Coach Meyer’s comments following his first game as head coach of Ohio State, courtesy of Fox Sports Ohio: (transcription provided by the Ohio State Athletic Department)
COACH MEYER: Obviously pleased with the win, very pleased with the win. Obviously the first quarter was very poor football on our end. But you also want to give credit where credit’s due, and that’s Miami Ohio did a really good job defending a certain formation that we ran out, which is a base formation. Concerning down the road we need to make sure we make quicker adjustments, which we made some halftime adjustments.
But they have some good players. At quarterback, we were concerned going into the game that a future NFL football player will be hard to contain because he’s going to throw the ball. Gets it out real fast. Can’t really get it to him. That’s exactly what happened.
But I think one of the things about Braxton Miller that I really had to see, and I did see today, is that the objective with Braxton is to make him from an athlete playing quarterback to a quarterback that manages.
And a quarterback position is a unique position in all sports, where he’s got to manage so much. He’s got to manage basically the entire offense. He’s got to stay positive, his leadership. He has to be a leader.
And he showed that today. I told him in the middle of the second quarter, because he started ‑‑ he kept positive even when it was ‑‑ we all saw what it was.
COACH MEYER: I think you can, but I never really talked to them about it. I think emotion is one of the great things about college football. If you get too emotional in baseball and go attack it, you have to keep your mindset in baseball. In football you can go, let it go, hit the guy harder and play a little harder and go.
Two things, I think without watching the film yet, I don’t know how well we played; but once again, give them credit, they were doing a certain thing without getting too complicated with the linebackers and moving right to where we were running some plays.
So you have ten months to prepare for a game and a lot of film to watch. They prepared very well. So that’s what happened in the first quarter.
COACH MEYER: Ohio State should be able to knock it in from the 1. I almost forgot about that. Thanks for ruining my day. (Laughter). That’s bad. That’s absolutely nonnegotiable. Nonsense.
And we’ll hit that with a sledge hammer on Sunday. Because that can’t happen. And I just flat looked at the linemen. I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t see.
But The Ohio State University, with a 220, 230‑pound tailback can smash it in from the one‑yard line. And that didn’t happen, without taking anything away from our opponent. The whole world knew we were doing, but it was part of the deal, at that moment I wanted to see if our line would do it.
COACH MEYER: Yeah, I slept pretty good. I like this team. I like these guys. When you like that, you sleep pretty good. I was anxious for the day. I was glad the fans enjoyed a decent day.
I was worried about the weather and how we would adjust to weather issues. And I just wanted it to be a good day for Ohio State football. And I believe it was.
COACH MEYER: I’ve been enjoying being Ohio State coach for about seven months now. So that was a ‑‑ I don’t want to deflate that moment. It’s a great moment.
I’m with a bunch of guys I care about. Love our players. Two guys next to me and Goebel’s to my left, and I love that guy. There’s a lot of guys on this team I have a lot of respect. And saying the alma mater, I’m a graduate ‑‑ and the fight song, that was a special moment. And we got to sing the fight song in the locker room as well.
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