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Ross Fulton Analysis: Has Ohio State Solved Its Rushing Issues? · Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning

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Welcome to Buck guys tomorrow morning for Thursday, November second, I'm your host,
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tom Or. The Rutgers game is in two days, the game against
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Michigan in twenty three days. If it is Thursday, that means it is
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time for our buddy Ross Fulton, everyone's smart football friend, one of the
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ex's nose gurus at buckeyehuddle dot com. We're going to be talking about the
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Ohio State offense today. There was a lot to like in that win over
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Wisconsin. Some stuff we're going to talk about that maybe you don't like so
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much, but we'll get there later. But every time we talked to Ross,
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it means we're proudly sponsored by Jeff Ruby Steakhouse. Jeff Ruby Steakhouse probably
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offering it nationally acclaimed usdab prime mistakes, seafood and sushi, impeccable service,
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live entertainment, and an attention to detail that is simply unmatched. Make reservations
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today and learn more at Jeffruby dot com slash Columbus. We're going to take
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a little look back at the Wisconsin game that happened what five days ago now,
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Buckey's won that one twenty four to ten. Showed some real progress on
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the ground. It felt like, Now, how much of that was a
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maybe okay but not great Wisconsin and run defense. How much of that was
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the return of Trevion Henderson. How much of that was Hey, there,
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everything's fixed and everything's great. Well, we're gonna be talking to our good
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buddy, Ross Fulton, the one of the ex's and o's gurus at buckey
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Huddle dot com to try and get the answers on all of that. Ross,
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Let's start with something that seems a little like window addressing but has turned
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out I think to be a pretty effective thing. That's their use of orbit
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motion. And you had a couple of plays you had picked out here to
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show how that's how that's working and why that's working so well for them in
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the run game right now. Yeah, I mean you're really seeing it a
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diversified run game from Ohio State, particularly compared to recent seasons. We can
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go through some of that, but yeah, so you're seeing a lot of
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orbit motion. I think, you know, we'll see how much of that
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is related to the fact that with a mecha Bouka not available, this really
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fits Xavier Johnson's skill set in particular. I mean, I think he's stronger
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as a runner on the edge than he is as a true receipt and also
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like as we'll see, he's also like kind of an effective blocker as well.
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But so you're but what they're doing nicely is they're tying this orbit motion
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together into a series of plays that all base off of that, and particularly
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with because the orbit goes behind the quarterback we've talked about in the past,
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like you get a good ball handling from that because with the quarterbacks back turn
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to the defense, they don't know who has the ball and what's happening,
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right, So we'll see they run two plays off of it, and there
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was actually more than that. So the first one that we're showing is the
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actual orbit motion to a lead zone and so like for the offensive line,
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they're just blocking outside zone. Chip train them is leading you know, for
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Xavier Johnson, so you're getting an additional lead blocker on the edge. They
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also did like even within these plays, they're doing some minor variations that are
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really building off of things. So later in the game, they ran the
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same play except they pulled Donovan Jackson the left guard back the opposite way,
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which makes it look like the play action pass that they like to use off
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of this, so you'll get the lead outsides in an orbit, you'll get
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out like a hard play action pass where they like to pull the guard and
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kind of run like a two manion route down field. You saw that a
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couple of times against Nebraska. And then the second play here is you know,
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you fake the orbit and you spin back around and give the counter.
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So this is a gh counter coming back the opposite way. And again,
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you know, good ball handling, you kind of get like an inside handoff
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here, which is sort of like hearkens back to the wing tee almost,
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you know that kind of like traditional ball handling. And so again, you
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know both, I think that you know, we see, and we're going
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to keep talking about, like, you know, to your point about Travon
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Henderson's return, obviously that makes a big difference with explosive run plays. But
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I do think that by diversifying the scheme, they're really also featuring run plays
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that play to his strengths by getting him you know, downhill outside on the
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edge, reducing his knee to read blocks, and more just getting him quickly
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out in space and you know where he can make a guy miss and use
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his skills at the second level. Well, one of the plays that they
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use that did all of those things and to great effect was wind back.
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That's a play that I feel like we've mentioned on this show before. I
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don't know if we've ever really broken it down and explained how it all works.
