Real Pod Wednesdays: Discussing How Ohio State’s Defense Can Be Salvaged After Loss to Oregon

By Dan Hope and Griffin Strom on September 15, 2021 at 12:30 pm
Teradja Mitchell vs. Oregon
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Coming off of Saturday's loss to Oregon, there's one question that most Ohio State fans have on their minds: Can the defense be saved?

After sharing our initial reactions to Ohio State’s 35-28 loss to Oregon and Ryan Day’s Tuesday press conference – where he made clear his displeasure with the performance of Kerry Coombs’ unit – we bring on Eleven Warriors film guru Kyle Jones (beginning at 17:00) to discuss what the Buckeyes need to do to try to salvage their defense.

Jones believes we should be realistic with our expectations for the defense for the rest of the year, as the Buckeyes probably won’t be able to completely revamp their scheme now that the season has begun. That said, he believes the defense can improve to some extent with better coaching and execution, and he explains what that might look like while also answering questions from our listeners about whether Coombs really deserves all the blame, whether Coombs should coach from the press box and why we shouldn't worry about offensive play calling.

Later in the show (51:15), we discuss why C.J. Stroud isn’t Ohio State's problem – and why we like most of what we saw from the young quarterback against Oregon – and why it's still way too early to give up on the Buckeyes as a College Football Playoff contender (57:40).

Finally, we also discuss why it's weird that Sevyn Banks isn't playing, our score predictions for this week's game against Tulsa and how much we think we'll see Kyle McCord – and if we'll see Quinn Ewers at all – this weekend.

You can listen to Real Pod Wednesdays in the audio player above or wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

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