Latest / Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning / Ross Fulton Analysis: Why Is Ohio State Struggling In Short Yardage?

Transcript

Ross Fulton Analysis: Why Is Ohio State Struggling In Short Yardage? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

• 0:01
  Welcome to Buckeyes Tomorrow Morning for Wednesday, September twenty seventh. I'm your host,
• 0:04
  Tom Moore. The Maryland game is in ten days. The game makeets
• 0:08
  Michigan in fifty nine days. All right, we gotta do it. I'm
• 0:13
  sorry, friends. We are going to talk about Ohio States short yardage offense.
• 0:17
  Yes, they scored a short yardage touchdown on the last play of the
• 0:20
  game. That was a pretty big one. We're gonna be talking about some
• 0:23
  of the other plays because that one feels like it's getting broken down to a
• 0:26
  whole crazy degree. We're even talking about some of the other short yardage plays
• 0:31
  for the Ohio State offense. Figure out what worked, what didn't work,
• 0:34
  what does it all mean moving forward. We're gonna be doing that with our
• 0:37
  buddy Buckeye Hutles Exs and nose Guru Ross Fulton Ross. Let's start with let's
• 0:42
  start with some good news. We're gonna we're gonna sort of ease people into
• 0:45
  this one. We're gonna start in the second quarter and it's second and one,
• 0:49
  and this is one where the Buckeyes made it look easy. No problem.
• 0:53
  Of course, you can pick up a yard when you want to pick
• 0:54
  up a yard Who can't do that? Hi was saying earlier this week than
• 1:00
  like, I'm starting to get frustrated O High State that I have to think
• 1:03
  so much about short yardage because I don't like thinking about short yardage. It's
• 1:07
  not fun. Uh, you know, it's not. It's not as entertaining
• 1:12
  to think about a bunch of bodies near the long of scrimmage. But all
• 1:15
  right, so I figured we should take one right that it worked positively,
• 1:21
  so he said earlier in the game. Second quarter. It is second and
• 1:23
  one, not third one. So that does introduce probably a bit more of
• 1:27
  a pass element. And obviously like where O High State is on the their
• 1:33
  own forty, there's obviously a vertical pass sort. But you know that didn't
• 1:38
  that applied later in the game too, So you know, Notre Dame High
• 1:42
  State here is in formation into the boundary. They've got trips to the short
• 1:47
  side. Notre Dame. You can tell from the snap they've single high.
• 1:51
  They're playing cover one, right, And so you had your best players on
• 1:55
  the field. You've got Marvin Harrison, You've got a mecha Buca and know
• 2:00
  O High State just friends are simple, just straight from the pistol inside zone
• 2:04
  play, everyone blocks handle well six yard game, right, so just like
• 2:08
  you would like to see a drawn out And I do think though that this
• 2:13
  has some important notes that we'll talk about later, namely personnel that's on the
• 2:20
  field, running within your offense, keeping the defense spread out. But the
• 2:25
  length and the width of the field. All right, So now we got
• 2:29
  the good news out of the way. Now we get to talk about everyone's
• 2:30
  favorite the bad news. Let's move on. Later in the second quarter,
• 2:35
  Buckeyes have it third and goal at the one. This is one ross where
• 2:39
  the personnel package here to me, just doesn't make a whole heck of a
• 2:44
  lot of sense. Because they take Ameca Abuca, they take Marvin Harrison off
• 2:47
  the field. You're gonna load it up. You're gonna put Kayden Curry at
• 2:50
  fullback, you're gonna have a couple tight ends, you're gonna have Luke Montgomery
• 2:53
  in there, and you are going to show them who is boss. And
• 2:58
  it doesn't work. And I guess my first question is if the defense is
• 3:04
  paying so much attention to Marvin Harrison and so much attention to a Mecca Abuca,
• 3:07
  wouldn't they pay more attention to them if they were on the field and
• 3:12
  potentially take bodies out of the box that you would then not have to block.
