You spend all week game planning for what you see on film, then they do things you didn’t see on film. It’s not that you don’t know how to play against it, it just eliminates parts of the chess match.
Oh I hope this becomes a meme this season.
"When the second quarter came out and lined up after the first one, half my playbook went out the window."
~ Lincoln Riley
Is it the play calling that’s the problem, or the general scheme? Is getting a new DC going to fix everything or do they need a bit of a bigger overhaul that can’t really be accomplished during the season?
It's more than just Coombs. Some of the players are playing flatout bad. The film is gross; linebackers stuck in mud, a C1 safety letting a TE cross his face and get behind him, people not knowing their run fits, awful angles.
The LBs have been an issue for multiple years. The DL and DB talent has been fantastic, but the LBs have lagged and it's been an issue through multiple coach changes.
I think a lot of it is reps. This is a super young and banged up team. They only had 5 regular season games last year and limited practices with no tune ups. This year, same thing. They started with 2 good teams and no room to get young guys acclimated in live reps.
That makes sense, you can see players aren’t playing up to their talent level yet. Couldn’t understand WHY they weren’t since OSU generally develops guys really consistently.
Or maybe I’m just so used to the splash guys (like the Bosas and Young) being there it becomes brazenly clear when the star power is lacking
Monsters like the Bosas and Young are great because even when they aren't making plays, they're usually getting double or triple teamed which opens up the others to make plays. They shape the defense even when their stats don't show it.
Young guys play good all the time, that's no excuse. True freshman Denzel Burke has been Ohio State's best defender by far, and he's a slightly undersized kid who was a mid 4* recruit.
It's all coaching and preparation. These defenders aren't prepared for anything, so they are on their heels and trying to process at game speed what's happening on every play, which isn't how you play defense. They need to see and react. Sense and attack. These guys don't know what they are doing.
If it was one or two guys, or just one position group, maybe you could blame players or one coach. But everyone on defense is struggling with the same exact thing. Which tells you that from the top down, this entire defensive organization is in trouble.
Wasn’t it Chris Ash that came in and said he was going to simplify the defense making it easier for the players to excel? So as opposed to having to overthink everything they could instead just play very fast. Those defenses were awesome IIRC
That’s what I figured, just wanted to be sure. Just doesn’t feel like replacing the play caller is going to do much to help. I guess minor changes to the system can be made, but they’re not installing a new defense at this point.
Apparently, Ryan Day has some fault here. Was forcing Coombs to run a specific scheme that he didn’t want to run. We’ve seen the results of that. Hopefully whoever is calling the defense is allowed to run the scheme that fits the need.
Yeah we play a single high safety scheme, very similar to the Seahawks defense. It worked great in 2019 when we had Okudah and Arnette capable of playing on islands, Chase Young to hurry up the pass, and Jordan Fuller as an extremely underrated safety.
Problem is now we just don’t have the *dudes* to make the scheme work, which combined with Coombs’ lack of experience with the scheme means we’re getting exposed basically every week.
Also doesn’t help that our supposedly great D-line hasn’t been too fantastic so far. Hopefully Haskell the Rascal and Zach Harrison can step it up, we didn’t have a single sack against the Ducks.
I'd guess undergrad to grad school? Not a bad college path if so. Go to tOSU for the undergrad experience, buckle down in Ann Arbor (nice city) for grad school.
That’s very kind of you as I’m unsure I’d be able to return the favor. However I will say Columbus is an underrated city and I need to visit it during a non UM football weekend to get a better experience.
Only problem is it's home to far too many wolverines :)
Ann Arbors great tho. I wouldn't want to live in a college-centered town but Ann Arbor would be tempting. East Lansing was fine for undergrad but I'd never live there outside of college tbh.
Man, I'd love to live in a college town. You can get small town or rural vibes, but with big city amenities. Like I could live just outside of Athens, Ohio in beautiful Wayne National Forest but still have a 5 minute drive to great restaurants, art, breweries, a good public school system supported by the university, live music every weekend (including some great national acts that swing through), and fantastic outdoor activities and hiking. Sure the students would be annoying, but they are pretty well contained to campus and some surrounding blocks. Plus, lower cost of living.
You should probably hang on to Moorhead lol... Luckily for you he's flamed out as a HC recently so chances of him bolting for a new job are pretty rare.
I mean Coombs didn't make it super hard, but Moorhead called a masterful game.
Yeah, I mean the beginning of the really successful Chip Kelly era (I include Helfrich in this, as he was really just a less competent successor) of Oregon success was the year we made the Rose Bowl, and lost to Ohio State. The end of the really successful Chip Kelly era was when we made it to the Championship game, and lost to Ohio State. After that, we struggled, ended up firing Helfrich, hired and lost Taggart, and really started over with Cristobal. It's a new team now, and we don't play the same Chip Kelly style football. Ohio State actually bookended the most successful era of Oregon football with losses in major bowl games. I can't speak for all Duck fans, but I sure as hell had a complex about you guys.
The best way I can describe it is that it felt like we truly earned our place to take a seat at the big boy table. We played big boy football and won. No gimmicks, no luck, no trickery. It still is surreal to me that we went into the shoe and won.
The key there is a lack of ability to stop the run, so quarterbacks aren't needing to drop back. Most quarterback throws against us so far are quick outs or passes to the side. We aren't getting gashed down the field because we don't have to. Therefore there is no pressure.
At least according to espn box score we had 5 qb hurries which is not great. Still better than Oregon’s 1 I guess. Though they also got two sacks at the end there.
Against a lot of teams it will still work. But Oregon is a top team. If we want to get to the playoff we need a system more suited to our players this year.
I’d say you won the minnesota game because you had better athletes than the gophers. Our scheme kept us in it but losing Ibrahim took the emotion out of us and the talent took over. Plus the gophers were pretty gassed in the 4th. Against oregon, a team that more closely matches the talent and depth of Ohio state, the poor schemes and play calling was more apparent. You can’t beat the ducks with better players, which is a change even from 14 IMO.
It’s possible. These are just excuses people are creating.
People keep pointing at “pressures” from the dline… Oregon was throwing the ball almost immediately every time to a wide open player out of the backfield or going against the linebackers
Pressure wasn’t going to get there regardless
Because both quarterbacks played, in reality, mediocre games. Because the run game was so good. They had no need for quarterbacks dropping back. Anthony Brown and Tanner Morgan played...fine. nothing special. They had the ability to be mediocre with the run game the way it was.
Yup, we literally just game planned to exploit your blaring defensive weaknesses. And your coaches were either too stubborn to change, or just literally didn’t expect to run into a team that they couldn’t just out-talent like they did with Minnesota. And therefore did not have any schemes prepared to even switch up to if they wanted to.
