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Ross Fulton Analysis: How The Buckeye Defense (Mostly) Shut Down Rutgers · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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Welcome to Buckeyes tomorrow morning for Friday, November tenth. I'm your host,
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tom Or. The Michigan State game is tomorrow the game against Michigan in fifteen
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days we were welcoming back our good buddy Ross Fulton of bucke Hudle. He
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is our ex's and o's guru and everyone ever Ross is on. That means
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we are sponsored by Jeff Ruby Steakhouse, proudly offering nationally acclaimed USDA Prime Stakes,
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detail that is simply unmatched. Learn more, check out the delicious looking menu
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and even make a reservation at Jeff Ruby dot com slash Columbus. So we're
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gonna be talking about something else that looked pretty good last weekend. It was
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the Ohio State defense against Rutgers. It was not perfect, but it was
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pretty darn good. Ross. Let's start with the safeties. This is how
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many times have we used the frame safety during defense over the last couple of
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years with Jim Noles. What was Ohio State doing with their safeties to really
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take advantage and get the better of Rutgers for long stretches of that game on
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Saturday. Yeah, one thing we've talked about in the past, and coach
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Ku Kou, which is another good X follow had a discussion about this the
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other day. Uh Jim Noles likes to spill the football by pinching down his
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defensive ends. We've talked about that in the context of pass rush or lack
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thereof and other areas, but interestingly against Rutgers, they largely did not do
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that. Instead that Joel's cut the defensive end wide. My speculation is that's
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because like that was his way of containing the quarterback read aspect of Rutgers offense.
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As a result, to fill that extra gap, he used the safeties
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quite a bit. So we saw a lot of cover four, probably more
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so than I've seen in a long time out of Ohio Sate, and certainly
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since Nole's has been here. That allowed, as will show, one of
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the safeties to come down or in the other instance wit will show next,
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he would use a safety run blitz to fill the backside sea gap, and
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so it was a lot of instead of using the defensive ends to spill the
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football, there's a lot of boxing inside and using the safeties to account for
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an extra gap. So okay, so two distinct things though here though,
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So the first one we're going to show is not it's not a blitz in
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fact, it's it's just they're playing Cover four. Josh Proctor here is the
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weak side safety, and he when he sees run action, he comes down
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aggressively and fills the B gap and closes it down, so it makes a
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tackle on the backfield. So so aggressively it almost looks like a blitz,
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but it's just a nice read by him and play. And so again this
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is the way that they're re equating numbers in the run game against obviously Rutgers
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being a run heavy team that involves the quarterback. The second one is in
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fact a B gap blitz. Now, but Knowles is like this throughout the
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year. We've seen it with Lathan Ranson a few times. We showed it
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last week against Wisconsin. And here it's obviously Sending Styles filling in for Ransom,
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but this is this is they're playing Cover one behind it, so they're
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showing split safeties again but then rolling down at the snap bringing that extra defender
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on a blitz. Styles made some nice plays doing this. He had this
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tackle on the backfield. He also they're doing it to defend the run,
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to get up, to get an eighth body, and to gap out.
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But he also when Rutgers passed, made several plays off of it, most
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notably forcing the quarterback to rush the ball, which led to the Jordan Hancock
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interception return for a touchdown, also caused a sack. So they use this
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quite a bit, you know, and again we've we've seen this concept in
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the past with the season with Nole's liking to bring the boundary safety and obviously
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it was Styles there. It fits his skill set to get him down near
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the line of scrimmage. So you know, as I said earlier, I
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think part of it was trying to contain the quarterback and have someone to account
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for him. I do also wonder though, part of it is, you
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know, trying to maximize the guys he has available and obviously a lot of
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injuries, particularly in the secondary, and you know, if Sunny Style is
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going to play boundary safety going forward, he is someone who is, you
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know, admittiately like being closer to the line of scrimmage, and that's what
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he's been repping at Nickel a lot this year. In some ways, it
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almost fits him more to be at boundary safety than Nickel because you can get
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him in the run fit easier. We've we've talked about that in the past,
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like the boundary safety for Knowles can tend to be pretty run focused depending
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on what the opponent's doing and so, but they're obviously trying to maximize that
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with the number of times they brought him on that b gap blitz. And
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in case you're wondering why that would be, that Sunny Styles is over at
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that boundary safety spot. Now that is the spot where Lathan Ransom had been
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playing. Ransom has missed. He missed, he got hurt during the Wisconsin
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game, missed last week. His status for this week we will find out,
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did not sound from interviews on Wednesday like that was a super imminent return.