• 3:15
  Am I am I crazy? Am I off base? There's what's the
• 3:17
  thinking here? No, I mean, I agree with you. And you
• 3:22
  saw that at the end of the game where even putting aside the Notre Dame
• 3:25
  had ten players on the field, they still had to They did, in
• 3:29
  fact have their defensive backs spread out, covering Harrison and a Buka by the
• 3:32
  goal line. And so I agree. I mean, you know, when
• 3:36
  you look at this pre snap, you've got eleven bodies for Notre Dame basically
• 3:40
  inside the tackle box and amenable to no concern about the pass. And I
• 3:46
  you know, I obviously we see on fourth down we can get to that
• 3:50
  one how you can throw out of these these looks. But you know you're
• 3:54
  bringing in a defensive end as your full back, and you know Notre Dame
• 3:59
  is BA basically and then you're running. You're running wide zone here and as
• 4:04
  you see, like what Notre Dame does is they basically cover everyone up.
• 4:08
  They're essentially in like a heavy bare front. But so like you know the
• 4:12
  point of zone blocking is to get double teams and instead of you're not accomplishing
• 4:17
  that here now because you have so many bodies in the middle, you're just
• 4:21
  leaving everyone in single blocks. And like, listen, if you're like Justin
• 4:27
  fry you can be like and deservedly so like this is not a good block
• 4:31
  by Josh Fryer. Like you're on the one yard line, you come up,
• 4:34
  come off high like that you're going to get blown back, which is
• 4:38
  what happens, and it destroys the play. So there's like on technical issues,
• 4:42
  if everyone executes well, this can work. But I just don't think
• 4:46
  it's putting your best foot forward to your point like Peck. We even still
• 4:51
  on Notre Dame, who is a much more run heavy team than Ohio State,
• 4:56
  Like their second touchdown came and they are on the two yard line and
• 4:59
  they spread out went empty with the four by one look. So there's no
• 5:02
  rule that just because you're on the two yard line you have to you know,
• 5:08
  get in these big heavy formations instead, like you can you know,
• 5:12
  you can mix it up even just to keep teams off balance. And so
• 5:15
  if I was, you know, my biggest critique here is I actually we
• 5:20
  can pull it up here and talk about it the fourth down play. I
• 5:24
  like the play call there. I just sort of like to see, you
• 5:26
  know, on third down, because I think it was a little too predictable
• 5:29
  that they're gonna once you've got stopped on third, that they're going to try
• 5:31
  to pass on fourth and once you're passing, once the defense thinks you're going
• 5:35
  to pass again, like put your best wide receivers out there. Yeah,
• 5:40
  the fourth down pass goes to It was browne four cased over and then almost
• 5:45
  caught by g Scott, neither of whom are rather notably Marvin Harrison or Meccauga.
• 5:48
  So yeah, let's let's go through that play because this is another one
• 5:53
  where we have a staff group text and it has been remarked upon more than
• 5:57
  once in this over in previous weeks. Hey, they tend to run the
• 6:00
  ball on third and one and then when they don't make it, they throw
• 6:02
  the ball on fourth and one. And it feels like that's something if our
• 6:06
  staff has noticed that the paid professional football coaches who are playing them and self
• 6:11
  scouting or scouting them for upcoming games have probably also picked up on that pattern
• 6:15
  as well. Yeah, I mean, especially when you change out the personnel
• 6:20
  and you take out King Curry, who again putting a backup defensive as a
• 6:25
  fullback. You put ship training back in a fullback. And so I remember
• 6:29
  at the time watching this sinking, they're not going to literally do again what
• 6:31
  they did versts Indiana right and run it on third and then pass on fourth,
• 6:35
  Like maybe they're gonna you know, rock paper scissors and run again and
• 6:41
  kind of full Notre Dame because they probably a Notre Dame is expecting to pass
• 6:44
  here and again, like I like the concept. It's a tight end throwback
• 6:46
  basically, so it's not the same route they used against Indiana. In the
• 6:48
  situation, he's trying to roll left and then throw it back to the right
• 6:53
  hand side. The problem is just like again the execution, like Stover gets
• 6:57
  knocked off his route and so he and Gee Scott are are way too close
• 7:00
  to each other. Like Geese Scott supposed to go towards the back pylon,
• 7:04
  Kid Stover, we're supposed to stay along the line of scrimmage. And like,
• 7:06
  even if the ball doesn't get tipped, or I should say if the
• 7:10
  ball doesn't get tipped, I still think Stover might be able to get a
• 7:13
  touch on here. Again, I just think it's more a situational thing,
• 7:16
  Like I think it was too obvious that they were that a pass was likely
• 7:21
  here to make the heavy play action throwback like the option like third down.
