Buckeye 411
- Injury Report-Christian Bryant’s still in the hospital, but due home today or tomorrow (according to reports). Will be off the field for a long while, most likely the rest of the season. Pittsburgh will be missing action through the Spring, while Bell and Homan may be back after the BYE week. The Donnie is “under the weather”- forces of nature being the only thing that can impact him.
- Tress Talk– The usual platitudes, and insight on the Gopher defense,
And now we need to go on the road and play better than we’ve played on the road. We head to Minnesota and it will be the first time for any of us on our team to ever have seen the stadium let alone play in it, so that will be exciting for us. And it’s an evening primetime game, and our guys will get excited about that. So now we’ve got to go back to work and understand that we’re facing a veteran quarterback in Adam Weber. We had him in youth camp. I thought he was outstanding then, and 10,000 yards later I think he’s still outstanding. And I think the school career passing record for us is a little over 7,000 and he’s got 10,000, just to put it in perspective what he’s been able to accomplish and he’s a heck of a player. He’s a competitor. He’s a senior. You can just hear in his comments that he doesn’t want to hear about coaching transition or this or that, this is still the 2010 Minnesota Golden Gophers and still the same team it was at the beginning of the year who has a passion to get some good things done, and through his leadership, you can be sure that they’ll never stop, and that’s the kind of leader that you want to have. And he leads a young group of receivers who I think are getting better and better and they’ve done a good job of giving you a lot of different formation looks, a lot of different personnel groupings.
Over on their defensive side, they were very young when they began, now they’re eight or nine games into it and they’re no longer — you no longer talk when you talk about a team of so and so had this many starters returning because that’s irrelevant now because they’re going into this point in the season.
And they seem to have dialed up a little bit more of their pressure package in this last game or so than they did earlier in the year. They did a similar amount against us a year ago, so it’s not like we haven’t seen it. It’s not like it’s anything brand new, but they are bringing good pressure. I think they’re playing a little bit loose and getting just excited to go out and hit somebody and see if they can create turnovers and so forth, so it will be a great challenge for us.
- Injury Report, cont.- In spite of injured feet, JB Shugarts graded out with a winning performance against Purdue.
- Passing Fancy?- Minnesota threw the ball 49 times against Penn State; you’ve got to think that looking at the Ohio State secondary would make this a trend that continues.
- Not Just The Home Jerseys- Redshirts are something the staff takes very seriously, so you can imagine that a decision to remove Sabino’s would be the result of something significant.
- Tress Talk, The Sequel- on Special Teams,
Special teams, we always say, is the key when we go on the road and I think if anyone has an interest in Big Ten football and doesn’t think that the special teams had maybe the biggest impact on last weekend, Wisconsin’s fake punt was probably the turning point in that game. Michigan State’s fake punt was probably the turning point in that game. I think Iowa missed a field goal, which was big, and an extra point, perhaps. The Cleveland Browns, I didn’t see it, but the little reverse pass or whatever they did was huge in their game, and on and on and on. Missouri, I think, didn’t they bring the opening kickoff back?
So special teams is something that we’ll never stop talking about and you’ll never be able to convince me of its relative impact on the emotion of the game, and football is an emotional game. And so we’ve got to make sure that despite the fact that we’ve had to go with a lot of different lineups due to injuries in the linebacker and DB areas, we’ve got to get better at special teams, especially on the road. It’s a huge impact. Purdue found that. Go full circle, Purdue found that out, coming over here, you can’t make two big special teams mistakes and think you’re going to win in someone else’s stadium.
- Award Winners- Boom was the offensive PotW for the second straight week, Cam was the Defensive Lineman of the week, Bryant Browning was awarded the Offensive Lineman award, with Jake McQuaid as the special teams honoree. Andrew Sweat won both the Attack Force and Tatum Hit of the Week awards. Scout team kudos to Marcus Hall, David Durham, and Chris Maxwell.
- Tressel’s Komedy Klassic- As always, presented without commentary or context.
I apologize. It was disguised as a pooch.
Other Buckeye News
- Oh, Davey- Terrelle Pryor has been named as a semi-finalist for the Davey O’Brien Award, along with Ricky Stanzi, Kirk Cousins, and Denard Robinson from the Big T1e1n
- Understandably so- According to Tress, TP is starting to call some of his own plays,
“He came to us (during the Purdue game) and said, ‘This is how they’re playing us; we should throw this.’ And all of a sudden he hits a 19-yard dig route. I mean, he had it down cold. Then he came back and called the next play and all of a sudden I thought, ‘Man, I’ve got all you other guys (assistant coaches) up there? What do I need you for?’
