| 22 October 2009
The Purdue loss was devastating. I am not talking about the way we lost. I am not talking about how bad we looked. I am talking about bowl prospects. The week before there was a story on College Football News, and another from yours truly, about the Buckeyes still being in the title hunt if we could win out. That all went out up in smoke last Saturday. The question now is, where do we go from here?
There are two schools of thought. We are young. We were not supposed to be contenders this year anyway. Be more focused on making these young pups better. Get more of them into the mix. Back-ups start. Current mop-up players move into the 2-deep. Seniors, thank you for your service. We need to look out for the future of the program so you are going to see less reps. We need to season some younger players.
The other school of thought is playing for the future is not fair to anyone but especially the seniors who have contributed so much to the current success. I don't know all the tiebreaker formulas but it looks to me like winning out gives us the Rose Bowl. It is still viewed as the most prestigeous bowl game there is outside of the championship game by most college football fans. That is one heckuva consolation prize. A competitor wants to win every game. If you put the youngsters into more playing time it is making the rest of the season like practice games. A preseason for next year.
My thinking is to be greedy. I don't know why we cannot have both. I think we need to get back to basics. I think we could do ourselves a great service by simplifying. By cutting the playbook. Get to doing a few things really well instead of so many different things fair to middling. Practice could be more about mechanics and techniques. Don't do things mostly right. Do them all the way right every time. Nobody gets well better with that formula than our very shook-up young quarterback. Something I have heard from Jim Tressel as long as he has been here is talking about playing to our strengths. Do that things we do and the rest will take care of itself. If there ever was a time to take that mantra to heart it is now. It is not just Pryor. We are starting 6 first or second year players. Carter is playing so much at receiever that we could call him the 12th man on the offense. That is 7 players who have not played alot of football. Lets get back to basics. On the offense line get out the box of yardsticks like Bo used to use. If they are not lined up with their feet 18 inches apart, break a yardstick on their legs. Pryor does not get to be sloppy. Finish your fakes, Terrelle, or I will find someone who will.
We have enough talent that if we start to play disciplined football, focused football and if we execute, we could have a jump start on the future of the program and send our seniors out with a trip to the Rose Bowl too.
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