Following Ohio State’s 38-10 win over Penn State last Saturday, Buckeye tight ends Marcus Baugh and Nick Vannett shared a laugh together. Both felt they played extremely well, but neither caught a single pass.
“At the end of the last game, we joked around about it,” Baugh said following Ohio State’s practice Wednesday evening. “It doesn’t really bother us.”
“We’re winning, so something is working.”
Both Baugh and Vannett were singled out — along with the offensive line — by head coach Urban Meyer following last Saturday’s win over the Nittany Lions for the roles they played in helping the Buckeyes run for 315 yards against a vaunted Penn State defensive front.
Baugh and Vannett each graded out as champions in that game.
“Marcus Baugh played his most extensive time; [he] played very well,” Meyer said. “Nick Vannett played well also.”
Things weren’t like this at the beginning of the season, though. Ohio State’s tight ends, and more specifically Vannett, weren’t playing up to standard.
The fifth-year senior would be the first to admit that.
“I felt that the first couple games I didn’t play that well,” he said. “I took that as a challenge where that’s an area I have to improve in. I just needed to be more physical at the point of attack and I think I did a really good job of that last week and I’ve just got to keep continuing to enhance it.”
Vannett knew coming into the season more was going to be demanded of him as he was going to be the sole replacement for Jeff Heuerman, a third-round selection of the Denver Broncos in the NFL Draft. Baugh was slated to slide into Vannett’s role as the “relief pitcher” as tight ends coach Tim Hinton often puts it.
Both struggled to adjust early on in the season, though, but have each improved their play, the coaches say. With Ohio State's lack of depth at wide receiver now, too, the tight ends have needed to get better as the Buckeyes have used more double tight end packages of late.
“Most of Nick’s things were not — 80 percent of the game he played very, very well,” Hinton said. “The other part is you just want to pull your hair out. Why did you do that?”
“Most of it was pressing more than anything.”
There aren’t any options for the Buckeyes beyond Vannett and Baugh; they had to improve their play. Freshman tight ends Rashod Berry and A.J. Alexander have “a long way to go,” Meyer said recently.
They’ve answered the call of the coaching staff in recent weeks even if that doesn’t mean they are catching many passes.
“We haven’t been used much in the passing game, but that’s OK with us,” Vannett said. “If they need us blocking the edge or whatever they need us to do we’re willing to do that.”
