Ohio State Ranked 6th in College WR Schools

Yesterday I posted about a story highlighting the top RB schools of all time.  Today Pete & Richard followed up that article with the top WR schools of all time which include 6 Big Ten schools out of 20 with 4 of those being in the top 10.  Michigan ranks #1 according to them with the Buckeyes coming in at #6.  Here’s the excerpt regarding the Buckeyes:

There was a time when Ohio State was a pure power running program with Woody Hayes more likely to wear maize and blue than to throw a forward pass. That was a long time ago. Ohio State has cranked out some of the best receivers in college football over the past 30 years with top pro prospects, All-Americans, and a Biletnikoff winner in Terry Glenn. It’s not like the Buckeyes have had a who’s who of all-star quarterbacks until recently; the receivers have simply been that good. How good is this group? Ted Ginn, Santonio Holmes, Michael Jenkins, and Chris Gamble aren’t in the top five.

Ohio State’s fab five …

1. Cris Carter – Carter showed off the hands that would make him an all-time NFL great making highlight reel grabs the norm. He caught 164 passes for 2,725 yards and 27 touchdowns and set a then-Rose Bowl record in 1985 with nine catches for 172 yards and was an All-American in 1986.
2. David Boston – Boston left school after rewriting most of the Buckeye record book catching 191 passes for 2,855 yards and 35 touchdowns highlighted by the game-winning touchdown catch in 1997 Rose Bowl over Arizona State. He was unstoppable even when he was the focus of everyone’s defensive scheme.
3. Terry Glenn – Glenn caught 15 passes for 266 yards and no touchdowns in his first two years in Columbus. And then he blew up with a Biletnikoff Award-winning 1995 season catching 64 passes for 1,411 yards and 17 touchdowns averaging 22.1 yards per grab.
4. Joey Galloway – An All-Big Ten performer on the field and in the classroom in 1993, Galloway used his otherworldly speed to be one of the premier deep threats in college football. He caught 64 career passes for 1,225 yards and 19 touchdowns.
5. Doug Donley – The team’s leading receiver from 1978 through 1980, Donley was a deep receiver averaging 21.2 yards per catch to finish his career on top of the OSU receiving charts with 2,252 yards on 106 catches with 16 touchdowns. Santonio Holmes could be here, but Donley did more in an offense that didn’t throw.

Check out their in-depth top 20 over at Scout.com

Drive-Thru: EDDIE EDDIE EDDIE

Consistent with my stated aims to upload a YouTube relevant to the foe at hand this season, I went with a very obvious candidate.  Yet perhaps subconsciously I also went with an option that underscores my preferred outcome of the upcoming Illinois game this Saturday in Champaign.  Indeed: I want total humiliation.  Accordingly, I went with the 1995 matchup between Ohio State and Illinois.  This game is an obvious staple in Buckeye lore for the exceptional performance of Eddie George.  In this game, he cemented his Heisman credentials by surpassing Keith Byars’ single game rushing record (coincidentally also against Illinois) and became the first, and so far only, Buckeye back to total 300 yards in a single game.

Yet, Eddie George wasn’t the story entering this game.  It was November 11, 1995 and there were several developments brewing at the start of this game.  In the bigger picture, Ohio State was undefeated and even the no. 2 ranked team in the country on the heels of their domination of Notre Dame in a highly anticipated match, their victory over the previous year’s undefeated (and should’ve-been national champion) conference champion Penn State in Happy Valley, and their thorough routing of most opponents that season.  They even boasted the nation’s best tailback (eventual Heisman winner Eddie George), the nation’s best lineman (Orlando Pace), the nation’s best wide receiver (Terry Glenn, eventual Biletnikoff winner) and one of the better quarterbacks in the country (Bobby Hoying).  Yet they weren’t even the story of their own conference that year.  Curiously enough, Northwestern — who was cycled off Ohio State’s schedule for 1995 and 1996 — was undefeated in conference.  Yes: that Northwestern.  Its only loss was an inexplicable post-Notre Dame letdown against Miami of Ohio.  Ohio State’s perfect record was the only tiebreaker the Buckeyes had keeping them on top of the Big Ten.  Further, Ohio State had two conference games left to Northwestern’s one.  Northwestern had beaten eventual 8-4 team Iowa earlier in the day.  All it had to do was beat sub-.500 Purdue while Ohio State had to take care of Illinois later that same day, Indiana and Michigan¹.