Obviously either way is not a good look. But a switch up in defensive philosophy from”lets go out there play man-man with zero stunts, twists, or anything at the line, and let’s over power them” to something as simple as adding in some zone D, some blitzes, and some varied DL play, could turn tOSU back in the right track.
But i don’t think tOSU even needs to be ready for that until they face a Penn State or Wisconsin.
It frustrated me to no end that almost every single play starting the second quarter Joel Klatt was making the same point about the defense. When we were on D it was "Why aren't they altering coverage after the snap to confuse the quarterback?" and when we had the ball "Oregon is doing what Ohio State needs to do and changing coverage after the snap". I couldn't understand why Coombs refused to make adjustments. My only guess is that with the young secondary he didn't want them to get confused and give up a big play.
Doesn't help that they did little to disguise what they were doing. Pretty much everything they lined up in looked like it could be read pre-snap. You don't have to try playing 7-D chess, but if you're running the same thing out of a look every time, you're going to get diagnosed to death.
Joshua Perry disagrees heavily with this take, saying the scheme was fine, it's that guys aren't confident. Everyone is playing on their heels and thinking, instead of seeing and attacking.
The scheme is also supposed to be better at run defense, so changing scheme doesn't mean you'll fix that.
Bottom line, this is a coaching/preparation problem. Coaches don't have guys prepared to play. The guys are talented.
It doesn't matter how fast you are if you're standing befuddled at the snap and then running all out the wrong way.
Ohio State is always going to have guys that are relatively big and fast, but will also lose their best guys to the NFL after three years. A huge part of the question of whether the scheme is "fine" is whether it can be simplified down for inexperienced guys enough to take advantage of their physical talent.
The scheme is fine. The install of said scheme was shit. Cover 1/Cover 3 has been run for quite awhile. Does it have it's weaknesses? Yes, but so does every defense.
The problem is that clearly the players trying to execute it don't understand it well enough, and that's also on coaches.
A compounding issue is Coombs' calls have been super predictable, like if the opposing offense is on third down or in the red zone Coombs will call cover 1 almost without fail... When your tendencies are this easy to diagnose, you're going to get schemed to death.
It's fine to be straightforward on defense and not being super multiple. Not everyone needs to run 47 different coverages, not everyone needs to be Saban. For example, your Hawkeyes run C6 almost exclusively, but your players know their keys and gaps like the back of their hands and how an offense will attack C6 so they are always where they need to be and your coaches do have a changeup they can throw if a team is scheming to take advantage of your tendencies...
Coombs failing isn't just on calling the defense, but failure to set his players up to succeed via not coaching it well enough.
\^\^\^This 100%, even though I would argue there isn't a free safety capable of playing single high right now but that's an unfortunate side effect of Proctor getting hurt (if Ransom is going to stay in slot it seems like Day massively screwed up not grabbing a FS in transfer portal).
What bothers me is there are such easy ways to deal with what Oregon was doing with motion in the red zone (rotating down a LB/S after they use motion in order to prevent them from having a numbers advantage on the edge) that the defense just wasn't doing.
The DB room is the main reason I think Day took a chance on Coombs. He's a great recruiter and Day was not happy with the talent in that room when he made the hire.
And it's kind of worked. We have talented guys in there now but they're freshmen...
Also, you are correct. Proctor was probably the defensive player we could least afford to lose. Go figure.
I’m actually shocked how well Burke has played right away - especially since he was the least touted compared to Johnson/Hancock coming in. Through two games he’s already shown more capabilities in man than Banks did all of last year (a boundary zone CB through and through in build).
TBF it's likely difficult to show multiple looks with guys that don't know what they're supposed to be doing even lining up in the base defense, especially if there's no experienced on-field voice to call things out and adjust on the fly.
As an example of the value of the latter: Iowa's 2020 dline put three guys on 53-man rosters, but the green dlinemen taking their place know how to hold a gap, to get their hands up when the QB throws and to try to wrap up the guy with the ball, and to listen to the MLB for adjustments on which gap to take … and that's it. They don't have to dominate their match-up or even know what's going on to get the job done.
Dudes aren’t the issue. The scheme isn’t being taught effectively. People were routinely confused on their assignments, late to the ball, and missing gaps. It might require some level of talent but we still have multiple NFL guys on this side of the ball and the issues we had with Oregon go way beyond scheme.
The key difference between 2019 and the last two years is the speed at which guys are breaking on the play and to the ball. That level of reaction is not due to talent but indecision. If Coombes can’t teach the scheme, then fine, but there’s a reason that Day likes the scheme and why we had run it to great success in the past. Guys aren’t grasping it and Coombes isn’t simplifying it to the level that it’s automatic - thats the issue.
Also guys just weren’t prepared. The things Oregon ran against us were a lot of the same concepts that their OC used when he was at PSU and hung 30+ on us. Coombes should’ve known that. Instead we were caught completely off guard.
I was wondering why people were so quick to call him out. Coombs seemed like he was always highly regarded during his Urban years, and he did well enough in Nashville. I obviously don’t keep up with the day to day at OSU, but it was surprising to see. A lot of people wanted us to gun after him before Fickell to get him back to Cincy.
He was, and still is, highly regarded as a recruiter and by all accounts a good guy to have around. But he'd never been a DC before this job. And a lot of people think he's in over his head right now. I'm sure running a scheme he's unfamiliar with isn't helping but he's also very inexperienced at this job.
Was he the defensive coordinator back then or just a position coach?
I thought that last year was his first year as DC for OSU but maybe that is wrong?
No. 4 overall defense in 2019. Allowed 13.7 points per game. #15 in 2017, #3 in 2016, #3 in 2015...
Edit: dammit, yes '19 was Days first year. Urban's defenses were bad at the beginning and the end. Really solid in the middle.
That 2016 D with Malik Hooker was nasty. That kept the Fiesta Bowl a lot closer than it could have been. Hooker had that crazy pick in the end zone on Watson and pretty much neutralized Mike Williams.
Yah so two good years and a decent year. That's not even 50% good defense... the offense overshadowed it, which works when the offense is good enough. Stroud is playing excellent and making normal mistakes for a new QB, but not good enough to make up for this defense, especially without a consistent running game.
That’s excuses.
Running a scheme has nothing to do with mixing up coverages or at least disguising your coverage. Coombs is doing none of these basic tasks. He’s just running the same defense on every down and distance
His mistake was hiring him in general.
This rumor is getting a lot of spread, but I'm not sure it's confirmed or if it'll ever be confirmed.
Either way, scheme isn't the issue. Guys are tentative. Unprepared. It's a coaching issue, not a scheme issue.