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So run us through wind back and why that works so well with Prevy
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on Henderson. Yeah, so they haven't. I don't know if they've.
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They've maybe run wind back once this year. They've run it a little bit
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in the past, but this game they ran it at least four or five
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times. And so wind back, you're basically it's it's like counter without a
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polar So like you tend to run it from under center and essentially like you
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fake like you're gonna go one way, the running back counter steps, it
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comes back the other way. What ends up happening is it starts out looking
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like wide zone because the lines taking those same steps, But essentially it turns
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into duo because you're once you're you're cutting back, like all those what looked
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like zone blocks let's say to the right, become now down blocks to the
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left for the running back and so again they ran it with a couple of
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different variations. Here you'll see probably what was most successful to them, which
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was having Xavier Johnson lineup as a wing and he basically pulls background and functions
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as a lead full back. Then going the opposite way, and so you're
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getting again like you know, kind of a heavy personnel downhill run at element
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you know, again like getting getting Henderson downhill, you know, as with
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duo, Like there's some downsides to wind back, like you kind of need
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these like tight formations because it's again sort of functioning that same way. And
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if the play like there was one where like Wisconsin brought an unblocked defender off
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the edge and and uh killed in the backfield. So like unlike let's say
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with stretch, where like you can use the defense as movement against them,
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like wind back if it's if it's you know, if the goes against the
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wrong defensive scheme call, it's not going to work. But again, like
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I do think again you're seeing like the iterating of plays and then like they
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faked wind back and play action pass off against Wisconsin. So like a much
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better job this year in general, like diversifying the run scheme time, play
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action pass to the run game. So like there are a lot of good
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things happening scheme wise that are in some ways are being obscured, like by
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their own inefficiency and like failing to convert points. But like I do think
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that they're they're helping themselves because you know, we could talk about this too
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more later, Like I going back to the Xavier Johnson point, like they
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are kind of limited, and like obviously getting Henderson back is a big plus,
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and we could see the difference at me in the run game in terms
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of just like converting four and five yard runs into bigger plays. But like
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you know, you obviously have Marvin Harrison, but like without a Mecca Booker
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right now, Like it's they're kind of limited. Like you know, Julian
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Fleming, like you know, I don't mean to be too mean, but
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he's kind of just like a guy, Like he's kind of like replacement level
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for them, right Like he's and you know, Colonel Tates a freshman,
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you know, so he has some upside, but like you know, how
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much can you rely on him? As I said, Xavier Johnson to me
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is more of a runner or kind of like a hybrid running back than he
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is like a true slot wide receiver, and so like beyond you know,
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Harrison and Stover right now in the passing game and Trevion Henderson, which we'll
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talk about. You know, they definitely are having to generate offense a little
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bit more through schematically, through you know, making plays look alike, tying
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things together in the run in the pass game. There have been a lot
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of things for ohiost tit, fans to be happy about it with the offense.
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A lot of times that they haven't been happy with the offense year It
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has been hey why are you running into the boundary so much? And the
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next one is, hey, they're running wide zone into the boundary. But
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this time it worked. So what was the difference here where this You know,
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they had success running into the boundary when I think the average person is
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looking and saying they're batting about fifty when they when they do that, you
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know, I couldn't pass up including a stretch boundary around when it worked.
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So in fact, you know we're talking about all this, you know,
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sort of diversifying the run game with counter you know, and you know we
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saw both counter gh like we showed earlier. We saw counter GT multiple times
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from twelve personnel. They also faked windback to run counter or the excuse me,
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they faked the orbit motion or encounter GT. We saw crack toss,
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we saw duo, we saw wineback. As I said, so like lots
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of plays, but stretch was still there, and in fact, they ran
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it pretty well throughout the game. There's a couple of times in the second
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half they're getting caught a little bit being predictable and first down running the football.
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You know, I think they had a lead, they'd had Kyle McCord
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had some turnover issues, he got hurt, I think, you know.
