I thought about plugging this in as a post, but felt it was much more deserving of its own thread. 

There has been a "relative" common theme over the course of the last month or so about our running game, specifically, our offensive line. The first peel of the onion that needs to be addressed is the way we choose to run the ball, the bread and butter so to say: inside zone.

To run inside zone, the OL is coached to block an area. Duh, it's a zone play. That area will almost ALWAYS be the player that shows up to the playside gap. There are wrinkles where teams will run zone and "pin and pull" at times, but that's not something that the Buckeyes ever do. On the inside zone, the running back is coached to square his shoulders to the line of scrimmage, and aim at the center's butt. The aiming point is the playside A gap, but ultimately, follow the center's butt; if the center reaches his block, playside A gap, if the center can't reach, backside A gap. One thing that is often told to the RB on inside zone, "bang it, bend it, but never bounce it". This means that option A is to bang it hard in the playside A, if not, bend it back to backside A, but NEVER try to bounce it outside.

The last portion is the most critical, because when you go back and watch us run the ball, there's one RB on the team that doesn't do this: Trey Henderson. There is no doubt that Trey is dynamic in space, catches well, etc. But when the bread and butter is supposed to hit frontside A to backside A, and you don't do it, there will be problems. These problems have showed against the better defenses we have faced in the latter portion of the year. However, Miyan and Dallan have shown to have the toughness and vision to run the inside zone, and run it well. 

One might ask, "if Trey can't run inside zone, why not run Iso, or Duo, etc?" The answer is that the footwork of the OLine is very similar between the zone play and the front side of GT counter. The RB opens up the same way in both plays as well, thus, creating a similar picture to the defense for a split second, hoping to get linebackers one gap overcommitted. 

I feel very confident that we will run with success this weekend if Miyan is healthy and with the emergence of Dallan. It will be critical to have TTUN commit an extra defender to the box, and that will only happen if we can get these two going early and often.