ICYMI:
- Mike Thomas relishes one-on-one opportunities with All-American Kendall Fuller.
- The first depth chart of 2015 (spoilers: a lot of ORs).
- Talkin' OSU-Tech with The Key Play.
HOW THE HOKIES CAN BEAT THE BUCKS. It happened last year: Ohio State lost the dang game to Virginia Tech. I would've lost a lot of money if I had money to lose.
So theoretically speaking, it's possible Ohio State's season starts off on the wrong foot Monday night in front of the whole country. Could Virginia Tech's plan to victory be as simple as rinse and repeat?
From CBSSports.com:
“Bear Zero,” [Urban Meyer] said, describing the Hokies' defensive scheme that day. “You can't run against it. Now we practice it every third practice.”
[...]
The risk-reward approach worked. Ohio State was held to a season-low 108 rushing yards. Barrett threw three interceptions. The Bear was used on 54 of 74 snaps.
[...]
Why, then, wouldn't Foster use the same scheme next week? Sure, the Bucks are stronger, more experienced. They've got game film on the Hokies, too. But you would have to figure Foster keep running some form of the Bear until the Bucks figure it out.
“I can't speak for [Foster], but it would make sense as a coach,” [Bear front guru Mike] Kuchar said. "His players understand the system. Bud's a 46 defense kind of guy.”
(Kuchar is the founder and senior research manger of X&O labs and, more pertinently, damn near wrote a book on the defense.)
Ohio State is a stronger, more experienced team... than a team the team that ran roughshod over the rest of the country.
Sure, Virginia Tech's defense will be better too, and Foster is assuredly smart enough to throw a few kinks into the mix, but if the plan is to make J.T. Barrett (my presumed starter) beat them with his arm... then he's going to beat them with his arm.
Perhaps, however, being sliced and diced by a man with doctor-like efficiency is a less violent death than getting bludgeoned by the Slobs and Ezekiel Elliott.
CHARGES TESTIFY ON BEHALF OF WARINNER THE OC. This will be Ed Warinner's first year as Ohio State offensive coordinator, but it's not his first rodeo.
Warinner orchestrated the explosive offense during those few years Kansas was decent and won an Orange Bowl, as well as a couple of years as Army's coach.
From Scout.com, who caught up with former Warinner charges:
“The guy’s a machine,” [former Kansas QB Todd] Reesing said. “He keeps going, and I don’t know how his voice didn’t get more hoarse when he was coaching at Kansas. He takes a look at every part of the offense. When we’re running team drills, he’s coaching everybody up. He’s looking over at what the receivers are doing, what the running backs are doing, what the tight ends are doing.
“If they need to make some adjustments, he’s going to be vocal about it. He’s not the type of guy just to let it go. He wants everybody to succeed. He’d much rather say something in practice than to have it be an error in the game.”
[...]
“He knows what good looks like,” said Bill Whittemore, who was an offensive graduate assistant at Kansas from 2006-08. “He’s one of those guys that doesn’t have to see the whole play unfold to know what went wrong. From that standpoint, I would say he’s not going to have an issue. He’ll probably be focusing more on his offensive linemen, but if he sees a hole open up and the running back didn’t hit right where he should, he’ll know what needs to change in order for that not to happen.”
... Sounds like a guy who would make an excellent offense coordinator. While he doesn't belong to MENSA — the organization for geniuses to which his predecessor, Tom Herman, belongs — but did you know Ed Warinner is a Mount Union alumnus? It's true.
"THEY BLEED LIKE WE BLEED." Even if I removed the names from these quotes from Tuesday's Virginia Tech practice, you'd still be able to guess which one was said by the professional and which was said by the "amateur."
From TheKeyPlay.com:
Even Virginia Tech offensive coordinator Scot Loeffler, a self-described football junkie, won't allow himself to catch any of the college football games this weekend. Not with No. 1 Ohio State coming to town on Monday.
"We're playing the No. 1 team in America with 16 or 17, probably, first or second round (draft) grade guys," said Loeffler. "I've seen some good teams on tape, but this (team), there's a reason that they're unanimous No. 1."
But while senior defensive tackle Corey Marshall certainly respects the talent the Buckeyes have, he made it abundantly clear that the Hokies won't be ceding one inch on Labor Day.
"Our mindset's always the same," said Marshall. "We're dogs, through and through. Nothing changes because of the opponent. We attack because they're across the field from us. This isn't a special game. This isn't something we're going to put on a pedestal. When we step on that field, they bleed like we bleed and we're gonna show the world."
Yes, the nationally televised game — the game Frank Beamer called the "most anticipated in Lane Stadium history" — is just the same as this certified street banger:
The only thing I remember bleeding on that day were my eyes. (This was back when I thought Virginia Tech's trashiness was going to cost Ohio State a playoff spot.)
"Scheme-wise, it's definitely not going to be a surprise, but anybody that watched film of that football game, there was no magic formula we were doing," said Marshall. "We executed to a lethal level and it showed in the score."
Ohio State deserved to lose last year. Virginia Tech was the better team, and it wasn't a magic formula. I just don't think they'll beat Urban Meyer by throwing the same punch, which looks like they're going to do.
#WAYBACKWEDNESDAY. This was pretty cool. The 1951 Dispatch article announcing the hiring of a "Miami U Mentor" to replace Wesley Fesler as head football coach of The Ohio State University.
From Dispatch.com:
Thirty-eight-year-old Wayne Woodrow “Woody” Hayes closed up shop at Miami University Monday and moved his T-formation to Ohio State as its 19th head football coach.
The portly, black-haired 1935 Denison University grad inherits what his resigned predecessor, Wesley Fesler, hinted was a “hot spot,” but has several compensations.
Hayes assumes his new duties as the announced “unanimous” choice of the screening committee, athletic board and board of trustees. The latter group gave its official and required stamp of approval at a special session Sunday.
Also, Hayes was accorded the fattest contract ever offered by the university. President Howard L. Bevis said, following his official announcement of Hayes’ hiring, that the salary would $12,500 and that his contract would be for one year “according to university regulations.”
According to the CPI Inflation calculator, $12,500 in 1951 is the equivalent of $114,792.81. Not a bad lifestyle in either era, but it's peanuts compared to today's coaching salaries. #MakesYouThink, for sure.
SAY IT AIN'T SO, JACK! Jack Nicklaus has lived a charmed life, but apparently his Ohio State museum has failed to capitalize on that.
From BizJournals.com:
Ten years since becoming part of Ohio State University, the Jack Nicklaus Museum still needs significant subsidies from the Buckeyes athletics department.
The shrine to golf’s greatest player and a former national champion at Ohio State was transferred by the private Jack Nicklaus Museum Inc. to Ohio State in 2005 in a seemingly natural move for a building that sits on campus and honors one of the university’s most-accomplished former stars.
While it's seen as a community asset instead of a profit center, the museum nonetheless has been a drain, most recently losing $199,895 in the fiscal year ended June 30.
Good thing Jack's got that baby Escobar money. If I lost Ohio State $200,000 they'd teleport me back to the 18th century and put me into debtor's prison.
THOSE WMDs. Australian news crew has 100% Australian reaction to humongous great white shark... The Long Road to Ramen... #FloridaMan turned into a comic... Central Ohio's most hazardous intersections... Can TCU's 4-2-5 stop the up-tempo spreads in college and the NFL?
