even in an era when superhuman athleticism and ability has become increasingly common across the spectrum of college football. More than a few teams have dazzlingly talented players, but the fact that we have nearly a half dozen players who, if placed on teams where they would get the lions share of touches, would be automatic Heisman candidates is hard to reconcile with the way we have performed. It just doesn't add up.
Then there is our coaching staff. Our head coach is in such rarefied space that he is no longer competing with his contemporaries. He is competing with statues. He is competing with men that have long ago passed and whose names have become the mythical deities of the game. Under him is a collection of specialists who are objects of desire for most, if not all, head coaches across the country.
No one could blame us for wondering if we might have been witnessing the golden age of Ohio State football. The run to our recent title was the stuff of dreams and legends. I remember the dread I felt after the game against TTUN when we had to start a kid at QB who I had seen make a couple of nifty moves in garbage time, but not much else. We had already been forced to place a blind trust in an unproven QB at the beginning of the season and here we were being forced to do it all again. I didn't exactly fancy our chances against what was a very solid Wisky defense. Then 59-0 happened and the dream took hold. I'll be surprised if sometime soon there isn't a 30-for-30 or some similar dramatic re-telling of what happened next, because it's unheard of. And somehow a vast majority of that team was returning. So, of course, we expected to have maybe a couple small hiccups like the start of the VaTech game, and then we would settle in to being who we know we are and taking care of business as we should. It's only natural to expect that. But that's just not the way this game goes. We aren't entitled. We're not entitled to win a championship. We aren't even entitled to blow out lesser teams. And that's okay. Because no team who has won it all has done so without having to answer some serious questions about themselves.
Alabama is still a powerhouse but some chinks in their armor have been exposed of late. I remember when Bama was THE gold standard, not too long ago. The 2009 Bama team struggled against Kentucky, the perennial SEC whipping boy. They beat Tennessee by two points, in a year when the Vols were a shell of their former selves. Hell, they opened that season by beating VaTech by a mere ten points. Then they won a title. Florida state struggled mightily against a jokey Boston College and looked far from great against several other unranked teams when they won the title two years ago. Auburn had two games against unranked opponents that were decided by three points the year they won it all. The list goes on. No team blows out every opponent on their way to a championship. Some teams actually LOSE to unranked teams and still win it all (I can think of one, for sure). In fact, most of these teams trace their winning to lessons learned in those struggles.
It's hard to see us struggle against Indiana, but let's not forget that many of us have been referring to the Hoosiers as the SEC East Champions after they went into Mizzou's house and sent them to bed last year. Yeah, we struggled with them, but the SEC East champs lost to them. At home. Admittedly, that was last year, but that's the point. This is a new year. Nothing is promised. We have tons of talent but ask Dan Marino, Cris Carter, Randy Moss, Steve Nash, Ted williams, and so on, if talent entitles you to a championship.
When Urban unveiled "The Grind" we all thought it was a great theme and an accurate title for this chapter. But now many of us are acting like it was just a new color scheme for the carpet and the curtains. We're acting like we expect to never trail in a game and never win by less than three scores. Turns out the grind is exactly what it sounds like, and maybe that's okay. If it was as simple as plug and play, doesn't it seem like every talented team would win a title? Maybe repeating as champions really is as hard as all astute fans know it is. And maybe we should embrace the grind and not act like our team sucks because we aren't cake walking into the playoffs. All I keep hearing is "we're undefeated but not as undefeated as we'd like to be." It sounds exactly as ridiculous as you think it does.
It's more than okay to question what's happening with our team and the coaching and to discuss what we think would help. We have every right to question which QB should be starting. That's the beauty of this site and the reason I come here every day. We have acres and acres of room to improve, and if we don't, we'll certainly lose a game, or more. We may not win the title. But, damn, can we quit pretending like it's our birthright to win big, just because? No matter what happens we're in the midst of a magical chapter in Buckeyes football.