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So, I guess being a little conservative is probably like not a wild eyed
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idea. But so there were sometimes where they got including running stretch where they
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got caught where Wisconsin would bring an extra defender off the backside edge crashing down
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it would blow up the play. But they executed stretch. And Wisconsin did
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some things too with like using some bear fronts and like a five to one
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front a couple of times against their zone schemes to make it difficult, kind
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of like what Purdue did. But the so this was the best I've seen
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Henderson run stretch, they blocked it, they got to the second level better,
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but like he just did a much better job immediately bending the play back
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behind the wave right like Wisconsin's pursuing and he just cut back immediately and so
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you see that here, But he did it a couple of two times before
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this too for successful plays and so you know, much better job of vision
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by him. I almost feel like it was a teaching point to him probably
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at some point after a couple of the earlier games, like hey, like
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put your foot in the ground and get up field, don't don't string it
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out, And then you know, you saw his natural ability like once he
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gets to the second level being able to you know, work his way between
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guys and then his explosion once you know he gets downfield, he's hard to
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catch. So again I think, you know, as we talked about,
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like just because you need you can diversify, doesn't mean stretch has to go
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away, and in fact it it makes it more effective when it's not.
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You're not expecting them to run it as much and they're doing a better job
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as well, Like they ran it here and a couple of times away from
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the tight end, like to the open side. So they're mixing and matching,
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like running to the field, running to the boundary, running into the
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formation strength or the weak side of the formation as well. And moving on
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to the past game. Now, we have talked about Ohio State running mesh
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a whole bunch of times over the last few years. There's a head coach
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in Amherst, Massachusetts who is probably still seeing it in his nightmares. That's
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that's the UMass, that's the umss' is problem now. But Ohio State's still
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using mesh with great success. And they also used something that I mean,
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I need I need some confirmation on this ross the wheel route. It has
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long been rumored that the wheel route is undefeated. Is that in fact is
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the wheel route in fact undefeated in college football? It's it's definitely effective when
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you got Trigon Henderson. Well, I'll show you though that it is defeated
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at times. And but that's that's okay though, right, So, like
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this is how they've run mash. And there's been some complaints I feel like
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in like the last couple of year or two that like word mesh go,
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or like why aren't they running as much? They've been running it more and
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more the last few weeks. I think that, like again, like you're
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trying to play to your players strengths, and like there's certain concepts like that
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I I see that Kyle McCord does better than others, and like we're going
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to go into a couple of those here. But like again, so like
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we have two Mesh plays here, right, first one, they hit Travon
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Henderson on the wheel, so like on Mesh, the way they run it.
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His McCord's first read is that wheel route, So like you're gonna glance
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there and see if it's open, and if it is, you're gonna throw
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it right. And that's that does create an explosive play, And like you
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can see that. It was a big point of empetasis this week to try
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to get Henderson involved in the passing game as well. Like they also,
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you know, as people probably remember, they motioned him into the slot and
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he ran a different a wheel route, not off of Mesh, but you
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know he was opening the end zone against a linebacker and you know McCord overthrew
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him, like you gotta he's a running back still, you gotta put the
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ball in his body, Like you can't force him to stretch for it thirty
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yards downfield, but like here, you know they run off a mesh.