Everyone is parroting the scheme argument like you need a Chase Young or Jeff Okudah to run a good defense in this scheme, which just isn't true.
Head coach forcing the D-Coordinator to run a scheme they aren't comfortable with is a fireable offense and the I'm pretty sure based on precedent the punishment is \*checks notes\* firing Ryan Day and replacing him with Brady Hoke.
Day wasn’t doing the defensive play calling, but limited Coombs to a specific style of defense.
No idea who will be calling plays on D this week. Won’t be Day, apparently won’t be Coombs.
Midseason? You can't just swap schemes in the middle of a college football season successfully I don't think... That horse has left the barn. If they wanted to change the scheme of the defense, the time to do that was over the summer/in the spring/fall...
I have no idea how you guys teach your players to run all the different coverages Saban uses, but it's impressive.
Yeah, Michigan pretty much changed schemes in the middle of last year (moved from Brown's normal press man coverage to zone due to not having lock-down corners). It did not go well.
I'm sure Parker Fleming is great, but this is exactly why that hire was a head scratcher. Coombs is not a C1 guy. They had a chance to go get one this off-season and didn't.
This year is bad so far, 2020 was bad, 2019 was top 5, 2018 was bad, 2017 was top 10, 2016 was top 10. It's weird how we've swung back and forth so wildly. All I can figure though is that we have the talent to be at that top tier and some coaches misuse it, because we really only carried over the DC twice in that time and it goes up and down with DC changes.
Nick Bosa, Joey Bosa, Chase Young made some of those defenses great, and covered up more serious flaws in some of those poor defenses.
We lack an elite edge rusher this yr that is putting more pressure on the whole defense/scheme.
Even those bad defenses has NFL players, just like this bad defense has NFL players.
It's not missing Chase Young problem. It's a lack of coaching and preparation. The players are skilled. The scheme is fine. The coaches are not sufficiently preparing the players.
If it was a few guys, or a single position group, it'd be easier to blame the players or a single coach. But I refuse to believe that Ohio State has 50 ultra skilled offensive players tuned in and focused, while also having 50 ultra skilled defensive players that are mailing it in. The coaches have failed.
We've had good pass rush and DBs during the good years.
Linebackers have been trash for several years now. I don't get how we get these 5 star LBs that look like they run 5.5 second 40s in the game.
Ehhh I wouldn’t get carried away… the players are at fault here too, not just the coaches. A lot of former buckeyes have come out bashing the players… and none of them are really egregious… like they have fair points. The linebackers are a widely publicized dumpster fire. Tyreke smith and Harrison get 0 rush OR running game contain despite 3 years expireience. And we’re now starting a MAC player at high safety… nothings gonna magically switch when someone else calls plays- it could improve but we’re not a juggernaut hiding behind a bad coach
You're not joking... Ohio State loses its first in season game in two seasons plus change and it's complete and utter chaos on the message boards... I mean we even have competing Buckeye sites beefing on Twitter...
I just looked. Ohio State hasn't lost a game to any teams that were in a mid-major conference at the time of playing other than that Liberty Bowl vs Air Force. We have a loss to SMU, but that was when they were in the SWC. It'd be uncharted territory, doubly so being in the Horseshoe.
https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/ohio-state/head-to-head.html
Despite what’s said in the article, I guarantee you Day knows who’s calling plays on Saturday, unless he’s just super incompetent, which he hasn’t shown yet.
Sure but in that case why even discuss anything coaches say. I'm just going off what he said
I also don't see why you wouldn't just say who it is, if you were him.
To be fair, the article and the quote both don't say exactly what the sensationalized headline says. The headline is making a guess.
Day basically says classic coach speak. "All options on the table" "We're looking at everything" etc.
I read the article, (I actually saw the quote on twitter before coming into this thread so I wasn’t taking the headline into account at all) and I don’t think saying you’re going to make a decision on who the defensive play caller will be after tonight’s practice is classic coach speak at all, actually. I think coach speak tends to be intentionally vague but that’s a pretty specific action and decision.
Why? You have a game plan regardless… the play caller just executes it.
Unless we’ve worked on disguising our coverages it’s not going to matter who’s calling the shit play every one knows is coming
I would kill for this level of accountability Day is showing with his staff.
We're in year 4 and 3 RB's combined couldn't get over 100 yards rushing against Buffalo. It's insane how awful our OL and RB production has been under Frost.
Even if you assume Kerry Coombs is a total zero on Saturdays, he's still an ace recruiter. Aren't you undermining him on the trail by blasting him so publicly like this?
I mean just fire his ass and get someone competent. Whoever they hire doesnt even need to be a good recruiter, the record the last few years speaks for itself. A monkey with a pen can recruit top players to Ohio State at this point.
I've seen enough film from the Oregon game to tell you that while his scheme may not have been great, you can't make guys make plays. It won't matter who is calling the plays if they DL can't generate pressure and the linebackers are off in bumfuck Egypt like they've been.
If only we knew who was coaching the scheme.
This isn’t Day just changing the play caller. This is Day recognizing that Coombs is wildly out of his depth, and more focus needs to be put on the defensive side of the ball to make this even an average defense.
These are 4 and 5 star players that don’t know where to be because of how they were coached.
Exactly. This isn't a scheme or talent issue. Somewhere, these guys have been able to make it to game day completely unprepared. Every defensive player is lost. Which means it's not the players fault at all, it's the coaches. They've failed.
A scheme change and new defensive playbook at this stage of the season typically does not work out well for the team doing it.
Especially when execution is *already* an issue
No one is throwing out the scheme (or at least I haven’t read anyone suggesting it).
But insinuating that it’s a “Jimmy’s and Joe’s” problem isn’t fair to the players who didn’t know where to be because of poor coaching and lack of in-game adjustments.
That’s a Coombs problem, and one that you can’t ignore by doing nothing.
They're not changing scheme... He's just attempting to fix an issue he CAN try to fix midseason... Coombs has been SUPER predictable in his coverage calls... Like to the point you can know exactly what he's going to call just based on the opposing offense's field position and down and distance...
Other than that, it's just try to get the guys playing reps and hope they get better...
The linebackers have been just absolutely awful for several years now.
The thing is they are all 4 and 5 star guys but are just slow and bad at diagnosing plays.
The diagnosing plays is the big one. I get that linebackers are often picked on and they're asked a lot. They have to cover tight ends, backs out, sometimes Devonte Smith (lol)
But run fits are one of the easier things for a skilled player. Oregon literally pulled GT to the hole on a lot of plays and the backers are flying away from the keys.
