Skull Session: G.O.A.T. Returns, Penalties Getting Worse, and Finding Confidence in a Shutout

By D.J. Byrnes on October 2, 2017 at 4:59 am
Demrio McCall runs away from the October 2nd 2017 Skull Session
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Miss Ohio State's 56-0 cudgeling of Rutgers? I distilled it into one highlight:

Okay, apologies to Rutgers. Both teams played hard. Here is the only highlight you need:

Whoops. Looks like I'm going to have to let my fourth social media intern go this season. (It's harder than you'd think to find good help for a job that offers low pay, no benefits, and grueling hours.)

HERE, FINALLY, IS THE GAME'S BEST HIGHLIGHT.

GOAT ROUTE

I'm a J.T. Better Respecter. But if this were NCAA Football 2018, Haskins and McCall would have already been starting.

ICYMI:

Word of the Day: Fetid.

 RETURN OF THE G.O.A.T. You might not believe Demario McCall to be the greatest Ohio State football player in history. That's fine. Part of what makes America great is the right for people to not respect fundamental facts of reality. (This is why your woke Brony nephew thinks the Earth is flat.)

But what you can't deny is the world being a better place when McCall is humiliating Ohio's enemies on the ol' gridiron. That is where I draw the line.

DA GOAT

So yeah, it may just be Rutgers, which wouldn't win the MAC. But a week after "curling up" on a punt return per Urban Meyer, he initiated contact and looked as healthy as he has all season.

From Tim May of The Columbus Dispatch:

McCall steps up

With the Buckeyes leaping to a huge lead through the first three quarters, third-string running back Demario McCall got plenty of time with backup quarterbacks Dwayne Haskins and Joe Burrow. McCall made the most of it — he wound up as the game’s leading rusher, 103 yards on 11 carries.

And he had two of the more spectacular plays. He sneaked out of the backfield to break wide open down the left sideline and haul in a 35-yard touchdown pass from Haskins at 13:56 of the fourth quarter. Later he broke free on a 48-yard run for his second TD, the last for the Buckeyes.

Meyer said after the game McCall wasn't 100%, so hopefully he continues his rehab without any further setbacks like last week.

Backfield carries will be tough to come by with J.K. Dobbins, Mike Weber, and Antonio Williams in the mix, but I'd like to see him at receiver or H-Back. He's a natural born playmaker.

 WELL, ACTUALLY... Ohio State beat Rutgers in a way usually reserved for the Browns in Week 17.

But it wasn't a perfect performance. And, if you're one of those people who needs negativity in your life to feel alive, I'd suggest aiming your harpoon at the penalties, which included noted blocker Terry McLaurin drawing 30 yards worth with a blatant late hit on a linebacker.

It's all part of a trend.

From landgrantholyland.com:

Once again, the penalty fairy paid a visit to Ohio State during game time. The litany of calls the Buckeyes collected this week include: offsides, false start, illegal formation (which was declined), block in the back, running into the kicker (which was also declined) and an unsportsmanlike conduct call.

When the clock hit all zeros, the Buckeyes were responsible for 10 penalties, costing a whopping 106 yards. Last week, I said to expect 6+ penalties if the team continued to play undisciplined football. Andddd, here we are.

Most of these penalties are the kind that can be worked out in practice and through drills—but they keep getting called each week. At this point, is the penalty problem even solvable?

I felt Meyer's teams have never been renowned for their lack of flags. So I went back and looked at the penalty standings since that championship trench run we all love to remember.

TeamRankings.com
YEAR RANK PENALTIES PER GAME
2014 50 5.6
2015 55 5.8
2016 73 6.3
2017 102 7.6

That's all fine and good against the UNLV and Rutgers' of the world. But nasty habits have a nasty habit of surfacing on life's biggest stages. A hit like McLaurin's is a drive-killer against competent teams.

 OK, I ACTUALLY FELT BAD. I half expected New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who attended the game, to send in the National Guard by halftime to break up a such a senseless beating in the name of TV contracts.

Blowouts are a nice breakup to the suffocating experience of covering a local team game in which it's not winning by at least 30 points. 

And I wanted the shutout, because I am a petty little man. But even I felt bad watching Rutgers' charity field goal doink off the right upright.

The sweeping shot of Chris Ash looking like a semi just tombstoned the family dog almost made me feel bad for a guy that earned four times my yearly salary for that performance. Almost.

From Tom Orr of theozone.net:

The kick clanged off the right upright, and members of the Buckeyes’ field goal block team celebrated like they would have if the miss had come in a tie game.

OSU safety Jordan Fuller said that keeping it 56-0, as opposed to 56-3, was important to them.

“It gives us confidence. We’ve been gunning for that shutout and we’re happy we finally got it,” Fuller said. “It’s just all our hard work paying off, basically. Seeing that zero at the end of the game is really special.”

I did get a kick out of the celebration. That's how I'll react when the hazard pay for having to watch that game direct deposits into my bank account.

Ash, he of the hilariously obtuse facial expressions (four links there), was not amused.

Sorry, Ash. It's just business. Such is the price for accepting a job at a traditionally awful program that sits atop fertile recruiting soil.

 WHO HAS IT WORSE THAN US? Ohio State is not considered the best team in the country right now. I know, it's an odd feeling.

But despite that, we can take solace in the fact we are not Tennessee fans after Georgia fleeced the Volunteers, 41-0, in Knoxville.

Their fans resembled our comment section after the Oklahoma debacle:

What I love about Vol plight is its savior is a former NFL head coach that hasn't coached college since a one-year stint in 1991 as Pittsburgh's tight end coach.

Oh, SEC misery didn't end there. Troy dumped LSU in Baton Rouge, and it ended with a Troy player shaking his testicles at the Homecoming crowd.

Troy head coach Neal Brown, the new hottest name in coaching circles, won't like that. It won't dampen the overall mood of the program, though:

Things went left for the Tigers from the jump. LSU third-string running back Nick Brossette fumbled on their first play of the game. Head coach Ed Orgeron didn't know the call.

But the bottom of the darkest corners of the basement belong to Mississippi fans, who not only have the displeasure of living in Mississippi and cheering for a backwoods crime cabal of a team, they're not getting dunked on by Alabama public address system operators.

Remember the true lesson here, folks: Winning championships justifies cheating.

 HARBAUGH! Here's how completely normal human being Jim Harbaugh spent a portion of his open week:

About as big a splash as he's made in the Ohio State–Michigan rivalry as a coach.

Even amateurs know the key to a splendid can opener is rocking back on your tailbone when your leg hits the water.

 THOSE WMDs. Killer clown case: Suspect arrested after 27 years... When "not guilty" is a life sentence... Heartbroken doomsday prepper that lost everything now saving hurricane victims... RIP the Broccoli Tree... Some mother's boy: Cracking a 96-year-old cold case.

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