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So you may get a little more of an extended run for Sunny Styles
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at the bandit position. We will all find out on Saturday during the pregame
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availability report when that comes out a couple hours before kickoff. All right,
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So we talk all the time about the defense and offense being a little bit
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of a cat and mouse game. So Ohio State does what they're doing everything's
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working great, Rutgers has a chance to respond and next two plays, Ross
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can get running us through sort of some of the things that Rutgers did in
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a response to what Ohio State was doing, and Ross run us through these
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next two because you know they they did have some success after some initial struggles.
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Yeah, And I mean I think part of it too is, you
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know, Ohio State, as you said, like Rutgers had basically no offense
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in the first quarter, and then the defense obviously down, some guys have
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some other injuries, people were playing through, started getting put in some bad
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spots. So I did promise that. We talked about the fumble Rooski,
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So you know there's I mean, the one thing you can say about that
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obviously every team. I mean, it's a smart play called by Rutgers.
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Like we've talked a lot about on for the icate offense, sneaking it well,
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you know, like anything else, you can't be predictable all the time,
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like so you do have to have a counter to your sneak. So
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it's a nice counter of the sneak obviously, like Cody Simon pinched down and
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try to stop the quarterback who and he has contained you know, I will
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David s Enigmunos and played a great play getting back to make the tackle because
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that was a four point play getting him on the ground. Like obviously,
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Ohio State's goal line defense continues to be really stellar. But so you know,
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between that and then you know, you get the big punt that wasn't
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supposed to be a fake punt, and then you get an interception and all
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of a sudden, you're like back on the field a lot. Then you
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you know, even the pick six, you're going right back on defense again.
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So it wasn't exactly like the greatest management of the defensive situation, but
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our Rutgers did keep Finally getting to my point, I did do a couple
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of things eventually that they cost some stretch stress. So the first one is
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running the quarterback on designed runs and so especially what they like to do.
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So this is pop out, So we talked about for that for Ohio State
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with Devin Brown. So pop out you're basically faking like it's a zone read,
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but really it's just a lead play. Then the running back leads to
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the backside for the quarterback and so you're just getting a lead blocker on essentially
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outside zone. But the what Rutgers did was they ran it to the boundary
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away from their bunch formation several times. So we've talked about like why do
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teams run into the boundary. Well, here's a good example, because Ohio
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State just doesn't have numbers to the short side of the field. Like most
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college defenses, they like to set the nickel to the field, so you
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have an extra force defender to that side. Especially when you have a bunch,
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you're going to have multiple bodies covering up those receivers and so they're just
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outnumbered. Eventually, they sort of started to you know, wreckers win to
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the well probably one too many times with pop out and O High State sort
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of started recognizing it and slowing it down. But you know, they hit
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a few, just getting just out numbering in a high state. The second
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thing, the big issue that popped up for High State was handling split zone
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or do a from with a split action. You know, the split zone
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is like not a new concept, right, like the High State runs it
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all the time. I'm not quite sure what the issue was, but like
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when you have split zone, the concept is that the linebackers you're supposed to
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fall back because you're you're now like creating a new gap, right, Like
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you did have a tight end on one side. He blocks back, So
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where you have four gaps to one side, now you have four gaps to
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the other side. So the term is like the linebackers fall back, so
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they just basically move a gap over with the tight end. But they weren't
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doing that, and so you can see that on this play, like they're
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just they're not gapped out because there's now an extra gap being created. And
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we'll talk about why. Like, you know, it's it's there seems to
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just be some confusion handling here or like is the defensive end spilling or boxing?
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It's unclear, Like, you know, is he supposed to force the
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buy that is he supposed to force the football outside or is he supposed to
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keep it contained? You know, stop styles is coming down as the boundary
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safety, but like where is he fitting on this? I just don't know,
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you know, I don't know if like they were prepared for Rutgers to
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run this or by doing what they were doing by using more of a boxing
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technique with the safety coming down, that's just like not what they normally do,
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and so it caused some confusion, but now like to segue, like
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as the game went on, they did they got sort of more and more
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comfortable running cover four having the safety come down like they did get better against
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it. So that's, you know, we can we can discuss why that
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happened. Yeah, all right, so we did the punch, we did
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the counter prunch. Now we're gonna do the counter counter punch. And you
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know, this was impressive for Olhouse Date to adjust like that because they were
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doing this without Josh Proctor. He they obviously were missing Layson Ransom, who
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had been playing the bandit position in the band the boundary safety, and then
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they lost Josh Procter on that pick six play. He was down on the
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field for a little while and then missed the rest of the game. So
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then you're doing it without your deep safety or adjuster safety. And you know,
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they they did not completely fall apart, and that's you know, obviously
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a good sign for what has been a pretty good defense this year. So
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what did O House to do to counter? And then you know, how
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how did that impact things as well? When Malie Hartford came on and had
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to play after not playing a whole heck of a lot the last couple weeks.