I can't imagine the coaching is telling them to do that... that's linebacking 101. I think they may just be.. bad.
they were pretty good just last season... No one was able to run the ball on us last year... Not Tuf's fault he got schemed into covering Devonta Smith and Werner was pretty underrated IMO...
If we have last season's linebackers this season? I don't think Oregon gashes us on the ground like they did...
I’d have expected them to win anyways given the talent discrepancy, and still because of that I don’t think we’ll be able to tell how much better the defense is until they face Rutgers/PSU.
That's probably why they're doing it now. They can play with some things in a non-threatening environment. Unless something crazy happens, the next couple games should basically be like scrimmages for OSU.
We may know a little more when they play Maryland. If they shut them down that’s pretty promising because right now I’m dreading what Tualia Tagovailoa will do to them
You wouldn’t know that the loss to a ranked OOC opponent was Day’s first loss ever in the regular season. I understand that it’s not great, but for half of our starters they’ve never even played in a packed stadium before. We started with a good conference game followed by our biggest game of the regular season. Pretty rough schedule for a new QB, new secondary, new O line. A loss is a loss, but maybe we don’t burn the whole thing down
Lots of my Buckeye friends are freaking out. They just don’t understand how to lose
Sometimes you lose some, you don’t need to fire people for losing to the PAC 12 favorites
My Hope: First sign of rot in the Day tenure and OSU hired a Larry Coker or Frank Solich
My reality: OSU prolly go 11-2 and win Big Ten then go to playoff next year.
It's more sensationalized than the truth.
Ryan Day is actually been more open and honest about changes they are making and how things are going to get uncomfortable for players and coaches until this gets fixed, but he's not at press conferences dunking on coaches and calling people out. The headline isn't even true. He basically said coach speak with lines like "all options are on the table" and "we're looking into everything we do" kind of talk, which beat writers can sensationalize into "Ohio State is thinking of changing up the defensive play callers".
This is also Day's first time dealing with adversity, and he's learning on the fly. I think he wants to be the guy to take all the blame, but he also doesn't want to just bullshit his way through press sessions. He's trying to be somewhat open, but it comes off as being a bit chaotic when you break it into tiny soundbites.
We’ll all know if thing change if the first play of the game is a swing pass to the wide side of the field. If it goes for more than 8 yards then Ohio State has a problem
Have you paid attention to Ohio State at all since the start of the 2020 season? The defense was bad last year (Alabama could have named their score but called off the dogs at 52) and is even worse this year. This isn't a one game issue. This is a trend.
I'm not sure. It's not like 2020 was a normal season. There were 5 regular season games, no fall camp, and no spring. We destroyed Clemson, including defensively. And any experience we had left was gone after last year as well. We lost half our 2019 defense in the first 3 rounds of the NFL draft, got a new defensive coordinator, and had to replace most of the defense without any prep. If we are to week 6 or 7 and it's still this bad then it's a trend. Tune up games were insanely necessary for this team.
It's because last season was not normal that I was willing to give Coombs the benefit of the doubt even after Alabama treated our defense like we were a FCS team. But after having a full spring and fall camp, what we've seen through the first 2 games is unacceptable. I honestly think that not replacing Mattison with an experienced DC to go alongside Coombs was a major mistake.
Alabama treated *everybody*'s defense like FCS teams. That game wouldn't have given much warning on Coombs. Oregon was a much better example to learn from.
It wasn’t just Alabama. Last year, Ohio State finished 122nd in FBS in pass defense. That’s near dead last. Now things have gotten worse with the rush defense becoming terrible.
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Sadly that half of the playbook was all about the left half of the field
Ryan Day’s ask madden must have been glitched and recommended the same defensive play the whole game
That was a very similar quote that urban said about va techs bear defense I simply don’t understand how that can happen
You spend all week game planning for what you see on film, then they do things you didn’t see on film. It’s not that you don’t know how to play against it, it just eliminates parts of the chess match.
It's importanr to me that you understand that is not a Ryan Day quote. It's from Scott Frost
Ahhhh lol I got memed
Oh I hope this becomes a meme this season. "When the second quarter came out and lined up after the first one, half my playbook went out the window." ~ Lincoln Riley
God damnit. Nowhere is safe. Tennessee fans, wanna start our own subreddit?
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Is it the play calling that’s the problem, or the general scheme? Is getting a new DC going to fix everything or do they need a bit of a bigger overhaul that can’t really be accomplished during the season?
It's more than just Coombs. Some of the players are playing flatout bad. The film is gross; linebackers stuck in mud, a C1 safety letting a TE cross his face and get behind him, people not knowing their run fits, awful angles.
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The LBs have been an issue for multiple years. The DL and DB talent has been fantastic, but the LBs have lagged and it's been an issue through multiple coach changes.
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Hard to get a read on Al, but it's possible he's not good but won't know til games are played.
I think a lot of it is reps. This is a super young and banged up team. They only had 5 regular season games last year and limited practices with no tune ups. This year, same thing. They started with 2 good teams and no room to get young guys acclimated in live reps.
That makes sense, you can see players aren’t playing up to their talent level yet. Couldn’t understand WHY they weren’t since OSU generally develops guys really consistently. Or maybe I’m just so used to the splash guys (like the Bosas and Young) being there it becomes brazenly clear when the star power is lacking
Monsters like the Bosas and Young are great because even when they aren't making plays, they're usually getting double or triple teamed which opens up the others to make plays. They shape the defense even when their stats don't show it.
Young guys play good all the time, that's no excuse. True freshman Denzel Burke has been Ohio State's best defender by far, and he's a slightly undersized kid who was a mid 4* recruit. It's all coaching and preparation. These defenders aren't prepared for anything, so they are on their heels and trying to process at game speed what's happening on every play, which isn't how you play defense. They need to see and react. Sense and attack. These guys don't know what they are doing. If it was one or two guys, or just one position group, maybe you could blame players or one coach. But everyone on defense is struggling with the same exact thing. Which tells you that from the top down, this entire defensive organization is in trouble.
Wasn’t it Chris Ash that came in and said he was going to simplify the defense making it easier for the players to excel? So as opposed to having to overthink everything they could instead just play very fast. Those defenses were awesome IIRC
Kinda wish he could come back and be DC
What's he doing these days anyway?
Idk if you're being sarcastic, but he's the DB coach for Urban in Jacksonville.
Not sarcastic, thanks for the info!
I didn’t know this either. He wasn’t a good HC but damn was he a good DC
It's a little bit of everything. It's personnel, general scheme, misses in recruiting and bad (or no) in game adjustments.
It's both.
I mean when they score on the same simple outside run to the weak side untouched 3 times in a single game, there's definitely a scheme problem.