• 7:26
  I think it could. I think it would have worked, all right.
• 7:29
  So now we're going to fast forward to the fourth quarter of the game.
• 7:31
  This is not the last drive of the game. This is the next to
• 7:33
  last drive of the game. And this is the play right before this.
• 7:38
  Travon Henderson has looks like he might be on his way to a touchdown and
• 7:43
  a Notre Dame defender just barely gets just enough of his cleans that he sort
• 7:47
  of stumbles and falls just short of the first down marker. Could have been
• 7:50
  a first down, could have been a touchdown. Instead, it's third and
• 7:54
  one. Ross take it away. So and I will say, like to
• 8:00
  go back to that second down run and to give them some credit before get
• 8:03
  into some of the failures, like they did do a nice job in this
• 8:05
  game with the run game diversity overall, like you saw them continuing to try
• 8:11
  the run game wasn't always successful. I don't think it was like the organing
• 8:13
  stuffed a lot. They just weren't getting beyond three to four yards a lot
• 8:18
  of times, but like you saw a variety of schemes, right like Travion
• 8:20
  Henderson's big run came off a guard tackle, counter tray pulling he got outside
• 8:26
  the room before this on second down was a same side pin and pull,
• 8:31
  which you know for astute listeners we discussed last year as they used a couple
• 8:35
  of times very successfully. So they you know, run to Trayvion Henderson's side
• 8:39
  that he's lined up on, they pull the center and the tackle and get
• 8:43
  outside. So so they again now even in short yardage, you see them
• 8:50
  trying different concepts, right like this is a different look. Now, I
• 8:52
  personally think part of the problem here is it's too different of a look.
• 8:56
  Like when I saw this live, I was like, this just too obvious,
• 9:00
  Like Trevi and Henderson's gonna run inside wedge because why is he lined up?
• 9:05
  Why is oviously under center and he's offset kind of looks like kind of
• 9:09
  jumps out of you. Maybe they want to sell the concept of what they're
• 9:13
  going to do on fourth down that like they were moving Henderson over so that
• 9:16
  he can serve better as a lead blocker for a mecha book on the sweep
• 9:20
  so they run. They run a wedge here, which we talked about wedge
• 9:24
  I mentioned it last week and wedge is also what they used on the Chip
• 9:28
  train and touchdown and so like the difference is like with inside zone, like
• 9:33
  the backside, yes, looks like it's blocking down, but the front side
• 9:37
  they're all stepping the same direction. So like if you were running inside zone
• 9:39
  left here with Henderson, everyone stepped to the left. With wedge, you
• 9:43
  literally have both sides of the offensive line just stepping to their insides. You're,
• 9:46
  you know, for those watching, literally creating a wedge. The problem
• 9:50
  again is now you have three you only have three guys to the center line,
• 9:56
  and so with a wedge, you're not sealing off the edges. And
• 10:00
  so you know, John Jim Patiz from Ohio State Fame comes straight off the
• 10:05
  edge tight and he's able to make the tackle. I think this again gets
• 10:11
  to our personal issue. Like I think, I think Traymon Henderson has a
• 10:16
  lot of strengths. He showed like I think I've as you know, I've
• 10:18
  been critical at times of him in his vision, I think, but you
• 10:22
  also see his strengths. Right, he is a home run threat, like
• 10:24
  he can create explosive place when you get him on the edge or to the
• 10:28
  second level. I do not think his strength is running for a yard and
• 10:33
  short yardage. I think to their credit they put two and two together on
• 10:37
  that same front, like they put chip train them in the game on that
• 10:39
  last touchdown, And I just think that like short yardage, it should be
• 10:45
  chip train them in these situations because I do think just the difference in size
• 10:48
  and like body type, he could probably carry like a defensive end that's coming
• 10:52
  off unblocked off the edge. I mean that's essentially what happened on the wedge
• 10:56
  play as well, and he was able to carry him for that extra half
• 10:58
  yard. So again like in some ways that they are searching in short yardage,
• 11:03
  like it's not like they're trying the same things you know of any of
• 11:07
  them. Like the one time they really ran the base offense was that second
• 11:11
  and one we showed at the beginning where it's just like pistol inside zone.