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They hit him for a big game. And then on Harrison's first touchdown mesh
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again. This time the wheel right is covered so you can see McCord work
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through his progressions to go from the wheel to the underneath a shallow crosser rail
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we're oute and so again like you know, they're they're working to get just
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like we talked about Penn State, like get Marvin Harrison in different spots,
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uh, you know, get him on underneath crossing routes like this to make
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sure that he gets the football. And again, I think this is one
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of these one of the few concepts that I think McCord excels at reading and
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getting the ball out. Now, I think when people look at that mesh
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play, especially the last one we just showed, you see a lot of
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contact downfield and you see the defender getting kind of picked off. There is
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there a line there that becomes we have seen offensive pass the difference called at
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times it doesn't get called a lot. Is there something that makes it this
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is a penalty versus this is okay? And like, oops, I bumped
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into him? How did that happen. M Usually, as long as you're
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running your route and you just happen to bump into him, that is gonna
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You're gonna be fine on that. If you extend your arms, that's normally
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where it'll get called if you look like you're affirmatively trying to prevent the defender's
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movement. But as a receiver, you are allowed to run in space,
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and if a defender happens to be in your way, that's not your fault,
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all right, So next up, we'll got you got this labeled as
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a good example of what Kyle McCord is doing. Well, right now,
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he's doing he's doing some stuff. Well I know people did not think that
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necessarily during the first half of the game with the Wisconsin at Wisconsin, but
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he has had some success this year as well. So run us through this
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next one, yeah, I mean and like so this is just like a
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deep comeboaut crout or deep out route to Harrison, And they ran this a
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few times during the game. Like Wisconsin was using, you know, a
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decent amount of cover three where they bail and leave these routes. So he
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had Julian Fleming on one early. Like again, I think this is a
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route like he throws well, he throws it in timing. I mean,
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these are not easy throws, right, So you're like, you know,
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for all the criticism the m A core took, like you know, he's
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still making some pretty pretty difficult throws that like your average college quarterback doesn't cannot
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make, doesn't have the arm strength to make. Like I think there's again,
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like there's this first half second half dichotomy with McCord that I wish I
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could explain it. I like, I don't know what it is, but
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like you can see it even just like in his mechanics, so like his
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mechanics were much cleaner, like this was an early second half throw, Like
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we're much cleaner in the second half against Wisconsin, Like his drops were tighter,
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his arm motion was cleanless, was more compact, And so I don't
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whatever they if they could ever get that second half guy. I mean I
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think he was seven to seven in the second half, Like you know,
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it wasn't perfect, like maybe didn't miss the pulling the trigger a few times
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to come out on the first half. You know that would help them because
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like obviously you had the two interceptions. The first one was like you know,
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you just you can't make that throw like that was supposed to be a
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bootleg t K. Stover as the underneath receiver, and like Stover got knocked
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off course and there was just nothing there, Like you just got to eat
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that. Maybe he could have tried to throw deep in the back of the
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end zone to Harrison, but like that wasn't where he went. The second
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one, I kind of I don't have as much a problem with, like
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they were in Wisconsin, was into Tampa two and the deep half defender jumped
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the route. I mean, it was a nice play by him. Maybe
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he was a little late with it. But like also stuff like we'll talk
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about with like you know, the intentional groundings and just being inaccurate, like
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he missed. There's a couple throws where he just like didn't put the ball
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in the right place. So you know, I think I agree that,
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like as with everything right, like there's too much like he's good or he's
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not good, Like there's just some like there's some gray there. Like he's
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playing pretty well, he's certainly not playing perfect. Again, like people who
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want to contrast him to you know what CJ. Shroud did in twenty twenty
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one, like a CJ. Stroud's obviously like a great player, so that's
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a very high bar you like first bats, like for instance, the Ohio
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State twenty twenty one defense was like c J. Stroud had, you know,
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Chris Olave, Garrett Wilson and Jackson Smith and Jig. But like that
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is not especially with the MECA bookat like not the receiving corps the Comaccord's working
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with right now, and nor is the offensive line at the same level.
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So you know, you got to play to your strengths. And like again,
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if they could just get that second half play to come out more in
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the first half, I think they'd be in a pretty good spot. But
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like again I think like to the point of the clip, I do think
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there's throws like he does well, and again like we was kind of beating
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the drum, like these kind of routes mesh, like the RPOs, Like
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he had that Clanser out rpo opposite side to carnal Tate. There was a
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really nice throw and a nice read by him, Like I continue to think
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like to the extent they can lean into those things, I also think that
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helps him all right. And so we're gonna end this one a little bit
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of a down note here. You've gotten a lot of good Ohio State.
