The Game, Version 2009 is 96 hours away.
This is the rivalry to top ALL other rivalries. It destroys the Red Sox/Yankees. Auburn/Alabama….LOL. Harvard vs Yale….shallow and pedantic. It even beats out Iowa vs Minnesota (seriously, Minnesota is their rival? Minnesota?).
Obviously, we here at The BBC are as fired up as we could be over another victory over That Team Up North, and we’ve decided to extend the usual discussion. Therefore, over the next four days, we’re going to dig a little deeper into the 2009 season, and what we expect from the conclusion of it.
Today’s question – Who, in your opinion, is the MVP of the Ohio State Buckeyes for 2009?
Jeff at The BBC
Without a doubt, #4, Kurt Coleman.
The guy ALWAYS seems to be on the spot when the ball pops loose. Either he’s been the guy forcing the turnover or he’s been the guy recovering the turnover. Either way, he’s been that guy who is always around when something bad happens to the other team.
His hits have a certain brutality and viciousness to them, and he’s been the leader of a unit that has acted as a team since Day One.
MaliBuckeye
Man, I’m going to have to go with Mike Brewster here. Outside of the Purdue game, he’s been playing lights out across the front, and we’ve rediscovered a running game. Tress trusts him, TP trusts him, that’s good enough for me. To be honest, this is a cop out since I can’t for the life of me decide between any one of a number of our defensive stallwarts. So Brewster it is.
Jim
The MVP this year is Terrelle Pryor, no question. That does not mean that I think Pryor has played the best football on the team, that honor would probably go to Heyward, Coleman, Homan or someone else on the defense. But if you look at which player adds the most value to the team, it is Pryor without a doubt.
I am going to speculate a little bit here, but without Pryor I see this team losing a few more games than they did. On the other hand, without Pryor we probably would have won in West Lafeyette. Funny how that works out.
I think early on we saw Pryor as a guy who felt the pressure to do everything by himself and make a big play every play. Following the Purdue game, I think Pryor started to “get” Tresselball. He learned that lesson in a heartbreaking fassion that made for a shitty road trip for me, but still, he learned.
Now, I think that Pryor may have dialed back a little too much, but he has stopped making bad decisions. In the four games sine Purdue, Pryor has completed 46 of 82 passes (56.1%) for 592 yards, 5 TDs, and here’s the kicker, only 1 interception (zero in the last three games). I have read speculation the Pryor’s injuries have forced him to dial it back a bit and make better decisions, but I say I don’t care how or why it happened, I like the improvement he has made over the last few games. He has clearly progressed, which is something that you couldn’t say from game to game at the beginning of the year.
Whenever Pryor finds the right balance between making plays and making smart decisions (hopefully he can figure it out sometime in the weeks before the Rose Bowl) I still think he can be a very, very good quarterback for us.
The emergence of good decision Pryor has also coincided with the rediscovery of the run game for the Buckeyes. Ohio State put up over 200 yards on the ground against two of the best front sevens in the country, so a lot of credit has to go to the offensive line and the running backs. But this begs the question: which came first? improvement from the running game or improvement from Pryor? Either way, the trend is an exciting one for the future. And who knows, maybe next year the MVP of the team will be the offensive line (please oh please oh please), but for now, this team goes as Terrelle Pryor goes, and that is why he is the MVP.
Eric
Honestly, this is an extremely hard question to answer. Few players have really stood out head and shoulders above the rest. Some names do, however, come to mind such as Hurt Coleman, Brian Rolle and Adam Homan. All three have been spectacular players so far this year making big plays when the team has needed it most. The MVP of the team, though, almost certainly needs to come from the Defensive Line, which as a unit has been absolutely spectacular all year. That player would be Cameron Heyward. No other player on the team has been as dominating as he has this season, especially against State Penn. He’s also the first player since James Laurinaitis in 2006 to win the Walter Camp National Defensive player of the Week award for the Buckeyes.
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