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Yeah, I mean you can only you know, take so many people
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out right, like Latham Ransom, like it's it's a loss, but like
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you can kind of manage it because Sonny Styles has played a bunch. They're
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they're they're increasingly showing that they're comfortable just keeping Jordan Hancock full time at Nickel,
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including gets the run. Like you take Josh Proctor out, people forget
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like they already lost to Hot Carter for this, uh you know, he
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has not been available, so you're really down a lot of safeties. And
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it did limit what they could do. So like you know, those first
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two clips we showed of like one was Proctor coming down, they pretty much
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stopped doing that. It was pretty much always Sunny Styles coming coming down either
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on a safety, Blitzer being the Cover four defender. They tried to keep
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Hardford as the deep safety, and so they were pretty vanilla and what they
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could do. But like they did increasingly like even play more and more Cover
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four and as the game went on, they did get better at it.
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So like in this example, you see the safety is like another split zone,
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but you're they're doing a much better job closing it down. Both from
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the defensive end side of it, and then the safeties are triggin more aggressively
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and coming downhill. So you know, again it was I think probably in
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some extent like different concepts from them, you know, take some reps.
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Rutgers wasn't using split zone initially, so that I do you think it was
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something that like you know, Rutgers coaching staff noticed and it took a little
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bit of time to adjust. And then I do think they were getting worn
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down a little bit just given the circumstances we talked about. But I do
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think like especially once the offense started, you know, answering and scoring points,
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like, I think they kind of settled in against the run and had
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some good reps from cover four like like this one, all right, And
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then the last thing we want to touch on was one of the areas where
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they maybe were a little bit more vulnerable against the past, especially with the
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young true freshman Malie Hartford in there at that deep safety spot. How did
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how did you see that shaken out? I mean, it doesn't seem like
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that's going to be a long term thing with Josh from all available indications,
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So this might not be a long term concern. But when Harford was in
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there, how was Rutgers able to kind of maybe take advantage of that a
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little bit? Yeah, I actually thought kind of as much as like any
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kind of giving up some runs, I thought like Rutgers really had success moving
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the ball when they could hit some pass plays. And you know, high
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stated a couple of penalties on the one drive too that that obviously extended that
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one. But they were they were hurting Ohio State in the slot especially.
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They caught them also on some like you know, stuff out of the backfield.
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But you kept seeing Jordan Hancock. He was playing with outside leverage like
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he does here, and there was a few times he did that and like
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the inside help was not there. Whether that was because of like a you
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know, over focused on the run from the linebackers or you know that again,
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you're playing a deep safety who doesn't have a lot of experience into the
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true freshman, and so like that's kind of evident here, right because like
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Hancock, yes he's in man, but it's kind of a loose outside man.
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He's like he's expecting help and the deep safety help is late and then
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they both missed the tackle, which you know that's a little thing, but
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like they just haven't been doing that this year, so you kind of take
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it for granted that you know, unlike previous seasons, you're not seeing a
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fifteen yard game turn into a thirty five yard game, which makes a difference.
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So I guess, like pretty obvious. We talked about this with the
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offense as well, like you lose multiple starters, like it is going to
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impact your performance. So yes, as I said, like I think they
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can get by. It's not certainly not ideal if Lathan Ranson can't come back,
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but like don't want to also add to that Denzel Burke and Josh Proctor
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and Tommy Eigenberg as well, Like that would start being a very significant thing
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because you know, you still see from the other linebackers like some holes,
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right, So like you know, still Chambers like doesn't always trigger correctly see
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that on some of the as run plays or like Cody Simon in the passing
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game, can you know, kind of get stuck in a spot and not
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adjust to routes. So with the when the two of them can rotate together,
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you're kind of can hopefully get the best of both worlds from each Chambers
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and Simon and minimize their weaknesses. But like you know, if you had
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to put the two of them together without Eikenberg and obviously I can virtually hear
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the defense, and you know, so they need Eikenberg, they need Proctor,
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they need Burke, maybe not this week, but certainly going forward.
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But as you said, the good news is it seems optimistic on those three.
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Yeah, so we'll be keeping an eye on those injuries and the this
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this weekend's game against Michigan State at bucke huddle dot com. Lots of lots
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of coverage of the team, Lots of coverage of recruiting. It's a end
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of the big recruiting weekend mark if we're keeping an eye on all of that.
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Lots of coverage of the exces and o's with Mikey and Devin and Ross,
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sorry Mickey, not Mikey, Mickey and Devin and Ross making you a
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smarter football fan. Lots of coverage of all the stuff going on at Michigan.
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Oh boy has the been at coverage of that at Buckeyhuddle dot com as
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well, So we'll continue to keep an eye on all of that as news
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continues to develop there. Thanks again to our good friends from Jeff Ruby Steakhouse,
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the award running upscale steakhouse in downtown Columbus, in one of the top
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learn more and make a reservation today. That will do it for today.
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Thank you guys all for joining us every great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow.