Latest / Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning / How Concerning Are Ohio State's Offensive Struggles?

Transcript

How Concerning Are Ohio State's Offensive Struggles? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

• 0:01
  Welcome to Buckeyes tomorrow morning for Monday, September fourth, I'm your host,
• 0:04
  tom Or. The Youngstown State game is in five days, the game against
• 0:07
  Michigan in eighty two days. We are starting to settle into the rhythm of
• 0:12
  the season, and on Mondays you're going to be hearing directly from the Ohio
• 0:16
  State players and coaches, just kind of breaking down some of the things that
• 0:21
  we heard from them, learn from them. After the previous Saturday's game.
• 0:25
  There was a lot to take away from Ohio States win over Indiana twenty three
• 0:29
  to three over the Hoosiers in Bloomington, And of course, what was the
• 0:33
  big what was everyone's big talking point, what was everyone's big concerned after the
• 0:36
  game. We're going to start with the quarterbacks. Of course, one of
• 0:40
  the big questions for Ryan Day was, you know, what was the plan
• 0:44
  going in with Devin Brown and Kyle McCord, And what was the deal with
• 0:49
  with Devin Brown really not getting that many snaps during the course of the game.
• 0:53
  You know, I would have liked to have seen Devin play a little
• 0:56
  bit more, but I just felt like we went three and out there and
• 1:00
  then I want I was worried that weren't going to be able to get into
• 1:03
  rhythm. We already felt a little clunky early on, miss some short yard
• 1:07
  of situations, didn't convert on some third downs, and so we didn't want
• 1:11
  to run the risk of putting ourselves in a bad spot by continually moving those
• 1:15
  guys in and out. But going in, you know, really wanted to
• 1:19
  play Devin some more. We'd like to do that moving forward, but like
• 1:23
  I said, from the beginning, we got to make sure we're doing what's
• 1:25
  right for the team, what's right for Ohio State, and I felt like
• 1:26
  that was the right call at the time. The Ohio State offense did not
• 1:30
  necessarily look like a typical Ryan Day offense during the course of the game on
• 1:34
  Saturday, and there are probably a whole bunch of different reasons for that,
• 1:37
  including the offensive blind, including the fact that hey, it's week one,
• 1:40
  including the fact that it's a new quarterback, all of those things, and
• 1:44
  perhaps some more stuff. But when you went looked at the first half and
• 1:48
  then you looked at the second half, was Ryan Day maybe feeling a little
• 1:52
  bit better about his offense after the game than he did at halftime? Mixed
• 1:57
  bag, I guess, right, now, you know, I thought there
• 2:00
  was some good things, but we gotta play better situational football. We gotta
• 2:04
  finish in the red zone, we gotta finish in short yardage, and we
• 2:07
  got to do a better job on third down. If we can do that,
• 2:09
  then certainly, you know we'll do better. You know, we need
• 2:12
  to run the football. I thought there was times, you know, it
• 2:15
  was kind of by committee. Today. You know, those games seem to
• 2:17
  go fast. You know, they they had fifty four total plays. We
• 2:21
  had sixty seven. But man, it just it it seems to go fast.
• 2:25
  And you know, I guess we ended up with about let's see,
• 2:31
  about twenty seven rushes and about thirty three passes, which is decent balance right
• 2:37
  there. The Chip ended up with about seven yards of carry. The other
• 2:39
  guys were just south of four yards of carry. We'd like to see all
• 2:43
  that, you know, north of five or six yards of carry. Then
• 2:45
  we're really cooking. So you know, we're we know what we need to
• 2:49
  do in order to win, you know, down the stretch, play great
• 2:52
  defense, run the football, and we'll continue to work to do that.
• 2:54
  But like I said on the radio, it's okay for me to be excited
• 2:58
  about great defense, you know, and I thought our defense played really well
• 3:01
  and so I'm excited about that. I think what we talked about is it's
• 3:05
  a different looking defense. You know, we got some good length out there,
• 3:07
  We got our hands on some balls early. They took some shots earlier.
• 3:09
  I thought we were there ready to make the play. Defensive line was
• 3:13
  disruptive. So a lot to grow on. You know, you gotta get
• 3:15
  that first win, and anytime you're dealing with a new quarterback and some guys
• 3:20
  in new Spots conference game on the road, you know, it's good to
• 3:23
  get that one under your belt. One of the big stories of the off
• 3:25
  season was the fact that, hey, Ryan Day's thinking about maybe giving up
• 3:29
  play calling duties to Brian Hartline. He was asked after the game about that
• 3:34
  and how that went, and he didn't really go directly into it, but
• 3:38
  I think if you read between the lines, you can kind of get the
• 3:40
  sense Ryan Day was more involved than you might have been led to believe by
• 3:46
  Brian Hartlin's offensive coordinator title. So you're gonna hear Ryan Day talking about that.
• 3:51
  And this is actually two different answers kind of back to back right here,
• 3:54
  just kind of both related. Thoughts. You know, a lot of
• 3:58
  great feedback from Brian. You know, between the series, we talk about
• 4:00
  it. You know, there was a lot of dead like, there was
• 4:04
  some injuries, and so then we got these timeouts. There was a lot
• 4:06
  of times we were over by the sideline talking about each play. I felt
• 4:09
  like it it was just kind of that way today for whatever reason. I
• 4:11
  don't know if that's because the clock's running and the TV timeouts happened, but
• 4:14
  it just seemed like we were over on the sideline a lot. But during
• 4:17
  those times, we're constantly having conversation. Justin Fries very much involved and the
• 4:21
  guys upstairs. So you know, it's a team effort. But you know,
• 4:27
  in a good start, but as we as we start to get into
• 4:29
  some of the games and the next couple of weeks, you know, we'll
• 4:30
  start to figure out how it's all going to work out moving forward. But
• 4:34
  like I said before, we got to do its best to win, and
• 4:38
  you know, Brian's doing a great job like that more than twenty three points.
• 4:41
  So I don't know if that's the operation or what. I think that's
• 4:44
  part of identifying week one what's going on. The number one goal was to
• 4:49
  get a win today. Didn't didn't know exactly how it was going to play
• 4:53
  out. Glad we got to win, but now we got to get better.
• 4:56
  So this was Kyle McCord's second career start. Of course, he started
• 4:59
  the end game back in twenty twenty one. It was a little different.
• 5:02
  So how did Ryan Day feel like Kyle McCord played after all sixty minutes?
• 5:08
  We're done. I thought in the third quarter, during those couple of drives,
• 5:12
  we got into a rhythm. He ate some nice throws. Made the
• 5:15
  nice throw to Marvin that you know, the refs told me that he got
• 5:18
  pushed out of bounds or he put himself out of bounds. I'd like to
• 5:23
  see the film. I thought that was a nice throw. But then we
• 5:25
  came right back and score it right after that, which is good. That's
• 5:28
  a good sign because it could be deflating when you throw a touchdown. Then
• 5:31
  you got to come back and do it again, and that was good.
• 5:34
  I thought to throw down the middle to decade, it was a really nice
• 5:39
  throw. That was big. You know, there was some plays certainly we
• 5:43
  want to have back, you know. I think, well, if again
• 5:46
  look at the film and see I think it was some mixed bag overall.
• 5:48
  I got to see if it was a mixed bag to the positive or negative,
• 5:51
  you know, And that's that's part of watching the film. Sometimes you
• 5:54
  think coming out of the game that something happened, and he didn't quite see
• 5:58
  it that way on the film. So we'll get on it, identify it,
• 6:00
  and move forward. One of the reasons the Buckeyes ended up with just
• 6:02
  twenty three points on the day was they were just two of twelve on third
• 6:06
  downs. That is not going to get it done against better opposition than the
• 6:10
  Indiana Hoosiers. So does Ryanday have any sense for why they struggled in those
• 6:15
  situations? Well, I know when you get off schedule and it's third and
• 6:17
  nine, third and ten, you know, the percentages there go way down.
• 6:21
  But we expect on third and three, third and two, third and
• 6:24
  one to convert about eighty percent at a time war or not. That puts
• 6:27
  us completely out of whack. And that happened today and that can't happen moving
• 6:30
  forward. There's been lots and lots of talk about how deep and talented the
• 6:33
  wide receiver unit is this year, but the running back room, boy,
• 6:36
  they are very deep and talented. As well. Three different backs each got
• 6:41
  between seven and twelve carries on the day on the day on Saturday. So
• 6:46
  is that going to kind of be the plan moving forward, dividing carries up
• 6:48
  between those three guys that way? You know, Trays the starter in nyons
• 6:53
  right there and you can see what Chip can do. It's good to have
• 6:57
  multiple backs. It was hot today, especially in the first half, and
• 7:00
  so you know, Tony Tony kind of rotated them and and that was good.
• 7:05
  You know, there was a couple of drives there that you know,
• 7:09
  we moved the ball down the field. I forget how many drives they were.
• 7:12
  And it was about time to to to go with a new back because
• 7:15
  of how long those drives were. So you know, it's it's it's gonna
• 7:20
  be a long season. They're all going to carry it. But but Trey,
• 7:24
  you know, is the starter. Minds right there and Chips right there
• 7:27
  as well. So you know, Dan don't think dlan Uh got a bunch
• 7:30
  of work today either. He's you know, he's gonna have to play.
• 7:33
  You know, we only have one football. But but all those guys are
• 7:36
  deserving. Everyone tends to forget this once you're a few weeks into the season,
• 7:41
  but the first game of the year always kind of looks a little bit
• 7:44
  like that. It's always a little uneven. That's true for Ohio State,
• 7:47
  that's true for other teams as well. But Ryan Day was asked, is
• 7:50
  there a reason for that? Is that a concern that it looks like that
• 7:54
  in week one again? And this is gonna be two sort of related answers,
• 7:58
  but together back to back. Well, I think what you want to
• 8:01
  do in the first game, and that was part of one of our goals
• 8:03
  this years, win the first game, because it is kind of that way.
• 8:07
  I think back on you know, Justin's first start in the FAU game.
• 8:11
  That was a clunky game. I forget what the final was there.
• 8:13
  I think it was twenty something of three. You know, the Notre Dame
• 8:16
  game was a top five game, so that was a little bit different.
• 8:20
  You know, those games you're just trying to win. The Minnesota game was
• 8:24
  again a conference road a conference road game in a you know, really tough
• 8:28
  environment. So so when you look at those games, you just got to
• 8:31
  get the first win, and that's really what you need to do. And
• 8:35
  then you identify it because there's just unknowns when you have guys who are starting
• 8:39
  for the first time, and then you can kind of identify it and grow
• 8:43
  from there. So the goal is to win the first game. You know,
• 8:46
  you don't need to be playing your best football in the first game of
• 8:48
  the year, but you gotta grow from it, and you gotta make sure
• 8:50
  that wins under your belt because you know, in a few weeks nobody cares.
• 8:54
  You know, the wins will win and then you move on. But
• 8:56
  the goal is to get it and then we got to grow. Yeah,
• 8:58
  that's the journey. That's the part I like, you know, going back
• 9:03
  now and figuring out, Okay, where are we at? What did we
• 9:05
  anticipate? What you can do is take a bunch of chances and be reckless
• 9:11
  and all of a sudden put yourself at risk of losing a game. You
• 9:13
  can't do that. Probably we could have been a little bit more aggressive at
• 9:15
  times today, but the number one goal is to get to win and then
• 9:18
  move forward. There's gonna be have to be times we're gonna have to be
• 9:20
  more aggressive, for sure. But you know, I'm talking offense. I
• 9:24
  mean I love the defense, though, I mean I'm allowed to talk about
• 9:26
  the defense, so I want to smile and I mean, if we played
• 9:28
  defense like this, we're gonna have a chance. Certainly, bigger challenges ahead,
• 9:33
  but I thought Tom did a nice job of replacing you know, a
• 9:37
  good portion of his team and getting the game ready in the first game.
• 9:39
  You know, he did a nice job with that. And he's a very
• 9:41
  good coach, So a lot of respect for them. I mean, this
• 9:43
  is a conference game on the road. We heard Ryan Day and his coaching
• 9:48
  staff talk a bunch during the course of the year about the fact that you
• 9:52
  never really know what you got until you have to you see a player doing
• 9:56
  it during the game. They can try and you know, make things as
• 10:01
  close to game situation as they can during practice or scrimmages, but it's never
• 10:05
  a game until it's a game. So now that Kyle McCord got thrown into
• 10:11
  a game and had to deal with being the starter and dealing with all the
• 10:16
  pressure and sometimes not having success immediately, how did he feel Kyle McCord did
• 10:20
  with dealing with the adversity that came during the course of that game. I
• 10:24
  mean some good things, yeah, some good things in there. I mean,
• 10:26
  the pick was on fourth down, so it didn't drop the way we'd
• 10:31
  like to. I'm not gonna blame him for that. You know, if
• 10:33
  it went back the other way, it would have been a disaster. But
• 10:35
  we got him on the ground, so that was a fourth down deal.
• 10:41
  You know. He did make a play with his feet on one of the
• 10:43
  play actions. I thought that was good, you know, And I know
• 10:46
  he wants to have a couple of reads back, a couple of things back.
• 10:48
  But you know, until you really watched the film, it's hard to
• 10:52
  evaluate exactly how the overall body work was in the game. And I think
• 10:56
  that's kind of what I felt like, you know, when I was trying
• 11:00
  to figure out whether to get Devin or not in there or not. You
• 11:01
  know, when you get those first couple drives under your belt, you kind
• 11:05
  of get into the rhythm of the game, and I didn't want to have
• 11:09
  Devin go through that as well. And then all of a sudden, we're
• 11:11
  in the second half and we're in a dog fight. Neither of them are
• 11:13
  in a rhythm. So that's that was my gut, and I went with
• 11:18
  it. If you were watching the game, I'm sure you probably noticed the
• 11:20
  offensive line was probably not at peak form just yet. Three new starters putting
• 11:26
  a transfer and a red shirt freshman. That's not a huge surprise. But
• 11:31
  how did Ryan Day think it went For the offensive line? I know where
• 11:35
  we need to be. We're not there yet for sure, but I got
• 11:39
  to look at the film and see and identify it. You know, I
• 11:41
  usually if I say something right now, it's usually not accurate because you know,
• 11:46
  you have a couple of plays in mind that certainly you want to have
• 11:48
  back. But sometimes there's different reasons for that. And you know, I'll
• 11:54
  give you know, Matt and Tom a lot of credit. You know,
• 11:56
  they you know, changed up some things in terms of what they were doing.
• 11:58
  And so when you when you wrap over and over certain things and they
• 12:01
  change it up a little bit, you know that that can get you off.
• 12:05
  And you know, some of those guys don't have a ton of experience
• 12:07
  to fall back on, and so we'll figure out how they all grade it
• 12:11
  out. But I know in order to win championships, we're gonna have to
• 12:13
  get better. All right. Now, We're gonna turn our turn our focus
• 12:16
  to some of the players we got a chance to talk to after the game.
• 12:20
  Let's start with travy On Henderson. He was one of three running backs
• 12:22
  that got a whole bunch of carries. He had the most carries. He
• 12:24
  did not have the most yards. That would have been chip training. But
• 12:28
  where does Travy and Henderson feel like the running game is right now? And
• 12:31
  how did he feel like Saturday went. I feel like it's all right,
• 12:33
  man, It's all right man. It was definitely uh, some some mistakes
• 12:37
  were made, and you know, just as an offense collectively, so man,
• 12:41
  it's just I feel like once we get it together, as long as
• 12:45
  as long as we just keep working, man, keep practicing, keep practicing
• 12:48
  hard and stacking days, I feel like it'll all come together. Just the
• 12:50
  first game, man. So we knew it wasn't going to be perfect.
• 12:54
  Man. We knew we were going to make mistakes. But it's first game,
• 12:56
  man. We're definitely gonna clean it up. Though. We've been very
• 12:58
  offense heavy during the course of the show, so I recognized that and I
• 13:01
  want to address the defensive side of the ball as well. We're gonna do
• 13:05
  that with j T. Twoey Molo out the defensive end. This was you
• 13:09
  know, the day was kind of a mixed bag for the offense, but
• 13:11
  the defense was just really solid all day long. Held. Indian enda is
• 13:16
  two point two yards per rush, a little under four yards per past attempt
• 13:20
  and only three points. So how big was it that the defense picked it
• 13:26
  up when the offense was struggling a little bit. You know, we're a
• 13:28
  family here, you know, brotherhood is the main thing. I don't know.
• 13:31
  We got the shots back no matter what happens, no matter how bumby
• 13:33
  the road is. We got shutters back. And you know for us to
• 13:37
  hold down, hold down on four, it just and just continue to make
• 13:39
  a turnovers, giving the office chances. You know, that's all we can
• 13:43
  do, and chusing our offense, and you know we all got clean up
• 13:46
  little things and have a better game next time. There is some new personnel
• 13:48
  on the defensive side of the ball, and this is the second year for
• 13:52
  Jim Knowles as the defensive coordinator, so they're working in some new stuff there.
• 13:54
  But overall, just what's different about the defense this year compared to last
• 14:01
  Swarm, energy and just playing off on or another, you know, just
• 14:07
  just over communicating. I think we improved a lot of the small areas and
• 14:11
  just keep all the things that we did well. But you know, I
• 14:13
  think I think that was one thing we improved. I was playing with great
• 14:16
  energy, playing what's each other and just swarm to the ball all eleven.
