While he's been among the nation's leaders in completion percentage and efficiency much of the year, Julian Sayin's development took another step in his fifth career start, this time against the visiting Minnesota Golden Gophers. Though Carnell Tate stole the initial headlines after a career night of his own, the tape showed an effort from his quarterback that simply couldn't be ignored.
Many had wondered if and when the Ohio State coaching staff would allow their young signal caller more latitude in the passing game. Well, that crowd got its answer as Sayin completed 23 of 27 for 326 yards and 3 touchdowns, taking command of multiple phases of the offense as the RPO game was prominently featured.
On the other side of the ball, Matt Patricia's defense once again impressed, though an initial first drive led the opposing coaches to believe they had finally found a chink in the Silver Bullet armor.
“They put you in a corner and mix up so many different coverages and fronts," P.J. Fleck said after the game. "After that first drive, I thought we had them in their base defense, their base coverages and we had a really good beat on them. Then we came back out and they changed it. That's really good coaching.”
What, exactly, did that coaching entail?
Here's what we go over in this week's video breakdown:
- The successful return of zone schemes in the OSU run game
- Sayin's masterful reads in the option game
- Minnesota's quick passing game was stymied by a move to man-coverage
- More D-Line dominance from the Buckeyes
Click the header photo above to watch the video, or head straight to YouTube.