In the micro view, Illinois had been an achilles heel for John Cooper his entire career at Ohio State.  Entering this game, Cooper was only 1-6 against Illinois and was almost single-handedly closing² the otherwise wide margin between the two schools in the series (now 56-23-2 Ohio State).  Further, Ohio State was going to play its first game of the season without Terry Glenn, the future Biletnikoff winner and — far and away — the best receiver in college football for the 1995 season.  As you’ll see in the YouTube clip, he injured himself making an impeccable dive and catch of a Hoying pass against Minnesota the week earlier.  Glenn would return later in the season, but he was never really better than 70 percent.

Naturally, the view of analysts entering this game was of a true dilemma for the no. 2 ranked Buckeyes.  It had the nerds breathing down its neck in the Big Ten and had no head-to-head matchup in the season to serve as tiebreaker.  It needed to be perfect in order to go to the Rose Bowl because Northwestern was probably not going to lose to Purdue the next week.  Moreover, it needed to start with a victory over Illinois — against whom Cooper had only one win in 7 tries — and it needed to be accomplished without the home run threat of Terry Glenn.

To make matters worse: Illinois, in spite of its record and its crappy offense, had one of the best defensive units in the country (especially in containing opposing team’s ground attacks), led by future Pro-Bowlers Kevin Hardy and Simeon Rice.  Antwoine Patton, a safety for Illinois, was no slouch either.  After two disasters to begin the season against Michigan and Oregon, Illinois had been holding their opponents to just over 11 points a game.  Surely these two studs in Illinois’ front seven, with the assistance of a run-stopping secondary, would complicate things for Eddie George as it did last year against the Buckeyes in Ohio Stadium.  After all, Tepper was probably the road warrior of the Big Ten.  Illinois was 10-3-1 in road games under his tutelage coming into this game.

In spite of the odds against the Buckeyes entering this game, the end result was total domination of the Fighting Illini.  The Buckeyes began the game with the ball, which ended in a quickie interception thrown by Hoying — shades of the 3 interceptions he threw in the 1994 matchup.  After the following Illinois punt that pinned the Buckeyes within their own one yard line, Eddie George just… well… went nuts.  Hoying, rather than throwing interceptions, just handed off to Eddie, who almost made up the entire length of the field by himself before Pepe Pearson turned in the ball to the end zone for a quick 7-0 lead.  After another Illinois punt, Eddie again led the charge for another Buckeyes touchdown — this one to Dimitrious Stanley.  By the end of the first quarter, Eddie George was already safely over 130 yards.

He, and the Buckeyes offense, wouldn’t let up either.  The Buckeyes never punted in this game, with the only 3 drives not ending scores coming from Bobby Hoying’s opening interception and Josh Jackson’s two missed field goals.  Further, save for Hoying’s interception, every single one of Ohio State’s drives ended deep in Illinois’ red zone or with a touchdown.  The two times the Buckeyes had to rely on field goals from Jackson came with the Buckeye offense stalling within the Illinois’ 5 yard line.  5 touchdowns and 2 field goals later, the Buckeyes offense had thoroughly flattened one of the better defenses in the country en route to a 41-3 victory.

Lest we forget about the performance of the defense, who dominated Illinois’ fragile offense the year after most of the same players had led a stirring second half comeback the year earlier in Ohio Stadium.  Illinois’ only points in the game came off a field goal to open the first drive of the second half.  Indeed, the plan was at the half that if Illinois could start the second half with a scoring drive to cut into the Buckeyes 17-0 halftime lead, it would be able to haunt Ohio State with visions of last year’s game.  However, after that drive, Eddie George took the first play from scrimmage after kickoff for his Heisman reel touchdown run.  In spite of a dominating first half, Eddie George had been kept out of the end zone in the first half.  In the second half, he poured in 3 touchdowns, with one coming as a receiver after Illinois’ lone turnover in the game.

With all said and done, Ohio State had won 41-3 and Eddie George had the best single performance of any Buckeye tailback in the program’s history.  It was a game that cemented Eddie George’s Heisman credentials, thus making Tommie Frazier the most horrifying college football player in history without a Heisman Trophy.

For the purposes of this exercise, though, it serves a point of reference for the type of humiliation that I think is the only just result for last season’s game against Illinois.  I can handle losing to Illinois since I don’t particularly value that rivalry.  Indeed, only those clowns in the Bucket & Dipper honorary care about the rivalry among Buckeye fans.  But getting Zooked? On Senior Day? And to snap our Big Ten record undefeated streak?  Now I want blood.

That said, I can wish all I want for a similar performance from Beanie, but there’s just no Orlando Pace or Rickey Dudley on the roster currently to create havoc.  There’s not even an Eric Gohlstin on the team..

Ohhh well.

Without further ado, you can watch my compilation of the 1995 Illinois game below.  In the interest of brevity, I don’t show much of the defensive highlights since it was kind of your garden variety total annihilation of an opposing offense.

1. we’re not talking about this game…
2. okay, that’s an exaggeration, to be fair to John Cooper.

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The Roots of Ohio State’s Problems, Part Seven: "Tresselball"

A few days ago, I turned into the Incredible Hulk via print and blasted Ohio State’s offensive performance against the Nittany Lions this past Saturday. Today we’ll continue our multi-series look at problems facing Ohio State, turning our attention to what has been so warmly coined “Tresselball.”

I apologize if some of the thoughts correlate with that previous article, but I’m going to try to dive a little deeper into solutions today rather than angry criticism.

I don’t know about you, Buckeye fan, but I’m almost tired of turning on Ohio State football now. Maybe I’m alone in this—maybe I’m not “a true fan” for saying this out loud—but watching Buckeye football these days is almost a chore.

Of course I watch, because this is the team I grew up watching as a little kid, and deep…DEEP down, I love this team. But by god, if I don’t hate the way this team plays football.

And save it, everyone who wants to hate on this article, because I’ve already heard it a million times…”This is the golden age of Ohio State football”; “Ohio State’s record is blah blah blah and five in the past blah blah years”; “Stop complaining! We’re winning”…and so on, and so on…

I’m not going to stop complaining, because the recruiting prior to 2008 was mediocre, the defensive schemes have been softer than your favorite ice cream, and this “offense” has been, other than 2006, absolutely, positively unwatchable.

This is THE Ohio State University, home of six Heisman Trophy winners, rich tradition, second to none facilities, and some of the best, most passionate, and knowledgeable fans around—and we deserve better than the product that is being put on the field.

The offense we’ve seen ever since Jim Tressel has taken hold of this program is an offense that isn’t built to win football games—it’s built NOT TO LOSE THEM. “Tresselball” is built on running the football, managing, and dominating the clock…minimizing risk.

Well, I’ve got a newsflash for the Ohio State coaching staff. Risk leads to reward, and sometimes you have to risk things to make things happen, because right now, it isn’t happening for this offense. The Buckeyes have been shut out of the end zone offensively in three games this year!

Someone needs to alert this staff that they are coaching at Ohio State and not Omaha State. Ohio State routinely recruits better athletes even in an AVERAGE recruiting class than probably 90 percent of the rest of the country. The athletes are there to make some plays for you as an offense…but to look at these numbers, you’d never know it.

Total Offense and Scoring Offense from 2003 to this year…

Total Offense                 Scoring Offense

2003 93rd (332 ypg)                 74th (25 ppg)

2004 98th (320 ypg)                 71st (24 ppg)

2005 32nd (422 ypg)                 26th (33 ppg)

2006 26th (384 ypg)                  8th (35 ppg)

2007 62nd (393 ypg)                 31st (31 ppg)

This season 85th (372 ypg)                 67th (25 ppg)

My questions to Jim Tressel would be, when are you going to trust your athletes to go out and make plays for you? When are you going to start mixing up your play calls? Maybe the best question of all would be, when are the people who sit at home NOT GOING TO BE ABLE TO CALL PLAYS FROM THEIR COUCHES?

Guess what, Mr. Tressel: If Joe Schmo the plumber can figure out what offensive plays you’re going to call, I’m pretty sure Pete Carroll, Urban Meyer, and Bob Stoops are gonna have a hint too.

Do you honestly think other top college programs and head coaches aren’t aware of those numbers above as well? Do you honestly think they don’t use these numbers and the philosophy against the Buckeyes in trying to pull in the best of the best in offensive talent?

I know for a fact that it cost us Fred Davis and Dwayne Jarrett right off the top of my head. Cordale Scott was the most recent that I could think of that chose Illinois over the home state Buckeyes because the Illini offense was viewed as more “dynamic.”

Look no further than the lack of talent in the upperclassmen at the wide receiver position to see that “Tresselball” has hurt recruiting. To put it in perspective, this is the alma mater of David Boston, Terry Glenn, Joey Galloway, Cris Carter, Demetrius Stanley, Dee Miller, Michael Jenkins…great wide receivers.

No offense to Brian Robiskie and Brian Hartline, but can you think of a weaker WR tandem than this combination at Ohio State in recent memory? Ohio State or not, wide receivers are cocky playmakers, and they want to go where they know they are gonna touch the football and get into the end zone.

Ohio State’s offense is known as a safe ground attack across the country.

“Tresselball” works when you are playing marginal, inferior competition and talent. You can throw your talent out on the field and win with better players.

But when you step up to play the best, you’d better have the offensive athletes to stretch the field, you’d better be prepared to trust the athletes you have to make plays, you’d better be prepared to open the coaching vault up and play call for the opposing coach’s jugular, and you had better be prepared to take chances and risks to GO OUT AND WIN THE FOOTBALL GAME…TAKE THE GAME!

“Tresselball” hasn’t done any of those things, and it’s gotten hammered every time it counts since the 2002 National Championship.

What can Ohio State do to remedy this? Easy…like it or not, Jim Tressel needs to find a young, bright offensive mind from OUTSIDE the program. A young coordinator that will bring in new ideas and philosophies to this coaching staff. A coordinator who will use the Ohio State offensive coordinator position to ADVANCE to a head coaching position somewhere else!

That’s right—coaching turnover within a coaching regime means that you have the best young minds in college coaching on your staff, your program is winning, and other programs want these young coaches for their program.

Florida has that, USC does too, and Texas as well. All of these schools not only have head coaches, but assistants who are young, hungry, and learning everything they can to advance in their profession.

Jim Tressel needs to find this individual that he meshes with and feels can grow that working relationship with—a coordinator that he can learn to trust to focus entirely upon the offense, focus on game planning and game calling, and who is also a good recruiter.

Hopefully taking this step will open this offense back up and improve the recruiting at the wide receiver and quarterback positions on a more consistent basis, though I do give the Buckeyes kudos for the haul of wide receivers they’ve gotten the last two years now—and of course, Terrelle Pryor is Terrelle Pryor.

But this momentum in recruiting needs to continue. Remember that it’s not always the talent that you bring in, but how you use the talent.

I hope that a new coordinator with a new scheme will open up aspects that have been lost on “Tresselball” for seemingly years now. Maybe use the tight end in the passing game, instead of strictly as a glorified offensive tackle? How about a quick slant to the wide receivers? Or even pass routes that cross the middle of the field?

I’ve even been told before that you can put offensive personnel in motion prior to the snap to try to create confusion for a defense and even personnel mismatches in coverage!

All this said, there must be changes THIS offseason. I know Jim Tressel is a proud man, I know he is a good coach, and he is a good man. But the philosophy isn’t working, and the stats I gave you above show as much. This philosophy has affected recruiting certain talent to Ohio State.

This team and these fans deserve to risk for victory, rather than to safely go down in defeat. As the cliché goes, “If you’re going to go down, go down swinging.” You’ve recruited better the last two years, there is more talent forming around this offense…open the playbook, trust your talent, and go down swinging.

As always, thanks for reading…please pass the word on this series and feel free to discuss and leave comments.

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Ohio State’s Monster.com Posting: "Will Pay Top Euro for Offensive Coordinator!"

I’m sick…physically ill. If I have to watch the 2008 edition of the Ohio State offense again, I might just vomit all over the computer screen and then hit send, and that will be my article for next week.

WHEW! That felt good to get off my chest. Almost like a good ol’ verbal teaspoon of Pepto-Bismol for the tummy. As a matter of fact, it felt so good, I think I’m gonna drink myself a whole verbal bottle full…

Explain to me, the “common man,” who doesn’t know the true intellect of football, how you can go count ‘em…one…two…three college football games during a singular season without scoring an offensive touchdown?!?!

Better yet, explain to me, the “ignorant fan,” the following numbers out of 120 Division I college football teams…

- 95th in the NCAA in passing offense

- 24th in the NCAA in rushing offense (mind you, this is what Ohio State does AT LEAST 75 percent of the time)

- 67th in the NCAA in scoring offense

- 95th in the NCAA in total offense

- 41st in the NCAA in third down efficiency

- 99th in the country in sacks allowed

Now for the greatest riddle of all: If an offense can’t throw the football, can’t convert third downs, and can’t protect the quarterback…how does it score???

Ah…but it’s a trick question, because if you are THE Ohio State University, you don’t know what the end zone is unless you are the defense and special teams! Because it’s become perfectly clear that this offense can’t find it.

