Michael Thomas Shined, But Ohio State's Wide Receivers Remain Its Biggest Underachievers

By Patrick Maks on September 8, 2014 at 8:35 am
Michael Thomas had a big game, but the rest of Ohio State's wide receivers looked average.
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Two days after losing to Clemson in the Orange Bowl, Michael Thomas logged onto Twitter and put his fellow wide receivers on blast for a pitiful and petty performance against the Tigers. For the sake of context, this particular nugget from Jan. 5 best sums up the eruption:

“Is it throwing people under the bus? Or is it telling it how it is? You watch tv you see the same stuff... You just sugar coat it..”

It was an accurate indictment of a feeble position group which hauled in two measly passes for five yards outside of former standout Corey “Philly” Brown against the Tigers.

Thomas has since deleted the tweets, but they live in internet infamy through screenshots. And most of all and most importantly, the sentiments behind them still ring true eight months later.

Between then and Saturday’s 35-21 loss to Virginia Tech, not much has changed for Ohio State’s wide receivers, which have long seemed to underachieve under head coach Urban Meyer.

“Very disappointed,” Meyer said of the unit after the game.

“I don't think our wide receivers played well. We dropped a touchdown early in the game … you start hitting some of those like we did, it puts them in the zone coverage.”

They combined for nine catches for 219 yards and a touchdown against the Hokies and, on the surface, the numbers themselves aren’t bad at all. But how the Buckeyes got to that total is the problem. Only four receivers caught the football and only one of them had more than one catch.

For a team that says it’s brimming with young, waiting-in-the-wings weapons at wide receiver around redshirt freshman quarterback J.T. Barrett, it did little to back up such a notion Saturday night against the Hokies and their airtight defense. Potential didn't turn into production.

“Gutsy effort by our quarterback. Obviously not good enough, but a quarterback is a product of those around him, and we all have to get better,” Meyer said.

In addition to familiar faces like Devin Smith, Evan Spencer and Dontre Wilson, names like Michael Thomas, Corey Smith, Jalin Marshall, Jeff Greene, James Clark and Johnnie Dixon were all supposed to give Ohio State a cache of skill players unlike it’d ever had under Meyer.

Thomas, who seems poised to be a stud in the right conditions, was the lone highlight. He had six catches for 98 yards and a long touchdown off a slant that drew the Buckeyes within a touchdown of Virginia Tech in a game slipping away.

Wilson, an H-back who’ll be used extensively in the passing game, had a spectacular 40-yard catch, but nothing more.

The same goes for Devin Smith, who was good for his customary big play (a 58-yard catch) before disappearing for the remainder of the contest. Corey Smith, a junior college transfer who some curiously likened to Santonio Holmes before playing a competitive snap, dropped a handful of passes.

Marshall, Spencer, and the slew of others projected to round out what was supposedly going to be the best crew of offensive skill players at Ohio State in some time were non-factors.

Coupled with Barrett’s inexperience and a porous offensive line that surrendered seven sacks Saturday night, the Buckeyes looked bad in the passing game, especially at the wide receiver position.

“I don’t think you can point the finger solely on that, I think that was a contributing factor at times and obviously we weren’t very accurate at times at the quarterback position,” offensive coordinator Tom Herman said.

“It was certainly not a one position, one thing that you can say this was the reason.”

That’s true. The lack of competent skill players (particularly at wide receiver outside of Thomas and Devin Smith) is just part of Ohio State’s problem.

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