Latest / Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning / Are the 2024 Buckeyes The Most Talented Team In Ohio State History?

Transcript

Are the 2024 Buckeyes The Most Talented Team In Ohio State History? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Buckeyes Tomorrow morning for Thursday, August twenty second.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Tom Moore. The Akron game in wait
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: for it, Wait for it nine days, single digits almost there,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: the game against Michigan in one hundred days, almost two
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: double digits there as well. This has been a season
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: we have been anticipating for quite a while on this
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: show and Bucky Weekly, Lucky Huddle dot Com, and pretty
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: much everywhere around the state of Ohio, because there is
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: a lot of excitement around this year's Ohio State football team.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: That has been the case basically since January, when a
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: whole mess of potential NFL draft picks decided, Yeah, I'll
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: come back and run it back one more time. And
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: then they also added a whole lot of talent in
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the transfer portal as well. This is one of you
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: more anticipated Ohio State football seasons than I can remember.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And we had a thread on the huddle Board presented
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: by Jeffruby Steakhouse at Buckey Huddle dot Com this week
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: from valued member Evan g twenty three. Titlewich was simply,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: when's the last time Ohio State had a roster this talented?
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: And I thought, you know who I'd love to talk
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: about that with good buddy Tony Gerdiman Buckeheadle dot com.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: He's been in that thread along with me with a
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: bunch of members, Lots of good Ohio State memories, talented
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Ohio State teams in the past, some not so good
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Ohio State memories on how some of those seasons, and
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about all that stuff here. But Tony,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: it does feel like this is over the last thirty years,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: it's been an awful lot of very, very good Ohio
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: State football teams. It does feel like the twenty twenty
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: four buck Eyes just in terms of sheer talent though,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: are right in that top tier of any of those
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: teams over the last thirty whatever years.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we can now add this team to the group
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: that we've always talked the group of teams that we've
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: always talked about, which I'm sure we'll get into. And yeah,
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: I don't know how you would leave this team out
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: given all of the players that have come back and
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: the guys who aren't even old enough to leave yet
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: that sort of thing. There are plenty of those players
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: as well that are going to have an impact on
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: this team. And of course transfer portal. So there's a
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: reason they're number two in the preseason polls. Other teams
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: tom have been number one. So technically, would those teams
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: be more talented or would the timing just be different.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: It feels like the timing would just be different. And
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: we're going to get into some of that pretty quickly
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: here because a lot of the years that we're talking
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: about here were not years where Ohio State won the
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: national championship. And some of that has to do with
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: just bad luck or bad timing, or just playing in
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: a season where the talent level is really high in
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: a couple other places as well. For example, let's start
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: with the most recent year that came up repeatedly in
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: that thread, twenty nineteen. That was a loaded Ohio State
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: team on both sides of the ball. They just had
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: the great misfortune of playing in a year when the
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: top three teams in that in the college football world
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: were all pretty darn talented. LSU that was the Joe
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Burrow season. Clemson that was the year that they had
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: Trevor Lawrence and you probably remember that Fiesta ball, and
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: then Ohio State. That was a year when you look
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: at those three teams, I think any of those three
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: teams probably wins the national championship in the twenty twenty
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: three season. Twenty twenty three is a year when the
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: talent sport wide is probably a little bit down. Twenty
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: nineteen was just a year when it was just so good.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: But you just look around that Ohio State team that
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: was just they were so loaded on both sides of
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the ball.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: They were loaded and they were hungry, and it was
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: a really really good combination of excellent secondary, excellent pass rush,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: good middle, and that defense was the timing of it,
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: bringing in Jeff Halfley and running his defense, putting in
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: a new system in Generally it takes a little while
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: to get those things going. But then you talk about
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: what Justin Fields brought and JK. Dobbins rushing for two
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: thousand yards, one of the all time great Ohio State
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: running backs, and the receivers that they had. So that
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: team is the first one that I go to. It's
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: the most recent, and honestly, for my money, it might
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: you know, we'll talk about it because there's some other school,
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: other other teams here, But I'm just looking at the
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and twenty two NFL draft.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Ohio State I believe had twenty seven players drafted that
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: were on that twenty nineteen team. Just that that contributed.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: So I haven't done the math on all of the others,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: but that's a pretty good number.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: That is a pretty good number. I go back to
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: the two thousand I think it was the two thousand
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: and two national championship team. At every starter or virtually
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: every starter on both sides of the ball draft that
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: it was maybe twenty one out of twenty two starters
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: something like that. If you're in that kind of realm
