| 11 June 2009
First, I want to talk about the offer to Jonathan Hankins. That is what I am talking about. A true nose tackle. He is as well conditioned a 325 lb kid as you will ever see. He is impossible to move and commands a double team on every play. He hustles and chases. Love the motor. The fact that Oklahoma has offered him seals the deal. We think DT, we think SEC but nobody is producing better DTs than Bob Stoops right now. The top 2 tackles in the draft could come out of Oklahoma next year. I am really surprised Michigan has not offered. With their 3-3-5 he is a perfect fit. The best part is he favors the Buckeyes right now.
Speaking of the 3-3-5, I had a revelation yesterday. You may have seen some back and forth both here and on Bucknuts between me and a knowledgeable young guy with the screen name Dvo45. He had some access and was the first to report to me that he saw alot of 3-4 in camp, which is the basis for our discussion. I say it is a odd man 4-3. He thinks it is a 3-4. There are still 4 linemen on the field in the base set. That they are lined up where they are is a wrinkle, as in odd man front, not a basic change in defensive scheme to a 3-4. But that could be changing. We have not offered players like Hankins over the years. The fact that we are looking at Jibril Black, a player who is likely to fill out into a nose tackle, is another reason to think we could be looking at a change. We have run the 3-4 Leo when Carpenter and Hawk were here but that is still a 4-3 defense. Heacock is very comfortable with a front 3. He likes to 2-gap but we have not had 2-gap DTs. We recruit the smaller quicker DTs, 1-gap players, and ask them to play 2-gap. Drives me nutty. The 3 DTs who make up the base front are Heyward, Worthington and Larimore, with Larimore playing right in the middle of the threesome. Heyward and Worthington fit the mold of 3-4 defensive ends. Worthington has always been a 4-3 tweener. He was never quick enough to be a defensive end and not big enough to play tackle. That is a good basic description of a 3-4 defensive end. I think Heyward could be a great 4-3 tackle but I think he is an even better 3-4 defensive end. The thing that is missing is a nose tackle. That brings me to the 3-3-5.
I have always been a firm believer in the 4-3. The best defenses I have seen were built around a front four that could at least get a stalemate consistently against the 5 offensive linemen across from them. I have started to come around to the 3-4. I think this pass happy generation makes having a smaller quicker guy on the field a sound strategy. Yesterday I was talking about this on the Bucknuts board and it hit me. The way 4-3 defenses are having to play right now it is more like a 4-2-5. We see more of Jermal Hines and Tyler Moeller than we do Ross Homan. In the 3-3-5 you still have 3 linebackers on the field. After that revelation I went looking for information. I wrote off the 3-3-5 as a gimmick defense. I would run right at such an animal. Zone block it to death. I did not think it would work at all in a conference where the best teams still want to pound the ball. I said some time ago that we would find out about the read option and the 3-3-5 that Rich Rodriguez was bringing in here this year. I think it is going to show some results as early as next year or it was going to look like he was not going to be around long. I think with the right quarterback the read option is very scary. I did not have the same opinion of the 3-3-5. Smash mouth dinosaur that I am, I saw maize and blue bodies laying all over the field with Carlos Hyde cleat marks dotting their bodies. After taking a closer look I might be wrong about that, .....and maybe we see some of that here in Columbus.
Here is a great primer on the 3-3-5 from BuckeyePlanet
http://www.buckeyeplanet.com/forum/news/609152-basics-3-3-5-defense.html
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