• 11:16
  In some ways, though, I think this is like getting too cute right
• 11:18
  with like the offset, Like if you're gonna wedge, I'd like to see
• 11:22
  them like they did the week before, like in the gun and like Kyle
• 11:26
  McCord like physically reaches up towards the line and gives it to the to the
• 11:28
  running back like half a yard behind the line of scrimmage, because it just
• 11:31
  makes it harder to come off the edge. But you know, the other
• 11:35
  thing I'd like to see is a is a quarterback. He can these situations
• 11:37
  in rank And I kept waiting for it to happen on Saturday night and it
• 11:43
  just did not. And like, if you don't want to sneak the quarterback,
• 11:46
  you can do what like every NFL team is doing right now, which
• 11:48
  is like put the quarterback in the shotgun and he looks around like he doesn't
• 11:52
  know what's going on, and then the tight end comes in motion and takes
• 11:54
  a snap and sneaks. So there are there are ways to avoid if you
• 11:58
  don't want your quarterback get hit or you don't think he's very good at it
• 12:01
  and getting a bigger body there. I just think it's making it hard harder
• 12:05
  than it needs to be at times. I was going to ask you about
• 12:09
  that because it did feel like they were several very obvious quarterback sneak situations.
• 12:13
  Is that something that is some quarterbacks aren't good at it is that maybe they're
• 12:20
  concerned about running that directly behind a red shirt freshman like Carson Hinzman and you
• 12:24
  know, maybe he's not going to get enough push. It just it felt
• 12:28
  like, you know, there was a rather famous game about eighteen years ago
• 12:31
  in that very same stadium where a quarterback sneak with a little help from the
• 12:35
  running back behind him, ended up winning the game. It felt like that
• 12:39
  was sort of sitting right there and they never took it night. I'm assuming
• 12:43
  there is some reason why. I mean, I haven't seen Colin McCord do
• 12:48
  it, so I guess they've made know better than me. I don't get
• 12:50
  why. I mean, yes, some quarterbacks are better than others. I
• 12:54
  mean, we saw Sam Hartman on Saturday fail running it. You know,
• 12:58
  he went for the the trull prior move of trying to pop it outside,
• 13:03
  which generally doesn't work. And we see why, like but come accords,
• 13:07
  like a big guy like he should be able to burrow in their crafit yard.
