Thoughts From The Shoe

[Rollo83]

I spent the day at Ohio Stadium yesterday and then watched the replay once I got home. I saw alot more to be encouraged about than discouraged.

The defense continues to play with passion and is very active. If this young group continues to improve, I can see it being the strength of this team the next few years. But mark my word, Central Michigan will present more of challenge for this defense in two weeks than the Buckeyes did yesterday. I say that because Tressel didn't play it "balls to the wall" yesterday. He was content to run the football and take the 8 to 10 yard patterns and move the chains. When we got within 21-7, you saw what he did...Ginn for 62-yard TD! CMU and LeFours will test our young secondary vertically all day.

The offense moved the ball and had three or four legitimate chances to score. The O-line is definetly a strength for us. Turner is our QB for sure. I'd like to see us protect him better and let him sit back there and throw the ball around more. I know with the OSU D-line that wasn't the gameplan and we had to roll him out most of the time. Bullock is going to be our feature back for the next three years...he looks to be a good one.

The decision to try the FG on the first drive was the wrong call IMO. Fourth and nine at the 33-yard line? Having your freshman kicker try a 50 yard FG into the wind didn't make sense to me. And, I wouldn't have asked your freshman punter to angle it out of bounds either. If he kicks it in the end zone, we only gain 13 yards of field position. I would have taken a shot on fourth down. What did we have to lose?

I've watched my share of OSU games Tressel has coached...both in person and on TV. When the Buckeye defense is on the field he usually is studying his offense play chart and not exactly paying a lot of attention to his defense on the field. His defensive coaches usally handle that side of the ball. But I noticed he was intensly watching our offense work yesterday. He stated leading up to the game that he really had a lot of respect for the spread offense and what Brandon and Urban Meyer had been able to accomplish with it at BG. The sign of a good coach is taking others ideas and making them work in his system.

I was dressed in orange with my brown Falcon hat on, and the wife had her orange sweater on The OSU fans couldn't have been nicer to us. They even had some nice things to say about the team after our TD drive to start the seond half. Walking to the stadium we did get a couple of boos from the students, but it was in good fun. We really didn't get any of the abuse some others experienced. Unfortunately, I think you could get that anywhere...even BG.

I think this game will pay dividends down the road. Some of young guys got some experience in a big-time environment against big-time talent and had some success for the most part. I think it will help us as we go to places like Mount Pleasant, Akron and Toledo later this year.

[Flipper]

Oh...i thought your shoe had actually discussed the game with you. That might have been an interesting read...although how much of the game would a shoe even see?

[OSU student]

LOL