[Edit: I updated the charts after the Minnesota game. Even more balance than before.
To avoid comparisons with certain reporters who do not label their edits, I have struck out any original text, leaving it intact for people to read. The charts are completely new.]

The term 'offensive balance' has been thrown around a lot over the past few seasons. It's come up lately regarding Ohio State and its newfound propensity to throw the ball. (Apologies Woody, but time and change, coach, time and change.) But balance is something that no one seems to define well. Is it running equal rushing and passing plays? Is it gaining equal running and passing yards? Is it just doing what your offense does best and exploiting what the defense does worst to get a win and move on?

The Pirate (aka Mike Leach, Head Coach Washington State University), made some interesting comments regarding 'offensive balance' in an Oct 1 press conference that garnered more media attention than his usual mysterious remarks. (The video starts at 1:20, and the specific comments go through about the 5 minute mark.)

For those who don't want to watch (you're missing out on a national treasure), here are some select quotes:

All kinds of positions touched the ball...We want contributions from all of our positions.

And I don't care about [balance]; passing yards have a way of spending just as good as rushing yards.

There's nothing balanced about 50 percent rush, 50 percent pass, because that's 50 percent stupid.

Taken out of context, great sports minds like Mike Golic blasted Leach for his complete disregard for conventional football wisdom. Once again, sports media wrote off Leach as an eccentric crackpot.

But Coach Leach got me thinking: What constitutes balance, and how balanced are the 2018 Buckeyes? Combined with recent the concerns from some about OSU's rushing game, I thought this was worth a deep dive into the numbers. (Warning this post contains statistics. I will make every effort not twist, distort or perform unnatural acts with farm animals to get these stats to say something other than what they are.)

On the surface, the 2018 OSU offense appears to be favoring the rushing game based purely on attempts: 256 rushing attempts to 226 passing attempts.  If we subtract kneel downs, late game clock kills, etc. these numbers are probably a little closer. In the aggregate, that looks like a fairly 'balanced' offense.

But if we look at yardage gained, it's almost a two to one advantage to the passing game (and why not if you have Dwayne Haskins as your QB?): 2188 passing yards to 1206 rushing yards. Compared to previous Urban Meyer Ohio State teams, that's about as out of whack as you can get. Take a look at the offensive numbers from every season from 2012 through 2017:

Only once in the past six seasons has passing yardage outpaced rushing, and that was 2017. (Please don't go there in the comments. This isn't about specific players, it's about the offense.) 2014 appears to be the most 'balanced' between rushing and passing, and we all know how that ended. Tthe 2018 version of the Buckeyes appears to be anything but 'balanced.' Clearly there must be something wrong with OSU's 'ground attack.'

Does that mean the 2018 offense is doomed? Do the Buckeyes have an identity crisis? Do we need the ghost of Woody Hayes to switch Ryan Day's playbook to stop the passing madness?

Let me pull another quote from Mike Leach that came a little later in his press conference around the 3:40 mark.

There's nothing clever about that. The wishbone, which I think is a great offense, there's nothing 50 percent run about the wishbone, ya know. They're like 95 percent run, but everybody touched the ball. That's why it's one of the greatest offenses devised.

Philosophically, [the wishbone] is very similar to [our offense]. Attack sideline to sideline...some of those pitches take place downfield, so they stretch the field more than they get credit for...and everybody touches the ball.

If you think about it nobody's every really stopped [the wishbone]. They get tired of it. The get bored with it. But nobody's really stopped it.

So what if we look at the 2018 OSU offense, and its relative balance through Mike Leach's lens. Are all the Buckeye play makers touching the ball, and is the offense balanced from that perspective?

The table below includes players with five or more attempts in any category and over 150 yards total offense. Combined they've accounted for 75 percent of Ohio State's total offense this year. 

**EDIT**

Things look slightly better but only for a few players. Dobbins, Weber and Campbell are averaging 523.3 yards between the three of them, which is well above the larger group average of 359 yards of total offense per player. Meanwhile, Hill, Mack, Victor, McLaurin and Dixon are averaging only 260.8 yards per player, which is 100 yards below the average of the entire group.

KJ Hill's record breaking performance pushed him up with the statistical leaders. Along with Dobbins, Weber and Campbell, this group averages 76 touches and 566.8 yards. That's 144 yards more than the average of all eight players. The four WRs average 16.8 touches and 258.5 yards.

This looks even worse from a balance perspective when one accounts for the fact that the majority of Campbell's yards have been the oh so maligned 'yards after catch' from his H-Back position. One could argue that the 1570 yards accumulated by Dobbins, Weber and Campbell are essentially rushing yards from hand-offs, screens and short passes behind the line of scrimmage. The only thing balanced might be the number of TDs scored by those three as compared to the other five. In any event, this smells a lot like the Spread Offense, or even a heavily modified Option Offense minus the quarterback run.

But what if we're looking at this all wrong? What if balance has more to do with position, and less to do with player, or rush versus pass? Could it be that we've missed the Buckeye forest for the Buckeye leaves?

If we take the exact same data set, and group the offensive totals of rushing and passing by position group, something magical happens.

**EDIT**

Despite shouldering over half of the offensive plays, the RBs are totaling 37 percent of all the yardage and 29 percent of the touchdowns. The H-Backs have 30 percent of the yardage and 29 percent of the TDs. The Wide Receivers have 33 percent of the yardage and 42 percent of the scores.

The running backs are still dominating the attempts column, but not to the same extent as Week 6. What really jumps out is the percent of total offensive yardage produced by each position group: RB 34.9%, H Backs 33.8%, WRs 31.3%.

It's hard to get more balanced than that. And based on the results, it's difficult to argue that there's a real problem with the offense. After six seven games, Ohio State is ranked #3 #4 in S&P+ offense, #4 #2 in Yards per Game, and #5 #6 in Points per Game. 

So, by taking a page out of The Pirate's Deck Log, disregarding the whole 'run-pass' offensive balance paradigm and finding a way to get every position the ball, perhaps the Meyer-Wilson-Day offensive triumvirate have found true balance.

http://www.cfbstats.com/2018/team/518/index.html
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/ohio-state/2018.html