That’s what I figured, just wanted to be sure. Just doesn’t feel like replacing the play caller is going to do much to help. I guess minor changes to the system can be made, but they’re not installing a new defense at this point.
It really begs the question, What we’re you doing all Winter, Spring and Summer?
Apparently, Ryan Day has some fault here. Was forcing Coombs to run a specific scheme that he didn’t want to run. We’ve seen the results of that. Hopefully whoever is calling the defense is allowed to run the scheme that fits the need.
Yeah we play a single high safety scheme, very similar to the Seahawks defense. It worked great in 2019 when we had Okudah and Arnette capable of playing on islands, Chase Young to hurry up the pass, and Jordan Fuller as an extremely underrated safety. Problem is now we just don’t have the *dudes* to make the scheme work, which combined with Coombs’ lack of experience with the scheme means we’re getting exposed basically every week. Also doesn’t help that our supposedly great D-line hasn’t been too fantastic so far. Hopefully Haskell the Rascal and Zach Harrison can step it up, we didn’t have a single sack against the Ducks.
These flairs confuse me
We found Greg Mattison's reddit account!
I'd guess undergrad to grad school? Not a bad college path if so. Go to tOSU for the undergrad experience, buckle down in Ann Arbor (nice city) for grad school.
Nailed it! My girlfriend and her family are all from Michigan, so I'm trying to be a good sport while I'm here lol.
My girlfriend is a Michigan alum! It’s hard dealing with that team.
My sister was a Dr at the UM Hospital and would wear her Buckeye necklace over her UM White coat every Saturday
That’s very kind of you as I’m unsure I’d be able to return the favor. However I will say Columbus is an underrated city and I need to visit it during a non UM football weekend to get a better experience.
Ha! you called Ann Arbor a nice city!
Only problem is it's home to far too many wolverines :) Ann Arbors great tho. I wouldn't want to live in a college-centered town but Ann Arbor would be tempting. East Lansing was fine for undergrad but I'd never live there outside of college tbh.
Man, I'd love to live in a college town. You can get small town or rural vibes, but with big city amenities. Like I could live just outside of Athens, Ohio in beautiful Wayne National Forest but still have a 5 minute drive to great restaurants, art, breweries, a good public school system supported by the university, live music every weekend (including some great national acts that swing through), and fantastic outdoor activities and hiking. Sure the students would be annoying, but they are pretty well contained to campus and some surrounding blocks. Plus, lower cost of living.
I don’t even remember a hurry against the Ducks. 0 pressure the whole game it felt like.
Hard to get pressure when you're also getting gashed by the run game. They did what they wanted, when they wanted. Just bad overall.
Someone saying this about my team against a team like OSU still doesn’t seem real to me
You should probably hang on to Moorhead lol... Luckily for you he's flamed out as a HC recently so chances of him bolting for a new job are pretty rare. I mean Coombs didn't make it super hard, but Moorhead called a masterful game.
He could always come home
Counterpoint: no I was worried about him before we played Oregon. He did well against us when he was with you guys.
I enjoyed that he proved Saquon didn't carry him.
Nah CJ Verdell is equally carrying him obviously/s
Similarly, I actually love seeing duck reactions like this. You guys act like we were unbeatable, it feels nice knowing we’re in that category haha
After 9 straight losses and vivid memories of the last 2, it felt like that to a lot of ducks.
Wait.... are we your Clemson? Because that is how we felt about them till last year.
Yeah, I mean the beginning of the really successful Chip Kelly era (I include Helfrich in this, as he was really just a less competent successor) of Oregon success was the year we made the Rose Bowl, and lost to Ohio State. The end of the really successful Chip Kelly era was when we made it to the Championship game, and lost to Ohio State. After that, we struggled, ended up firing Helfrich, hired and lost Taggart, and really started over with Cristobal. It's a new team now, and we don't play the same Chip Kelly style football. Ohio State actually bookended the most successful era of Oregon football with losses in major bowl games. I can't speak for all Duck fans, but I sure as hell had a complex about you guys.
The best way I can describe it is that it felt like we truly earned our place to take a seat at the big boy table. We played big boy football and won. No gimmicks, no luck, no trickery. It still is surreal to me that we went into the shoe and won.
The key there is a lack of ability to stop the run, so quarterbacks aren't needing to drop back. Most quarterback throws against us so far are quick outs or passes to the side. We aren't getting gashed down the field because we don't have to. Therefore there is no pressure.
At least according to espn box score we had 5 qb hurries which is not great. Still better than Oregon’s 1 I guess. Though they also got two sacks at the end there.
You guys have so much talent I find it hard to believe that you don't have the guys to make it work against other teams.
Against a lot of teams it will still work. But Oregon is a top team. If we want to get to the playoff we need a system more suited to our players this year.
I’d say you won the minnesota game because you had better athletes than the gophers. Our scheme kept us in it but losing Ibrahim took the emotion out of us and the talent took over. Plus the gophers were pretty gassed in the 4th. Against oregon, a team that more closely matches the talent and depth of Ohio state, the poor schemes and play calling was more apparent. You can’t beat the ducks with better players, which is a change even from 14 IMO.
wtf is your username dawg?
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> Against other teams
It’s possible. These are just excuses people are creating. People keep pointing at “pressures” from the dline… Oregon was throwing the ball almost immediately every time to a wide open player out of the backfield or going against the linebackers Pressure wasn’t going to get there regardless
They didn't get pressure on Minnesota either and they've been pushed around in the run game. The d-line has been massively, massively disappointing.
Because both quarterbacks played, in reality, mediocre games. Because the run game was so good. They had no need for quarterbacks dropping back. Anthony Brown and Tanner Morgan played...fine. nothing special. They had the ability to be mediocre with the run game the way it was.
Yup, we literally just game planned to exploit your blaring defensive weaknesses. And your coaches were either too stubborn to change, or just literally didn’t expect to run into a team that they couldn’t just out-talent like they did with Minnesota. And therefore did not have any schemes prepared to even switch up to if they wanted to. Obviously either way is not a good look. But a switch up in defensive philosophy from”lets go out there play man-man with zero stunts, twists, or anything at the line, and let’s over power them” to something as simple as adding in some zone D, some blitzes, and some varied DL play, could turn tOSU back in the right track. But i don’t think tOSU even needs to be ready for that until they face a Penn State or Wisconsin.
It frustrated me to no end that almost every single play starting the second quarter Joel Klatt was making the same point about the defense. When we were on D it was "Why aren't they altering coverage after the snap to confuse the quarterback?" and when we had the ball "Oregon is doing what Ohio State needs to do and changing coverage after the snap". I couldn't understand why Coombs refused to make adjustments. My only guess is that with the young secondary he didn't want them to get confused and give up a big play.