• 13:11
  I mean he's not Jalen Hurts, who like can run it every time
• 13:16
  when everyone does it's coming and for it every time for the Eagles, but
• 13:20
  with him and like the ability again to have like a chip training back there
• 13:22
  to push him from behind. Like I just I don't I don't have a
• 13:28
  better answer for why they're not doing it. I just think it's a mistake,
• 13:31
  especially if you need half a yard, all right, Well they needed
• 13:35
  they needed not just half a yard, but a full yard. On fourth
• 13:39
  and one, this is the play after the wedge play we just talked about
• 13:41
  a minute ago, and they give it to a Mecca Abuka on like a
• 13:46
  jet sweep motion, like a jet motion. And Ryan Day said after the
• 13:50
  game that they had the look they wanted for this, and then when I
• 13:54
  went back and watched, it seems like Notre Name's got several defenders on the
• 14:00
  edge there where they're running that directly into the boundary. What do you know
• 14:03
  what the look they were looking for that they felt like they had was because
• 14:07
  I looked at that and I thought, yeah, this looks like a play
• 14:09
  that's not going to work, even before they snap it. Yeah, So
• 14:13
  I get what he's saying, right, So they have they have three blockers,
• 14:16
  so you're basically they leave in the way they run this, they're gonna
• 14:20
  leave the defensive end of that side unblocked. Like he's not going to run
• 14:24
  down the jet sweep, So you got three blockers for your three defenders,
• 14:26
  your two tight ends, and then your tackle is going to release. And
• 14:30
  the look they got is that their Notre Dames and cover one or man coverage.
• 14:35
  Right, So when you watch Ameca Bucca at the snap run the fly
• 14:37
  sweep, he is being trailed by the corner. So Notre Dame is down
• 14:43
  a body and that guy's trailing he should not be able to make the play
• 14:48
  again. Like I will say, like again, like do you watch the
• 14:52
  NFL right now? If you watch other football, like, there's lots of
• 14:54
  using this kind of jet sweep and short guardage situation, so it's not like
• 14:58
  a whole crazy idea. I think my biggest problem with this play, well,
• 15:03
  the two problems. First is like your personnel, Like I've seen their
• 15:09
  tight ends struggle blocking these kind of plays too many times now, you know,
• 15:13
  they just they seem to struggle in space doing this and they don't get
• 15:18
  any sort of movement whatsoever. I think my bigger issue though, is that
• 15:22
  I don't I don't like running it to the short side of the field.
• 15:24
  Like I will defend running to the short side of the field a lot as
• 15:28
  we've talked about. But in this situation, like when you're moving laterally like
• 15:31
  this, like you just need more room for him to find a lane to
• 15:33
  cut up. Like in theory, he could have cut probably between Fryer and
• 15:39
  Kaid's sober, Like Fryer's got his butt turn and like there's a little bit
• 15:43
  of a hole there. But that's just hard in that short area of the
• 15:46
  field to be able to turn it up like that. So again I'm not
• 15:50
  opposed to the concept. I just think that I'm not sure about running it
• 15:54
  to the short side of the field. The other thing that about this play,
• 16:00
  that's you know, people have brought up to me on Buckeye Huddle and
• 16:03
  discusses if you looked at the top of the screen, Marvin Harrison has like
• 16:07
  a I'm looking now like an eight yard cushion, let's say, from a
• 16:14
  corner with no help whatsoever. So I think there is a question of,
• 16:18
  you know, it's a young quarterback, how much how much discretion do you
• 16:22
  want to give him. I just wonder whether they should build in reliefs so
• 16:27
  like if he sees that he should just be able to throw, I mean,
• 16:30
  you don't even need to throw a slant. You could just like literally
• 16:33
  throw to him on that spot and he should be able to get a yard,
• 16:36
  so or you can just or you can call a slant and it's probably
• 16:38
  a touchdown. And so again I'm like, this goes back to your original
• 16:44
  point, which is I like, you know, you have to me like
• 16:48
  three really explosive playmakers and Harrison and Bucca and Henderson and so you know,
• 16:56
  I think you want to feature them, and they're all very good in space,
• 17:00
  and so I just don't I think obviously they're trying to use a buka
• 17:03
  here and get on the edge, and so I don't fully fault them for
• 17:07
  that. But I just think with Harrison in particular, like again, like
• 17:11
  we actually talked about this as Michigan in at different contexts, but like last
• 17:14
  year, if teams want to leave him single it up like that and kind
• 17:17
  of like they're basically not paying attention to him because they know the ball is
• 17:19
  not going that way, Like I think you should have automatic or leaves to
• 17:22
  punish them, like whether it's a quick slant a quick hitch, like depending
• 17:26
  on the leverage of the quarterback. All right, so now we've gotten the
• 17:32
  we've gotten the vegetables out of the way. Let's have a little dessert.