• 14:18
  And finally you're gonna hear a little bit from Kyle McCord now, after his
• 14:22
  second career start, first as the true starter, he just he looked a
• 14:28
  little more comfortable out there in the second half. The whole offense looked a
• 14:31
  little more comfortable in the second half, but Kyle McCord, perhaps in particular,
• 14:35
  so did he feel a little more comfortable in the second half. We
• 14:37
  kind of get into the flow of the game, and you know, I
• 14:41
  think just as an offense, I think we played a lot better on the
• 14:43
  second half. Now, we ran the blow better, we passed a lot
• 14:46
  better, moved with ball better as a result. So I think, you
• 14:48
  know, just how can we continue that, you know, get it to
• 14:52
  the next level, you know, and keep you know, I'm proven and
• 14:54
  putting the more person aboard. We've mentioned that first career start for at Kyle
• 14:58
  McCord against Ac Run back in twenty twenty one, so he's done this before,
• 15:03
  but let's be honest, it was kind of a different situation. He
• 15:07
  was just kind of filling in for CJ. Strout as Stroud took one week
• 15:09
  off to kind of rest up his shoulder. So did this feel different for
• 15:13
  Kyle McCord compared to that first start against ACRAN, Yeah, I felt more
• 15:18
  control surn, I better understanding obvious being in this system FIRS in my third
• 15:22
  year. Now you're understanding. You know what defense you're trying to do and
• 15:26
  what we're trying to do on offense, and it's having to defense. As
• 15:31
  you have probably heard someone mentioned once or twice, Kyle McCord and Marvin Harrison
• 15:35
  for teammates in high school, so those two guys know each other pretty well.
• 15:37
  But in McCord's first start this year, Harrison only had two catches for
• 15:41
  eighteen yards. That is certainly not what you probably went into the week expecting
• 15:46
  for Marvin Harrison. So what was Indiana doing to take him away? And
• 15:50
  how does Kyle McCord and the rest of the Ohio State offense have to deal
• 15:54
  with that? I mean, he's the best receiver in college football, so
• 15:58
  a lot of the time be rare if you get one on one with him,
• 16:02
  and you know, if they do leaven one on one, you have
• 16:03
  to make them pay, right, It's not surprising when they put as safe
• 16:07
  you were top the other one. We're right in the case maybe, but
• 16:08
  I think you know, having him look to do it, and when maybe
• 16:11
  that opens up other guys which you know maybe a few times they were capitalizing
• 16:15
  that, well, that will do it for today. We are getting settled
• 16:18
  back into the game week routine, as I mentioned earlier. So we'll try
• 16:22
  and have a show with Ross Fulton this week, maybe two as we shout
• 16:25
  of look at all the different stuff that there is to break down on the
• 16:27
  offensive and defensive sides of the ball. It could be a lot to talk
• 16:30
  about there. We'll have interviews with Ohio State players and coaches coming up this
• 16:34
  week as well, Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday evening, a little Thursday lightning round
• 16:38
  with Ryan Day, and then kick off on Saturday against Youngstown State at noon
• 16:42
  in Ohio Stadium, the home opener for the twenty twenty three Ohio State football
• 16:47
  season. That should be a very fun week and a very eventful week here
• 16:52
  in Columbus. I'm sure there will be a lot of stuff to talk about,
• 16:55
  so I hope you guys are talking about it at buckeyehuddle dot com,
• 16:57
  where our team of insiders is covering the team in recruiting and x's and os
• 17:00
  and much much more, plus a really fun community. Lots of stuff to
• 17:04
  talk about there. So sign up today, became remember there, and also
• 17:07
  make sure you were following us on YouTube, YouTube dot com slash Buckeye Huddle.
• 17:11
  Make sure you're subscribed and hit that bell so you get notified when we
• 17:12
  post something new. Make sure you're on our Facebook page, Facebook dot com,
• 17:17
  slash Buckeye Huddle, all the places, all of our podcasts you can
• 17:19
  find those wherever you like. Wherever you find podcasts, you can find oursist
• 17:23
  search Buckeye Hudle. You can subscribe right there, and also we would appreciate
• 17:26
  it if you'd leave us at five star rating and review will to help other
• 17:30
  folks find those shows as well. That we'll do it for today. Thank
• 17:33
  you guys all for joining us. Up a great day. We'll talk to
• 17:34
  ya tomorrow.