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You should be feeling pretty good about Ohio State's offense so far. Got to
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end on a little bit of downloaded with definitely not perfect. You mentioned the
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intentional grounding play. They should probably stop running that as much as they have
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been. This is one where it was there, It was there. There
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was a throw to Marvin Harrison. You'll see on one of these replays Marvin
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Harrison is creating, you know, about to create some real separation. There
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is a deep ball there to Marvin Harrison, but kind McCord just doesn't have
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time and it ends up with an intentional grounding. So run us through what
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went wrong on this one? Yeah, I mean, I think the big
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takeaway is, like, you know, when you look at there's like,
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you know, what was your success rate like relative to your opponent? I
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mean, Ohio State outperform Wisconsin Wealthy on what the score is, but like
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you can't have three or four drives inside your opponent's forty ended no points,
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right, And like a big part of that was the intentional groundings taking them
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even out of field goal range. Like you know, we've talked a lot
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about like goal line stuff and red zone about converting into touchdowns, but like
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they also just like misopportunities just to get points in general, and so and
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like part of that is these these negative plays that are coming in and so
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it's you know, this one was a third and eight and you know Wisconsin
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brings six with like a cover zero creeper right and like the offensive line like
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this is I feel like the past protection has been pretty good. Like you
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can't expect perfection, certainly not from this group, Like Josh Fryer had a
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couple of struggles and then like they just had some identification struggles, like this
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is one like Donovan Jackson, he should seems like he should be sliding left,
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like the left side the lines half sliding to their left, but he
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goes right to the nose guard instead, and that leaves like, so at
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least if you would like have picked up this inside linebacker and like they're bringing
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an extra one off the edge like we saw that against Purdue. Right,
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like you can kind of backpedal and it gives you time to make that throw
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to Harrison you're talking about. But if your pressure's right in your face,
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there's not much you can do now, you know, Kyle has to figure
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out how to like a not just like throw it wildly to the side or
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be like not fumble when he's hit. Like those are concerning points, and
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like you know, I think sometimes there's like a little panic or just like
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trying to do something that's not there. But I also do think that,
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like you know, I don't know the scheme wise, like they run four
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verticals here, like as you said, like Harrison's going to be open,
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but like you also need to look at like the creeper pressure and like figure
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out maybe we need some sort of outlet route or like hunt some kind of
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hot route here like someone coming underneath, because there's just nothing, like there's
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nothing he could do here, and like who's he even supposed to try to
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act like he's throwing it too, even if you want to like basically get
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rid of the football, right because you've got guys with their backs turned towards
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them. But like, yeah, so you know, as much as I
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do think they've done a nice job as I've talked about it, like diversifying
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the scheme, like there's still sometimes that, especially like in these scoring areas,
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there's a couple like you know, big picture things like the first drive,
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they they went forward on fourth down, but like if you're going to
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go forward on fourth any fumble, but like if you're going to go for
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it like fourth down, like why not run it on that third and three?
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The play before that to set up like maybe you get picked up or
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you get into fourth and one and hey, now they can sneak, so
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they could have done another sneak or you know, then the next drive where
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they kick the field goal, like they run wine back on third and four,
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but then they kick a field goal, So I'm like, why are
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you running it on? Or maybe it was like third and sixty it was
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a third and mid range and so it's like, I don't know. It's
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sometimes like you know, making sure the call matches the situation as well.
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But again, like I do think, like to the point of like when
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mccor does well, like sometimes I think you need to give him sort of
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like a quick game read that he can get the ball out in these situations
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because you know, he's not super mobile and like he's you know, when
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pressure's in his face, like he wants to get it out of there.
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So you got to give him an option. All right, So there was
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your look at the Ohio State offense, currently ranked number thirteen the nation in
21:56
FEI. I know what feels like that a step back from a typical Ohio
21:59
State offense, but that's not too shabby. Tomorrow we get to talk about
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the number one ranked in FBI Ohio State defense. Boy, this is what
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a wild turn of events. This is the Defense show, is the good
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times, good vibe show. All of a sudden when we're talking to Ross
22:14
every week and if I would add, you know that's thirteen. A lot
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of that is driven by like again, like they're not taking advantage of scoring
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opportunities, right, Like the efficiency numbers are good, it's just like when
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you're not getting points that that hurts those kind of advanced rankings. Always good
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to have advanced stats to confirm my long held theory that scoring points an important
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part of offense in college football. Nice to have the defense keeping people from
22:38
scoring points. We're talking about that with Ross tomorrow. Thanks again to our
22:41
friends from Jeff Ruby Steakhouse, the award winning Upscale steakhouse and Downtown Columbus named
22:47
one of the top fifty steakhouses in America by Food Network. You can make
22:51
reservations and learn more at Jeffruby dot com slash Columbus. Thank you guys all
22:55
for joining us. Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow. M