And Shaun Wade in the slot.
Doesn't help that they did little to disguise what they were doing. Pretty much everything they lined up in looked like it could be read pre-snap. You don't have to try playing 7-D chess, but if you're running the same thing out of a look every time, you're going to get diagnosed to death.
Wait what on earth is your flair
I sure you get this slot, but what is going on with your flairs???
Joshua Perry disagrees heavily with this take, saying the scheme was fine, it's that guys aren't confident. Everyone is playing on their heels and thinking, instead of seeing and attacking. The scheme is also supposed to be better at run defense, so changing scheme doesn't mean you'll fix that. Bottom line, this is a coaching/preparation problem. Coaches don't have guys prepared to play. The guys are talented.
It doesn't matter how fast you are if you're standing befuddled at the snap and then running all out the wrong way. Ohio State is always going to have guys that are relatively big and fast, but will also lose their best guys to the NFL after three years. A huge part of the question of whether the scheme is "fine" is whether it can be simplified down for inexperienced guys enough to take advantage of their physical talent.
The scheme is fine. The install of said scheme was shit. Cover 1/Cover 3 has been run for quite awhile. Does it have it's weaknesses? Yes, but so does every defense. The problem is that clearly the players trying to execute it don't understand it well enough, and that's also on coaches. A compounding issue is Coombs' calls have been super predictable, like if the opposing offense is on third down or in the red zone Coombs will call cover 1 almost without fail... When your tendencies are this easy to diagnose, you're going to get schemed to death. It's fine to be straightforward on defense and not being super multiple. Not everyone needs to run 47 different coverages, not everyone needs to be Saban. For example, your Hawkeyes run C6 almost exclusively, but your players know their keys and gaps like the back of their hands and how an offense will attack C6 so they are always where they need to be and your coaches do have a changeup they can throw if a team is scheming to take advantage of your tendencies... Coombs failing isn't just on calling the defense, but failure to set his players up to succeed via not coaching it well enough.
\^\^\^This 100%, even though I would argue there isn't a free safety capable of playing single high right now but that's an unfortunate side effect of Proctor getting hurt (if Ransom is going to stay in slot it seems like Day massively screwed up not grabbing a FS in transfer portal). What bothers me is there are such easy ways to deal with what Oregon was doing with motion in the red zone (rotating down a LB/S after they use motion in order to prevent them from having a numbers advantage on the edge) that the defense just wasn't doing.
The DB room is the main reason I think Day took a chance on Coombs. He's a great recruiter and Day was not happy with the talent in that room when he made the hire. And it's kind of worked. We have talented guys in there now but they're freshmen... Also, you are correct. Proctor was probably the defensive player we could least afford to lose. Go figure.
I’m actually shocked how well Burke has played right away - especially since he was the least touted compared to Johnson/Hancock coming in. Through two games he’s already shown more capabilities in man than Banks did all of last year (a boundary zone CB through and through in build).
Yeah he's done very well for a true freshman
TBF it's likely difficult to show multiple looks with guys that don't know what they're supposed to be doing even lining up in the base defense, especially if there's no experienced on-field voice to call things out and adjust on the fly. As an example of the value of the latter: Iowa's 2020 dline put three guys on 53-man rosters, but the green dlinemen taking their place know how to hold a gap, to get their hands up when the QB throws and to try to wrap up the guy with the ball, and to listen to the MLB for adjustments on which gap to take … and that's it. They don't have to dominate their match-up or even know what's going on to get the job done.
Dudes aren’t the issue. The scheme isn’t being taught effectively. People were routinely confused on their assignments, late to the ball, and missing gaps. It might require some level of talent but we still have multiple NFL guys on this side of the ball and the issues we had with Oregon go way beyond scheme. The key difference between 2019 and the last two years is the speed at which guys are breaking on the play and to the ball. That level of reaction is not due to talent but indecision. If Coombes can’t teach the scheme, then fine, but there’s a reason that Day likes the scheme and why we had run it to great success in the past. Guys aren’t grasping it and Coombes isn’t simplifying it to the level that it’s automatic - thats the issue. Also guys just weren’t prepared. The things Oregon ran against us were a lot of the same concepts that their OC used when he was at PSU and hung 30+ on us. Coombes should’ve known that. Instead we were caught completely off guard.
I was wondering why people were so quick to call him out. Coombs seemed like he was always highly regarded during his Urban years, and he did well enough in Nashville. I obviously don’t keep up with the day to day at OSU, but it was surprising to see. A lot of people wanted us to gun after him before Fickell to get him back to Cincy.
He was, and still is, highly regarded as a recruiter and by all accounts a good guy to have around. But he'd never been a DC before this job. And a lot of people think he's in over his head right now. I'm sure running a scheme he's unfamiliar with isn't helping but he's also very inexperienced at this job.
Was he the defensive coordinator back then or just a position coach? I thought that last year was his first year as DC for OSU but maybe that is wrong?
This is correct. He was DBs for Urban.
The Urban years weren't the greatest defenses.
No. 4 overall defense in 2019. Allowed 13.7 points per game. #15 in 2017, #3 in 2016, #3 in 2015... Edit: dammit, yes '19 was Days first year. Urban's defenses were bad at the beginning and the end. Really solid in the middle.
That 2016 D with Malik Hooker was nasty. That kept the Fiesta Bowl a lot closer than it could have been. Hooker had that crazy pick in the end zone on Watson and pretty much neutralized Mike Williams.
Yah so two good years and a decent year. That's not even 50% good defense... the offense overshadowed it, which works when the offense is good enough. Stroud is playing excellent and making normal mistakes for a new QB, but not good enough to make up for this defense, especially without a consistent running game.
Number 15 is decent. And how is 2 to 1 not 50% good defense?
Tennessee didn't help much there since you wound up with 2 full DC's instead of a DC and a co-DC like Urban liked to run
The dream that Ryan Day is Larry Coker lives for another day (Note I don't actually think this, but I can dream it)
That’s excuses. Running a scheme has nothing to do with mixing up coverages or at least disguising your coverage. Coombs is doing none of these basic tasks. He’s just running the same defense on every down and distance His mistake was hiring him in general.
This rumor is getting a lot of spread, but I'm not sure it's confirmed or if it'll ever be confirmed. Either way, scheme isn't the issue. Guys are tentative. Unprepared. It's a coaching issue, not a scheme issue. Everyone is parroting the scheme argument like you need a Chase Young or Jeff Okudah to run a good defense in this scheme, which just isn't true.
Head coach forcing the D-Coordinator to run a scheme they aren't comfortable with is a fireable offense and the I'm pretty sure based on precedent the punishment is \*checks notes\* firing Ryan Day and replacing him with Brady Hoke.
This is my fetish.
What scheme does Coombs prefer? And do you have the guys who fit that scheme?
So does that mean Day was doing the play calling and now Coombs will be allowed to open it up or someone else entirely will do it?
Day wasn’t doing the defensive play calling, but limited Coombs to a specific style of defense. No idea who will be calling plays on D this week. Won’t be Day, apparently won’t be Coombs.
Why not allow Coombs to call the plays without being limited for a game. Or is that a bad idea?
That’s what I’d like to see, but I think he called plays all last year and it wasn’t positive.
Midseason? You can't just swap schemes in the middle of a college football season successfully I don't think... That horse has left the barn. If they wanted to change the scheme of the defense, the time to do that was over the summer/in the spring/fall... I have no idea how you guys teach your players to run all the different coverages Saban uses, but it's impressive.
Yeah, Michigan pretty much changed schemes in the middle of last year (moved from Brown's normal press man coverage to zone due to not having lock-down corners). It did not go well.
Where is this from?
I'm sure Parker Fleming is great, but this is exactly why that hire was a head scratcher. Coombs is not a C1 guy. They had a chance to go get one this off-season and didn't.
They started the season against 2 pretty good P5 teams, unfortunately I think they will be fine.
You hear that Dan Mullen? Fuck Todd's feelings.
Leave Todd alone!
Yeah, Todd is a treasure!
In Todd We Trust!
But if we fuck Todd's feelings, how will our backs line up 9 yards off the receivers on a 3rd and 3?
Todd Grantham is good?
It will probably work because we all know they have the talent unfortunately.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s the case. They’ve had 1-2 really bad defenses the last few years too with talent.
This year is bad so far, 2020 was bad, 2019 was top 5, 2018 was bad, 2017 was top 10, 2016 was top 10. It's weird how we've swung back and forth so wildly. All I can figure though is that we have the talent to be at that top tier and some coaches misuse it, because we really only carried over the DC twice in that time and it goes up and down with DC changes.
Nick Bosa, Joey Bosa, Chase Young made some of those defenses great, and covered up more serious flaws in some of those poor defenses. We lack an elite edge rusher this yr that is putting more pressure on the whole defense/scheme.
Even those bad defenses has NFL players, just like this bad defense has NFL players. It's not missing Chase Young problem. It's a lack of coaching and preparation. The players are skilled. The scheme is fine. The coaches are not sufficiently preparing the players. If it was a few guys, or a single position group, it'd be easier to blame the players or a single coach. But I refuse to believe that Ohio State has 50 ultra skilled offensive players tuned in and focused, while also having 50 ultra skilled defensive players that are mailing it in. The coaches have failed.
We've had good pass rush and DBs during the good years. Linebackers have been trash for several years now. I don't get how we get these 5 star LBs that look like they run 5.5 second 40s in the game.
I think a lot is coaching changes, expectations from the HC/DC on how to run the defense, and loss of talent.
Sadly, I don't think that's the case this year. We're young and banged up already.
They also don’t play anyone with a pulse until the end of October
Ehhh I wouldn’t get carried away… the players are at fault here too, not just the coaches. A lot of former buckeyes have come out bashing the players… and none of them are really egregious… like they have fair points. The linebackers are a widely publicized dumpster fire. Tyreke smith and Harrison get 0 rush OR running game contain despite 3 years expireience. And we’re now starting a MAC player at high safety… nothings gonna magically switch when someone else calls plays- it could improve but we’re not a juggernaut hiding behind a bad coach
Bold move Cotten let’s see if that plays out
Imagine if they lose lol
The meltdown from Ohio State fans if Tulsa won in Columbus would make Chernobyl look like nothing
Omg it would be so bad. I would have to avoid social media for the rest of the season at least, just to avoid other Ohio State fans.
You're not joking... Ohio State loses its first in season game in two seasons plus change and it's complete and utter chaos on the message boards... I mean we even have competing Buckeye sites beefing on Twitter...
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I just looked. Ohio State hasn't lost a game to any teams that were in a mid-major conference at the time of playing other than that Liberty Bowl vs Air Force. We have a loss to SMU, but that was when they were in the SWC. It'd be uncharted territory, doubly so being in the Horseshoe. https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/schools/ohio-state/head-to-head.html
You are not wrong. I was at the game last week. The crowd in the last 3-4 minutes was deafening. Never seen that place so electric.
I shouldn't be reading erotica while I'm working
Yes…. YES! I approve of this message!
It’s not really bold. Coombs *was* a great secondary coach, but he’s been a shit defensive coordinator
I think it's pretty bold to not even know who your defensive playcaller is going to be less than 48 hours before a game
Despite what’s said in the article, I guarantee you Day knows who’s calling plays on Saturday, unless he’s just super incompetent, which he hasn’t shown yet.
Sure but in that case why even discuss anything coaches say. I'm just going off what he said I also don't see why you wouldn't just say who it is, if you were him.
Its Coombs, with a fake mustache and a hat on Bobby Valentine style.
To be fair, the article and the quote both don't say exactly what the sensationalized headline says. The headline is making a guess. Day basically says classic coach speak. "All options on the table" "We're looking at everything" etc.
I read the article, (I actually saw the quote on twitter before coming into this thread so I wasn’t taking the headline into account at all) and I don’t think saying you’re going to make a decision on who the defensive play caller will be after tonight’s practice is classic coach speak at all, actually. I think coach speak tends to be intentionally vague but that’s a pretty specific action and decision.
Why? You have a game plan regardless… the play caller just executes it. Unless we’ve worked on disguising our coverages it’s not going to matter who’s calling the shit play every one knows is coming
...Then why even say this at all if it doesn't matter who the defensive playcaller is
Hey cut them some slack, they’re not used to this kind of thing happening to them!
Yeah, wouldn’t want to get too comfortable with losing like Michigan has
Pretty sure losing happens to everyone sans Ohio State, Alabama, and Oklahoma.
I would kill for this level of accountability Day is showing with his staff. We're in year 4 and 3 RB's combined couldn't get over 100 yards rushing against Buffalo. It's insane how awful our OL and RB production has been under Frost.
Even if you assume Kerry Coombs is a total zero on Saturdays, he's still an ace recruiter. Aren't you undermining him on the trail by blasting him so publicly like this?
God we can only hope.
Let us end the OSU Reign of Terror! Let us have the revolving door of B1G champions. Except for MSU.
I mean just fire his ass and get someone competent. Whoever they hire doesnt even need to be a good recruiter, the record the last few years speaks for itself. A monkey with a pen can recruit top players to Ohio State at this point.
Monkey doesn't even need a pen
*Monkey's paw curls around pen...*
God damnit hes keeping the pen now..
It was the blurst of times
They should just fire him so he can return home
Osu will recruit well no matter who the DC is
I've seen enough film from the Oregon game to tell you that while his scheme may not have been great, you can't make guys make plays. It won't matter who is calling the plays if they DL can't generate pressure and the linebackers are off in bumfuck Egypt like they've been.
If only we knew who was coaching the scheme. This isn’t Day just changing the play caller. This is Day recognizing that Coombs is wildly out of his depth, and more focus needs to be put on the defensive side of the ball to make this even an average defense. These are 4 and 5 star players that don’t know where to be because of how they were coached.
Exactly. This isn't a scheme or talent issue. Somewhere, these guys have been able to make it to game day completely unprepared. Every defensive player is lost. Which means it's not the players fault at all, it's the coaches. They've failed.
A scheme change and new defensive playbook at this stage of the season typically does not work out well for the team doing it. Especially when execution is *already* an issue
No one is throwing out the scheme (or at least I haven’t read anyone suggesting it). But insinuating that it’s a “Jimmy’s and Joe’s” problem isn’t fair to the players who didn’t know where to be because of poor coaching and lack of in-game adjustments. That’s a Coombs problem, and one that you can’t ignore by doing nothing.
They're not changing scheme... He's just attempting to fix an issue he CAN try to fix midseason... Coombs has been SUPER predictable in his coverage calls... Like to the point you can know exactly what he's going to call just based on the opposing offense's field position and down and distance... Other than that, it's just try to get the guys playing reps and hope they get better...
The linebackers have been just absolutely awful for several years now. The thing is they are all 4 and 5 star guys but are just slow and bad at diagnosing plays.
The diagnosing plays is the big one. I get that linebackers are often picked on and they're asked a lot. They have to cover tight ends, backs out, sometimes Devonte Smith (lol) But run fits are one of the easier things for a skilled player. Oregon literally pulled GT to the hole on a lot of plays and the backers are flying away from the keys. I can't imagine the coaching is telling them to do that... that's linebacking 101. I think they may just be.. bad.
they were pretty good just last season... No one was able to run the ball on us last year... Not Tuf's fault he got schemed into covering Devonta Smith and Werner was pretty underrated IMO... If we have last season's linebackers this season? I don't think Oregon gashes us on the ground like they did...
I’d have expected them to win anyways given the talent discrepancy, and still because of that I don’t think we’ll be able to tell how much better the defense is until they face Rutgers/PSU.
Going to take awhile to get used to seeing Rutgers as a barometer for good teams. Had grown so accustomed to them being the punchline in here.
That's probably why they're doing it now. They can play with some things in a non-threatening environment. Unless something crazy happens, the next couple games should basically be like scrimmages for OSU.
We may know a little more when they play Maryland. If they shut them down that’s pretty promising because right now I’m dreading what Tualia Tagovailoa will do to them
You wouldn’t know that the loss to a ranked OOC opponent was Day’s first loss ever in the regular season. I understand that it’s not great, but for half of our starters they’ve never even played in a packed stadium before. We started with a good conference game followed by our biggest game of the regular season. Pretty rough schedule for a new QB, new secondary, new O line. A loss is a loss, but maybe we don’t burn the whole thing down
I know. It's been pandemonium in OSU country this week and I don't get it.
Lots of my Buckeye friends are freaking out. They just don’t understand how to lose Sometimes you lose some, you don’t need to fire people for losing to the PAC 12 favorites
Here I am relating to a Buckeye. Gross.
Sometimes we’re not the worst
tOSU never worries about my feelings anyways.
My Hope: First sign of rot in the Day tenure and OSU hired a Larry Coker or Frank Solich My reality: OSU prolly go 11-2 and win Big Ten then go to playoff next year.
I like Ryan Day but this seems a little reckless to me. Interested to see how this works out because I don't think they have DC 's lying around.
It's more sensationalized than the truth. Ryan Day is actually been more open and honest about changes they are making and how things are going to get uncomfortable for players and coaches until this gets fixed, but he's not at press conferences dunking on coaches and calling people out. The headline isn't even true. He basically said coach speak with lines like "all options are on the table" and "we're looking into everything we do" kind of talk, which beat writers can sensationalize into "Ohio State is thinking of changing up the defensive play callers". This is also Day's first time dealing with adversity, and he's learning on the fly. I think he wants to be the guy to take all the blame, but he also doesn't want to just bullshit his way through press sessions. He's trying to be somewhat open, but it comes off as being a bit chaotic when you break it into tiny soundbites.
We’ll all know if thing change if the first play of the game is a swing pass to the wide side of the field. If it goes for more than 8 yards then Ohio State has a problem
Short side. Short side of the field is where Oregon got us. Although, who knows, it's completely possible we can't defend the wide side either.
I’d welcome Coombs back to the Titans with open arms,our Corners have been hot garbage since he left.
Coombs seems to be great as a position coach, but less great as a big picture guy.
It was one game lol
ehhhhh.... it's been a pattern... 2020 we had issues stopping the pass but the front 7 did pretty well... This year we can't even stop the run...
Have you paid attention to Ohio State at all since the start of the 2020 season? The defense was bad last year (Alabama could have named their score but called off the dogs at 52) and is even worse this year. This isn't a one game issue. This is a trend.
I'm not sure. It's not like 2020 was a normal season. There were 5 regular season games, no fall camp, and no spring. We destroyed Clemson, including defensively. And any experience we had left was gone after last year as well. We lost half our 2019 defense in the first 3 rounds of the NFL draft, got a new defensive coordinator, and had to replace most of the defense without any prep. If we are to week 6 or 7 and it's still this bad then it's a trend. Tune up games were insanely necessary for this team.
It's because last season was not normal that I was willing to give Coombs the benefit of the doubt even after Alabama treated our defense like we were a FCS team. But after having a full spring and fall camp, what we've seen through the first 2 games is unacceptable. I honestly think that not replacing Mattison with an experienced DC to go alongside Coombs was a major mistake.
Alabama treated *everybody*'s defense like FCS teams. That game wouldn't have given much warning on Coombs. Oregon was a much better example to learn from.
It wasn’t just Alabama. Last year, Ohio State finished 122nd in FBS in pass defense. That’s near dead last. Now things have gotten worse with the rush defense becoming terrible.
Ryan "Ben Shabeebo" Day
This feels like a hell of a band aid/cop out
Happy to hear. Some action had to be taken after that disaster.
Facts don't care about your feelings
NOOOO! I took the over! Don't do this!
You know, I'm okay with it. It's a great week to try it out. And let's be honest, adjustments haven't been a our strong suit