Jim Bollman should be fired IMMEDIATELY…IMMEDIATELY. And they should scour the country to find an assistant coach to try to teach this offensive line how to friggin’ block!

Chris Wells, your preseason All-American tailback, your workhorse…22 carries, 55 yards for a grand whopping total of 2.5 yards per carry! The offensive line got no push, there were no holes, no cutback lanes, nothing…

Alex Boone (6′8″, 316), Bryant Browning (6′4″, 312), Ben Person (6′4″, 323), Steve Rehring (6′7″, 335), Jim Cordle (6′4″, 300), Michael Brewster (6′5″, 295)…Not one player under 295, and you’re gonna try and tell me that you can’t make a hole?

This isn’t just about Penn State: it’s about Ohio, Troy, and USC too. The only thing consistent about this unit all year has been its inconsistencies. When Michael Brewster, a true freshman, is your best offensive lineman among four-year starters and multi-year starting seniors…there is a big problem.

And don’t tell me that the reason OSU can’t run the football is because the Buckeyes aren’t a threat to throw the ball deep. It’s garbage.

Navy leads the nation in rushing annually, and everyone from the opposing head coach to Lil’ Tommy the 10-year-old popcorn vendor in section 146 ZZZ knows it’s coming. But the Naval Academy offensive line, (which by the way, probably AVERAGES about 275 pounds per lineman), are tough, hard-nosed, and disciplined. They know their assignments and they execute them, and they carry out their game plan.

Oh…game plan? Almost forgot! Leads me to my next dose of Pepto…

An offensive coordinator for Ohio State…I think the time has come for the alumni association, the board of trustees, and the fanbase to rise up together and DEMAND one. And NO…I don’t mean a “co-offensive coordinator” like Jim Bollman claims to be. And NO…I don’t mean bringing in some coordinator who is a puppeteer for Jim Tressel.

I’m talking a full-blown, independent, young, energetic, filled with new ideas, offensive coordinator that Jim Tressel can have a good working relationship with.

Because I, along with the rest of BuckeyeNation, am sick to death of an offense that used to have explosive weapons all over the field (Terry Glenn, Eddie George, David Boston, Joey Galloway, Teddy Ginn, Rickey Dudley, Maurice Clarett etc….etc….etc….) and has potential now with DeVier Posey, Lamaar Thomas, Terrelle Pryor, Chris Wells, Brian Robiskie etc….being wasted in the philosophy of “Tresselball.”

This is an offense where our offensive coordinator thinks the most important play in football is the punt! Wrong, Mr. Tressel: The most important play in football is the play that gets you first downs, moves the damn chains, and gets you into the end zone! That’s the most important play in football!

I know I’m angry right now. I also know that this isn’t a nonsensical rant. These are well thought-out sentiments that are being expressed with the hint of “Tresselballitis” that is rumbling from the pit of my stomach.

It may not seem like it from this article, but I’m an Ohio State fan and a Jim Tressel fan. I think he is an excellent leader of young men. I think he is centered as an individual, wise, and offers a great father figure to the players. But I think we are coming to some dead ends as a program.

I’ve been told on many occasions by people “in the know” that Jim Tressel won’t give up play calling duties. Well, I think it’s time for the people above him to make him do just that. If Jim Tressel can’t understand that, is he really still right for this program any more?

A coach has to be willing to adapt. A coach has to be willing to change. If you can’t do that, you risk your program becoming stale. Yes, Ohio State is Jim Tressel’s football program, but he still answers to alumni, to board members, and to you, the fan—and it’s about time we start demanding some change.

There is absolutely no reason this team should be as inept as they are offensively. None…N-O! N-E!…zero, zilch, nada…This team has talent across the board to get inventive, creative, and become explosive.

Ohio State has the talent offensively to be just as prolific as the Texas Techs, Missouris, Oklahoma States, Oregons and Illinois of the world. None of them have “recruited” to the level of Ohio State, so why are they outperforming us?!?!?

Bottom line, stop wasting this team’s offensive talent. Fire Bollman, who can’t motivate this offensive line to block, and open up the world’s largest athletic department budget to hire an offensive coordinator that can help find an offense that, excluding ‘06-’07, has been absent for the past 10 years.

Hell, at least get us into the Top 50 in most offensive categories (I know we’re not like Ohio State or anything). Let’s see what we can do…if that isn’t asking too much.

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