Does it really matter who starts at LT?

Everyone will be (and has been) focusing on the battle at left tackle this fall camp between Mike Adams and Andrew Miller, and for good reason. Ohio State has been searching for an answer at LT for two seasons, and inconsistency at the position has been an issue for longer than that.

With four returning starters along the line, that leaves only one thing to talk about. And it has been talked about, and talked about, and talked about…

Having the urge to be original, I am going to take a slightly different angle when looking at the line. The twist? It doesn’t matter who plays left tackle this season.

Mike Adams, Andy Miller, Marcus Hall, J.B. Shugarts, Andrew Norwell? There are certainly a lot of options. But I think people are forgetting that Ohio State put up 200+ rushing yards per game over the last half of the season and had a great offensive performance in the Rose Bowl, all with Jim Cordle at LT.

I am not trying to trash Cordle (great Buckeye, great leader, great person), but he was not a left tackle.

So why did Ohio State turn the corner in the run game and on offense once Cordle made the move to the left side?

Experience and knowledge (and the all around health of the offensive line, but that is not what we are focusing on here).

Cordle didn’t have the physical tools of pretty much any of the candidates at LT this year, but what he did have was a knowledge of the offensive line and four years of experience in the trenches.

When you know what you are doing and what everyone else is doing, you can just play, and that makes a big difference.

The more experience you have, the less physical ability you need to excel (or at least do well). Mike Adams, Andrew Miller, and whoever else all have a year of additional experience under their belt, and they all have at least as much physical ability as Cordle.

The point? No matter who plays at left tackle, as long as they know the offense and are comfortable at the position, we will be fine, in fact, we will be a whole lot better than fine.

Having the second coming of Orlando Pace at tackle would certainly be nice, but with the experience of the rest of the line, the stable of running backs, and Pryor at QB, in the end does it really matter who earns the starting spot at LT?