- Not to be confused with- Denard Robinson calling his own plays.
Elsewheres
- Bad news for the SEC, Part One: Our friends at Alabama and LSU may want to keep an eye on this, a lawsuit challenging the “one year only” status of scholarship offers for student athletes. Certainly would make the trend/tradition/”way of life” of creating medical “hardships” for students or dismissing them outright a lot more difficult, potentially removing a “competitive advantage” from schools who follow this practice.
- Bad news for the SEC, Part Two: The NCAA and the NFL are looking at measures to limit student athlete interaction with agents, including penalizing the athlete if/when they become pros as a deterrent. We’ll have a bit more on this next week with a discussion about the finances of sports, but for now, let’s just say that the good folks at Deadspin are (as always) really on point regarding the shell game that this whole mess actually is.
- Freek of the Week: Again, LSUFreek brings it serious:
Just to prove that he’s got a sense of humor, here’s his take on his Tigers’ experience at Auburn:
| Coach Tressel Weekly Press Conference Transcript/Video | ||||||||||
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COACH TRESSEL: Well, the Buckeyes are 6-0 and Paul Keels is 1-1. It’s good to see Paul back and we missed him, but glad he’s feeling well and the Ohio State Hospitals could be there for him.It’s good to have a homecoming. I think anytime you’re really anxious to get back out on that field, it’s nice that it’s your own field and I thought our guys prepared well after, you know, a significant disappointment the week before and we were most interested in trying to get better. And I thought we had a good week of practice. I thought Purdue helped us by kicking it out of bounds, and that just is another reminder of the impact that the special teams have, not just in the simple field position, but in the emotional flow of the game, gave us great field position. Now we’re in a situation where we’re 60 yards away from points rather than maybe 80, and I think your percent chance of scoring is, like, maybe 20 to 25 percent higher just between those two field zones. And then they had the error on their punt return and all of a sudden it was 14-0, and we were at home and they were young and they had been through adversities of their own with injuries to their great receiver and their quarterback and tailback, and then I think later in the game the quarterback got banged a little bit, so it was an adverse situation for them and a situation that turned out such that we could play some guys and, again, get a little bit more depth built and see if we can enter this final third of the regular season with good health and good play and momentum.
And now we need to go on the road and play better than we’ve played on the road. We head to Minnesota and it will be the first time for any of us on our team to ever have seen the stadium let alone play in it, so that will be exciting for us. And it’s an evening primetime game, and our guys will get excited about that. So now we’ve got to go back to work and understand that we’re facing a veteran quarterback in Adam Weber. We had him in youth camp. I thought he was outstanding then, and 10,000 yards later I think he’s still outstanding. And I think the school career passing record for us is a little over 7,000 and he’s got 10,000, just to put it in perspective what he’s been able to accomplish and he’s a heck of a player. He’s a competitor. He’s a senior. You can just hear in his comments that he doesn’t want to hear about coaching transition or this or that, this is still the 2010 Minnesota Golden Gophers and still the same team it was at the beginning of the year who has a passion to get some good things done, and through his leadership, you can be sure that they’ll never stop, and that’s the kind of leader that you want to have. And he leads a young group of receivers who I think are getting better and better and they’ve done a good job of giving you a lot of different formation looks, a lot of different personnel groupings. It will be a good challenge from a linemen assignment standpoint, to begin with, for our defense, and they’ve moved the football. I think they had 27 first downs last weekend. Normally you’re going to win if you have 27 first downs. So they’ll give our defense every challenge we could possibly want. Over on their defensive side, they were very young when they began, now they’re eight or nine games into it and they’re no longer — you no longer talk when you talk about a team of so and so had this many starters returning because that’s irrelevant now because they’re going into this point in the season. And they seem to have dialed up a little bit more of their pressure package in this last game or so than they did earlier in the year. They did a similar amount against us a year ago, so it’s not like we haven’t seen it. It’s not like it’s anything brand new, but they are bringing good pressure. I think they’re playing a little bit loose and getting just excited to go out and hit somebody and see if they can create turnovers and so forth, so it will be a great challenge for us. |
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