• 17:34
  Hey, Ohio State won this game. Despite all the negative stuff we're talking
• 17:37
  about, they still did win the game. It looked a little implausible at
• 17:41
  times, even rewatching. You'll hear the Buckeye Weekly episode on Wednesday, Tony
• 17:47
  Gerdeman and I rewatched the game or would be talking about that. And boy,
• 17:49
  I got to tell you, there were times when I was like,
• 17:52
  how did they win this game? I don't I was there, I saw
• 17:55
  it, and I still don't understand how it happened, But it happened.
• 17:59
  Ten men from noted were involved, Chip Trandom was involved, walk us through
• 18:03
  the walk off almost walk off touchdown. Yeah, And so I mean there
• 18:06
  were good things like right, like we can talk about this in subsequent shows,
• 18:10
  Like I say, it had only had eight offensive possessions, they on
• 18:14
  seven of them. They got in a Notre Dame territory. I mean,
• 18:15
  they moved the ball pretty consistently. They just they wasted scoring opportunities, and
• 18:22
  obviously short yardage is a big component of that. Again, so like I
• 18:26
  think here, it's like, you know, you're gonna have to caveata forever
• 18:30
  with the ten men situation. But like I do think it accomplishes some of
• 18:34
  the things we discussed, which is like you have Harrison in a book on
• 18:38
  the field, like the defense has to account for that. You have Chip
• 18:42
  train them in as your short yardage running back, you know, like I
• 18:45
  will say, like you know, jumping back, like where they gave it
• 18:48
  to Mayan Williams. I just don't think like if you're not if Chip trams
• 18:52
  your second running back and like mine Williams isn't really getting carries at all,
• 18:56
  then I don't think like bringing someone in totally cold at the two yard lines
• 19:00
  like the time to do it. Like I don't doubt dispute that like mine
• 19:03
  Williams can serve a similar purpose. I just think if you're gonna play chip
• 19:07
  train them anyways, like play someone who's a little bit more in the flow
• 19:10
  of the game. And again they so they got single coverage and they run,
• 19:14
  they wedge again and which you know still allows some penetration, right,
• 19:18
  Like it's it's not like an easy touchdown, even despite with ten men.
• 19:22
  But I do think like, at least like to me, these are sort
• 19:26
  of some of the building blocks of what they need to do. Just personnel
• 19:29
  wise and not like totally trying to change who they are. And you know
• 19:34
  again, I think in some ways you can just run like your regular office
• 19:38
  down there, even if you use eleven personnel and run inside zone like we
• 19:41
  shown that second one. But it would be nice if they figured out how
• 19:45
  to quarterback sneak as well. Well. We will. We'll be keeping an
• 19:49
  eye on that and watching how their short Yoda defense developed over the coming weeks.
• 19:56
  As Ohio State that gets a little a little bit of a breather this
• 19:59
  weekend, weekend off and then onto the Terps next weekend. As Ross mentioned,
• 20:03
  we are going to be talking about a few other elements of this game
• 20:07
  on an episode coming up a little later on this week, so we have
• 20:10
  that to look forward to. We also have o Higo State football player interviews
• 20:14
  coming up on Wednesday. No Bryan Day this week, he's off on the
• 20:17
  road recruiting. No Jim Knowles for the same reason, but we will talk
• 20:19
  to some of the players on Wednesday. We'll have a very special live episode
• 20:22
  of Black Eyes tomorrow morning Wednesday afternoon, That'll be the plan anyway, and
• 20:27
  then Ross will way back a little later on the week to talk about some
• 20:30
  of the other stuff. Oh boys, there are a lot of stuff to
• 20:33
  talk about from this game. So thank you guys all for joining us.
• 20:36
  Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow.