I was out of town visiting my sister and family with a new baby over the weekend was not able to squeeze in time to watch the game. After reading a lot of the articles and comments, I was finally able to watch the game last night and saw a lot of what others have shared. Here’s what stood out to me:
1) Our kicker and punter are absolute godsends. Remember when we were all questioning the use of a scholly on a kicker from UNC when we already had the top kicker in the nation out of high school on the roster? Yeah, that didn’t age well. We’ve gone on ad-nauseam about Ruggles but props to Mirco as well. He has an ability to just kill the ball inside the five that was shown again on Saturday. They are huge strengths to the team that we should not take for granted.
2) Steele Chambers is more than just good for being a RB that just transitioned to LB. When he came back in the second half, the energy and dynamism he brought was palpable. He was everywhere! Flying all over the field, making sure tackles, blowing stuff up, intercepting passes, he’s a true joy to watch and he deserves credit for being a great LB period. No caveat.
3) The “holding” call on Chambers when he tried to run through the wall of blockers and running back was complete BS. He was trying to run past them and he and the RB ended up tripping over each other.
4) Flemings sideline grab should have been a catch. No homerism, he had full control. It doesn’t require two hands to have control. Just bc he took his right hand on and off of it shouldn’t have factored in.
5) The bad O-line play has been well-documented and the root cause remains just as mysterious, but I actually thought the greatest hinderance to OSU’s offensive success was CJ had a rough game. He seemed shaken in the pocket, wasn’t seeing the field well, and kept taking his check down throw when the pocket was clean and he still had time to assess the field. One play in particular he didn’t see Olave running wide open for what would have been a sure TD but he took a bad check down instead that got blown up.
6) Nebraska had a low key great defense. That one LB was all over the place. Blowing up plays, intercepting passes, that dude made McFadden look like Kvaughan Pope. They also had some DBs that were real physical with the receivers, which if there’s a weakness of our receiving core, it’s that they don’t like really physical DBs. So, while we’re spending all this time trying to figure out what’s the matter with everyone on OSU’s offense, I have to give credit to that Nebraska defense. They were solid.
7) Olave quietly made some huge plays. JSN had a monster day but Olave made some clutch 3rd down catches and the TD to start things off. One of those catches should have sailed over his head but he went up for it draped in a DB and still came down with it. It’s little things like that we’ll miss when he’s gone.
8) I didn’t think the run game was as bad as I’d seen discussed. I think we needed to continue to try different things with it, including letting the fresh legs of Teague and Willams hammer that defense into submission. I wouldn’t treat Henderson as a true bell cow back just yet. He’s an 18 year old who didn’t play his senior year and we’re going to need him for the final run. But what I saw from Williams and Teague should have been good enough to earn them more carries.
This one was tedious to sit through for sure, but I think we’ve been pretty spoiled by the explosive offense and so any hiccup and it feels worse than it likely is. I think if OSU could get the Defense from the first three games turned around so quickly, then it should take less to fix whatever ails the offense that had previously looked unstoppable. I think part of Stroud’s struggle is he doesn’t have a run game to take pressure off of him having to throw. PSU and Neb threw some looks at the O-line that we’ll learn from and get better, and once Dawand is feeling better, we can get back to that continuity that they were used to seeing.
