Football
Tressel Expects Spring Drills to Different Tone from Last Year's
By John Porentas

Spring practice sessions begin today for the Ohio State football program, and OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel sees a different kind of spring this season as compared to last year.

In 2007 Tressel was dealing with a rather young football team that had a lot to learn and a lot to prove. This year however, Tressel has an extremely veteran team returning.

"I think we have 47 guys entering their fourth or fifth year," said Tressel.

"What we don't want is for someone to come into spring practice that this is the same-old-same-old and here's what we'll do Monday, here's what we'll do Tuesday.

"We really want to challenge them mentally, challenge their knowledge of the game, challenge their ability to maybe teach the game. We think we should be a smarter football team with all the experiences that these guys have had."

Tressel and his staff had to both teach and at the same time evaluate the talent on their squad last spring. This year they'll have less evaluating to do simply because so many of the players on hand this spring have already been on the field and the OSU coaching staff has a pretty good idea what they can and cannot do.

Because of the lessened need for evaluation Tressel foresees a spring in which there will be less hitting and therefore a spring with less chance of injury. Less however does not mean none.

"We'll probably only have one major scrimmage," said Tressel.

That scrimmage will be full go, but last spring Tressel's team participated in two full scrimmages. This year more emphasis will be placed on refining skills and understanding

"One thing we suffer from a lot as coaches is we love having the chalk and we love showing our wisdom up on the board with those guys," said Tressel.

"It's really not important what we know. It's important what they know.

"When a guy doesn't know anything he can't take the chalk at all.

"When a guy does know a little something you'd like to think if he can teach it he really knows it. We really want to stretch them as to what they truly know and talk a little bit more from a conceptual standpoint.

"We would really like for them to walk into day one practice and them teach the coverage to those new guys, or the older linebackers step up to the board and teach Etienne and Andrew how we do a drill or coverage, or here's why we do this coverage or here's why we're adjusting this because here's what people are doing."

NCAA rules limit the amount of hitting permitted in the spring. OSU practices will reflect those limitations and will start slowly and gradually build in level of hitting.

"We'll have our first two practices in shorts, then we'll put the pads on Saturday and then beginning that second week we'll work Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday," said Tressel.

Tressel said the Buckeyes also plan on using spring drills as a time to focus on improving strength and overall conditioning.

"We want to make sure we train through spring practice from a strength standpoint," said Tressel.

"With the quarters calendar we've had a lot more discretionary weeks (since the bowl game) that most people which means you haven't had as much hands on strength individual training, so we make sure we train through spring practice and make up for a little bit of that strength training time as well so it's going to be a little bit of a different spring."

OSU's veteran squad will allow Tressel and his coaching staff to coach nuances and to coach at a demanding mental pace, but there will also be a group of young players in camp for whom this will be the first time around. Linebackers Etienne Sabino, Andrew Sweat, linemen J. B. Shugarts and Mike Brewster and wide receiver Jake Stoneburner are newly signed freshmen who are participating in their first OSU practices. Tressel said that those players will probably require a little TLC.

"I think that's a real challenge for our coaches. You have 47 guys who have been here for four or five years, then you have these other guys who have been here four or five days," Tressel said.

"You can't assume they know all that we know.

"We're stretching these guys (the larger group) conceptually and they (the younger group) don't even know how to get lined up.

" I think a little bit of extra time and attention with them will be important. That's difficult because they have more of an academic strain than they've had in a little while. The last half of that senior year, or even the first half of your senior year if you're in high school, when you're the man you might not be grinding it as hard you're going to have to here. Now they're finding themselves with tutors and study hall and tougher classes."

Though the coaching staff will likely devote some special attention to the younger players, Tressel does not expect them to stand out this spring, if for no other reason than they are spending so much time trying to figure out what's going on that they are unlikely to be able to stand out on the football field.

"I'm not sure we're see who they are until August because our guys are so far advanced, but when you come back in August and you have 29 practices when you're not going to school and it's all football and you have a chance to learn from that foundation you built up in April, I think then you'll find out who they really are," Tressel said.

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