Are you not Entertained? Colorado

That was a much better result than last week’s game, I’m sure everyone will agree. That said, though, there’s still a long way to go before this team is anywhere near as good as we’re used to. Let’s see how entertained we were this week.

Jim

First Downs. We sure did. Our second drive was entirely run plays, and gained plenty of first downs. It may not be as constant as we want yet, but we did pick up 20 first downs in the game.

Big Plays. We saw a few big plays, including four players who made plays of longer than 15 yards. The longest of the day was a 32 yard pass to Devin Smith for a touchdown.

Start Fast. Well, the first drive was a quick three and out, but the Offense did move the ball effectively for a touchdown on the 2nd drive. The team was also able to take a 17-0 lead before Colorado was even able to score.

Defense being the defense. The defense certainly looked presentable. They did a good job of limiting Colorado all day long. The unit is still showing some weaknesses, particularly in zone coverage, but they’re doing good work so far.

Joe D.

Rush the BRAXTON. You wanted 50+ running yards from Miller, you got 83 yards on 17 attempts. I think that gets the job done! They even focused on the running game for the first drive, so they took this idea to heart.

Start Strong. How about entering the second quarter with a 10-0 lead? Is that strong enough?

Receivers at Ohio Stadium. Devin Smith caught 3, T.Y. Williams caught one, and Chris Fields caught one. The receivers were on display today in a bigger way – though they clearly still have a long way to go.

Stop the Big Play. Colorado’s biggest play of the day was a 27 yard run by Rodney Stewart. Several CU receivers picked up more than 15 yards on any given pass – many over the middle of the field. Colorado had success, but in general the big play was not available.

Joe L

20 Pass completions. This was a little ambitious, particularly since we only got 7 on 15 attempts, but it was certainly a step in the right direction.

Offensive game plan. There was clearly a gameplan today. There were a couple wrinkles thrown in, but the offense stuck with Miller the majority of the game, and tried to get the running game moving before looking to much for the pass. The gameplan was quite well conceived.

Continue the good special teams play. The special teams’ play was nearly spectacular. If Jordan Hall had housed the Kick Return, I certainly would have called it spectacular.

Can Berry come out and play?. Berry did come out and play, outside of his usual special teams contributions. Unfortunately, he didn’t make much happen on his two carries for a single yard.

Eric

Return to the vanilla offense. You can’t get much more vanilla than an early drive of all runs. There were some cute plays later, notably Jordan Hall in the slot and Jamaal Berry in the backfield, but we still ran the ball up the middle. Also, we focused on the I-Form and Shotgun sets, with only a sprinkling of wildcat. This was a reasonably vanilla and basic offensive gameplan.

A defense focused on tackling. The tackling was better, and we saw several cases of great body hits from the defense, but there was still a bit too much arm tackling going on. We desperately need to fix this before Michigan State comes to town.

Five catches for the Receivers. Success! We got exactly 5 receptions from the receivers, while still getting 2 from the tight ends (both for Reid Fragel, with a couple of other attempts).

An Ohio State lead at the end of the first quarter. OSU had a 10-0 lead going into the 2nd quarter, and a 17-0 lead before Colorado managed to score with less than 5 minutes left in the half.

Chris

Braxton, Braxton, and more Braxton. Every Buckeye drive but the last was a Braxton Miller drive, and Miller accounted for 83 yards passing and 83 yards rushing on the day, and two total touchdowns, for a fairly solid day.

Jordan Hall gets 20+ carries. Hall continued to be a very bright spot for the offense (and Carlos Hyde was pretty bright too) but Hall only had 18 carries for 84 yards and a TD. However, we did run Hall twice out of the wildcat, so we certainly worked on making Jordan Hall a big part of this offense.

Stop passing on first down. There was a lot of focus on the running game, but we still occasionally threw the ball on first down. We just didn’t do it very frequently.

At least 2 sacks. I recall only 1 on the day, a nice sack by Storm Klein. Did we get a second? I don’t recall.

Mali

Release The Braxton. Braxton struggled a bit, mostly because of the receiver’s dropping passes left and right, but he was solid in his first start of his career. He found plenty of running room and generally made good decisions all game long.

Aggressive Defense. The defense was pretty aggressive and got lots of pressure on Tyler Hanson. It could have been better, and we didn’t pick up many sacks, but the aggression seemed to be there.

No Ben Buchanan. He was certainly on the sidelines a lot, but he still had to punt 4 times. That’s certainly not an overly large number of kicks for Ben.

Buckeye Nation, Loud and Proud. The boo-birds appeared intermittently, but generally the crowd was excited, exuberant, and happy – particularly when the passing game was working well.

No False Starts. Nope, we had two, one each from each of our bookends. Sorry Mali.

Jeff

Braxton, start to finish. Almost. Only on the last drive, which consumed the last 4 minutes of the game, was Braxton not leading the offense. I think we can count this as a success.

A lack of boo birds. There was some mild booing, but after the last couple weeks I think that was to be expected. The crowd was mostly positive all day long.

Stick to the game plan. We absolutely stuck with our gameplan. We went with Braxton Miller the whole game. We established the running game in a big way to start, and then attempted to get the passing game going. I think we were generally successful in doing what we thought we were going to be successful at today.