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: and that kind of level of talent across the roster, boy,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: that is that is elite, elite company. Not a lot
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: of other teams in that in that range. So yeah,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: that's a good one, the twenty nineteen team, And you
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: think about that, Yeah, they didn't get a chance to
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: play LSU. I sure would have liked to see that
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Ohio State team matching up with LSU. I think they
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: would have matched up with LSU probably better than Clemson did.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: And you think about all the stuff that had to
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: go wrong for Ohio State to lose that Fiesta Ball
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: that has always felt like one where the better team
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: did not win. And yeah, I'm sure everyone is remembering
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: right now the the fumble that got returned for a
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: touchdown then overturned on replay. But there's just a lot
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: of j If JK Dobblet doesn't get hurt in the
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: first half of that game, they probably win that game.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: There were just a couple of bounces here and there
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: that just didn't go their way, and that in a
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: fine margin game like that, that makes all that That
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: makes a difference between getting to play LSU and having
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to have a long, sad flight home. That remains probably
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: the quietest locker room I have ever been in after
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: a football game. That was a team that was not
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: ready for their season to be over, so a lot
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: had to go wrong for that team that makes the
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: National Championship game. Twenty fifteen is sort of the next
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: one when you go back before twenty nineteen in terms
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: of just the talent level, and that was one where
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: that feels more like, yeah, the talent was there to
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: win the National Championship. Again, the mindset really wasn't, and
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: maybe the offensive coaching staff really wasn't in the way
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: that it was the year before. It feels like the
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: twenty fifteen team did not fall short because of talent.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: It fell short because of all the other stuff that
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: goes into being a good football team.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and also winning it the year before really changes
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: the motivation for a lot of players when it's so
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: many second year guys are part of that twenty fourteen
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: team and then they know twenty fifteen is their nflure,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: that's their contract year, and you already kind of have
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: one foot out the door. And I think we saw
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: that quite a bit. But for the other reasons you
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: mentioned as well at coaching and you know, I would
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: argue that I think the quarterback situation held back as well,
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: going having this pushball between j. T. Barrett and Cardale
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Jones where the end of the twenty fourteenth season was
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: lightning in a bottle and they just weren't able to
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: keep that going for a myriad of reasons in twenty fifteen.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: So I always use the twenty fifteen teams like the
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: cautionary tale of Fat and Happy. Basically, they won their
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: national championship. Now they're playing out the string, and that's
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: not something that we saw with the twenty nineteen team.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: I don't believe it's going to be something that we
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: see with this team, the motivation is pretty different.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a very very different mindset coming back
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: for that one more year. A lot of those twenty
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: fifteen guys felt like they came back because the NFL
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: said they had to. This year, a lot of these guys,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: most of these guys had a choice and chose to
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: come back. And yeah, there's not a lot of complacency
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: around this team right now. It was something that urban
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: Meyer talked about pretty openly that year that you had
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to you have to battle that complacency. That is definitely
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: not something we've heard talked about around this year's team.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: So facing some different challenges, but probably not the same,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: likely not going to run into the same issues that
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: twenty fifteen team did. What's funny is before that twenty
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: fifteen team, you have an almost identical story with the
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: two thousand and three team, which is another one that
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: was absolutely loaded. This was one of the you know,
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: the classic story of the Ohio state team that wins
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: during the year that not everyone is expecting them to win.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: Twenty fourteen was a year when Brax de Miller gets
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: hurt in fall camp and everyone kind of goes, well, huh,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: too bad. Maybe next year, and then they win the
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: National champions with twenty fourteen and then have the year
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: after hangover in twenty fifteen. It was kind of the
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: same thing in two thousand and two into two thousand
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: and three. That was a relatively young team in two
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: thousand and two, won the National Championship, brought virtually everyone back,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: and you sort of went well, so certainly they will
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: win the National champions two thousand and three, and then
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: the Maurice Clerett stuff happened, and that just kind of
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: threw that team off a little bit. And they were
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: still very, very good, and they still put a ton
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: of teams, a ton of players into the NFL Draft,
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: but just the one bad play in Madison and you
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: lose seventeen to ten, and then you fall way behind
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: against Michigan and Chris Perry, and then Michigan wins that game,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: the one hundredth meeting of that series, and that was enough,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: and then Ohio State does not get a chance to
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: play for the National Championship in a year that it
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: felt almost preordained that they were going to. But it
