Football
Buckeyes Searching for the Right Mix in Fall Camp
By John Porentas

Whether your writing a novel or making soup, the one thing that's for sure is that the final product will be determined by how you blend the parts.

Blending and evaluating the parts is what is going on in OSU fall camp right now. With a team that was hit heavily by graduation Jim Tressel and his coaching staff are trying to figure out which parts are the best ones and how they might fit together to make a good football team.

Head Coach Jim Tressel
Photo by Jim Davidson

"We know there are some good characters (players) in this novel and we know they have a lot of ability. Whether the writers (coaches) have good ability, we'll figure that out," Tressel said as drills began on Monday.

Tressel must find replacements for some big shoes, most notably almost all of his skill players on offense, but the job of coming up with a good finished product is made somewhat easier by the presence of some key returners like offensive linemen Kirk Barton and Alex Boone, the entire linebacking corps, veteran cornerback Malcolm Jenkins, tailbacks Chris and Maurice Wells and the return of safety Anderson Russell after missing most of last season with an injury. The challenge for Tressel and his staff is to figure out just how the veteran group and newcomers will mesh.

"I think that's the fun of coaching," Tressel said.

"You have to learn what the linemen we have know how to do, what the receivers we have know how to do, here's what the backs we have know how to do and will execute well, and here are the things that our quarterback thoroughly understands. Now, combine all those. That's what you try do in coaching."

Like the man said, it's just like writing a novel. The characters have to mesh and the plot has to match the characters and make sense. Even when all that is true however, the process of putting all those things together often results in a different final manuscript than the author envisioned when he started. It's a lot like that in Buckeye camp this fall. The Buckeye coaching staff has an idea of what their team will look like based on what they saw in spring drills and what they expect of the incoming freshmen, but make no mistake about it, the Buckeyes are a work in progress as fall camp gets under way and Tressel knows it.

"Sometimes you smile in looking at some depth charts in the spring and then looking after the season. You think 'Oh my gosh, I can't believe that was the lineup we thought (would work). Or you look at your things you thought you would feature n spring and then look at what you ended up doing at the end of the season and see you were different," said Tressel.

The conjecture is that the Buckeyes will be a more ground oriented team offensively this year to take advantage of the talents of tailback Chris Wells as well as Maurice Wells and freshman Brandon Saine. On Monday, however, Tressel also indicated that he does not want to see a one-dimensional team or a team that is overly predictable.

"We want to be balanced." he said, "and we don't want to put our quarterback in positions where the only time he throws it is on third and eight. That wouldn't be fair to our quarterbacks. We want to be able to throw on first down and do a variety of things."

As one reporter suggest, the final outcome is still a mystery. The writer is still developing the characters and hatching the plot in the hopes of coming up with a best seller and not an over hyped flop. The good news for OSU fans is that this isn't exactly the first time Tressel and company have executed this process. Most likely they'll come up with the right plot to fit the cast of characters and end up with happy ending.

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