Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer makes his offensive philosophy sound quite simple to the average person: “If you have a good player, you get him the ball,” he says.
But over the Buckeyes’ previous two games — a 38-0 victory over Hawai’i and a narrow 20-13 escape against Northern Illinois — it doesn’t seem like that has been happening. And when that point was brought up to Meyer in his weekly press conference Monday afternoon, the fourth-year Ohio State coach agreed.
“No,” Meyer said when asked if he felt like he was getting the ball to his best players enough. “Then a couple times we did and it didn’t get to them, so we’ll get better.”
One of those players who has been a hot topic to get more touches is running back Ezekiel Elliott, but he's not necessarily one of the players Meyer was referring to about touching the ball more.
Elliott has received plenty of touches over the last two weeks. Ohio State’s junior running back has received a total of 53 touches against Hawai’i and Northern Illinois. He gained 101 yards on 27 carries against the Rainbow Warriors and had 23 runs for 108 yards versus the Huskies. Elliott also had three total coaches in the two games.
Perhaps there’s something to how Elliott has garnered those touches — maybe the Buckeyes have gone away from him for too many consecutive series — but as far as sheer quantity of carries? Elliott is right where he needs to be.
Ohio State running backs coach Tony Alford agreed Monday when he was asked if Elliott had been touching the ball enough.
“If someone says he’s not carrying it enough, I can’t answer that for you,” Alford said, before adding he feels Elliott is getting an adequate number of touches. “He’s doing fine.”
Over the last two games, Elliott is averaging just 4.2 yards per carry. Throughout all of last year, Elliott averaged 6.9 yards per carry. He hasn’t been able to break free for a big play over the last two weeks, which has been a large contributor to that decrease. In fact, after Elliott’s 80-yard run against Virginia Tech on his very first carry of the season, his longest run of the year has been just 13 yards.
That lack of explosion obviously isn’t all on Elliott; the Ohio State offensive line hasn’t played very well in any of its first three games. But the lack of big plays in the running game is certainly concerning, and it’s part of the reason why fans might be worried.
Elliott can’t carry the ball 30-plus times every week; that’s just begging for him to get hurt. The Buckeyes don’t really have a ton of confidence in their backup running backs so Elliott has seen the majority of the workload at the position. Alford said Ohio State hopes to get freshman running back Mike Weber back this week.
The bottom line: Elliott may seen a slight increase in his touches going forward, but a significant one doesn't seem realistic right now. Ohio State just simply has to improve in all phases of its offense.
“We’re playing defense on offense right now and you don’t do that,” Meyer said. Some people do, but our history is we want to score a lot of points. … On offense right now, for a variety of reasons and not the players, we’re sitting back and we’re not going to do that anymore.