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: feels like a lot of the same issues that we
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: talked about with twenty fifteen kind of you have the
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: year after syndrome in two thousand and three as well.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: You know that two thousand and two team that won
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: a national title. There was always the argument about, you
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: know who was the most irreplaceable guy. You can't replace,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: You can't lose Chris Gamble, you can't lose Kraig crensl
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: is so important to all of this. I think we
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: got our answer with the two thousand and three team
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: because you remove Maurice Claret and the offense, the running
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: game just disappears. And I think Lidell Ross led the
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: team with like eight hundred yards rushing Mel Hall as
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: the other guy. They just did not take that step
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: offensively that you would expect from a fifth year senior
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: quarterback like Craig Crenzel. So you remove, you remove one
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: guy from the and you know Matt Wilhelm was on
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: that team, and Mike DAWs like there were there are
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: other guys that were important. But I think that the
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: biggest move there is you lose Murray's Clarett and you
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: see what happens, and you know there's gonna be a
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: reoccurring theme here Tom that the year they're supposed to
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: win at Ohio State is supposed to win the national championship.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: It it doesn't ever happen.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Well, And I think a lot of that. You can
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: look at that and go, oh, they're doomed this year.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: And if the twenty fifteen team was playing in a
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: twelve team playoff era, guess what they're in. If the
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: two thousand and three Ohio State team was playing in
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: a twelve team playoff era, guess what they're in. And Tony,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: if the nineteen ninety eight Ohio State team was playing
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: even in a four team playoff era, guess what they're in.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: So this is this is a little bit of you
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: get a little bit more of a mulligan, and you
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: don't have the one stupid game, the one stupid loss
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: that cost you a national championship. That's not necessarily a
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: case in the regular season any more, where you can
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: have just the one game that dooms you. Boy, I
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: bet John Cooper would not mind coaching in a twelve
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: team playoff er because John Cooper had a number of
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: teams where it was the one bad Saturday and that
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: was it. And he had the one bad Saturday in
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight as well. Happened a couple weeks earlier
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: than it typically did for his teams. Happened. I think
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: it was November seventh of nineteen ninety eight, first weekend
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: in November, Michigan State came to town, and boy, the
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety eight Ohio State team has always kind of
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: been the benchmark for me in terms of just pure
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: raw talent, and it took basically a miracle, and you know,
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: not a good miracle in Ohio State fans minds, but
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: basically a miracle, an incredible confluence of events for them
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: to blow a twenty four to nine second half lead
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: and lose that game to Michigan State. And they really
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: just kind of thumped everyone else all season. They just
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: had basically one and a half bad quarters back then
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: that was enough to derail your season. But boy, in
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: a twelve team playoff era, you go around the field
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: on that team, Give me the nineteen ninety eight Buckeyes
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: in a twelve team college football playoff and you can
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: take the field, and I think I'm gonna like my chances.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to feel pretty good about that one.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: That was just a different kind of team where the
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: expectations were high and they met those expectations and then
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: just one random Saturday, things all went to hack. But yeah,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: you matched them up. You give them a reset essentially,
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: and they reset pretty well after that Michigan State loss.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: But yeah, you give them another opportunity, and I think
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: they would be the betting favorite, and maybe maybe not
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: the first seed because they wouldn't necessarily be allowed to
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: have it based on records, but I think they would
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: be the favorite there.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and boy, you give them a reset. They as
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: you said, sponded, beat Iowa, beat Michigan, and then won
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: their bowl game against sexas a and m twenty fifteen
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: was kind of the same thing. They lost to Michigan
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: State late, came back, thumped Michigan, and won their bowl
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: game against Notre Dame. So if you if you can
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: learn that lesson from that one bad game, well maybe
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: that's not the you know, as long as you don't
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: have the bad game at the worst possible time, maybe
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it is not the worst thing. Now moving forward to
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: potentially have that one bad game this fall as well,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: we will see whether they have any bad games this fall.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: That season now nine days away, cannot wait, starting with
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the Akron game, then moving forward through the full season.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: We will be there for the whole thing, be there
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: for all of them at Buckey Huddle dot com. That's
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: where Tony, Kevin and I cover the team, our covers
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: recruiting and get our whole team of x's and those
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: gurus there to make you a smarter football fan. It
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: was really fun and active forward where sometimes we have
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: questions so good we turn them into whole podcasts. That
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: is the Huddleboard presenter by Jeff Ruby, Steakhouse all at buckeyhud.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: We hope to see you there. That'll do for today.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you guys all for joining us. Have a great day.
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: We'll talk to you tomorrow.