Football
Buckeye Offense Likely to Evolve as Much as Pryor
By John Porentas

There are times when the stereotype is so strong that people become blinded to the facts. Take for example, OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel and his ability to be flexible on offense.

Tressel's image is that of Mr. Stodgy, the guy who is conservative and set in his ways on offense, the kind of guy who has trouble with change.

To those of you who think that's true we ask, did you watch last season?

The season began with the assumption that a sixth-year senior quarterback, a drop back passer, would have his best season and that an all-world type tailback would be on the field making defenses cringe, in the process making it possible for the passing game to open up.

The quarterback didn't pan out, and the tailback got hurt. Now what?

Mr. Stodgy made the decision to change horses midstream, shelving his 6th-year senior quarterback and going with a talented but green true freshman whose skill set didn't match the offensive plan that was in place for the 6th-year senior and didn't have a healthy all-world tailback for much of the season. Talk about your bold move. Tressel had to find out what his young quarterback could do and retool the offensive plan around that...on the fly. When you think about it, it was quite a feat.

Mr. Stodgy adjusted on the fly last year. This year, he'd like to have a plan before the season and stick to it.

"We've spent a lot of time studying what we've done and who we are, had a lot of discussions about what it is we need to get a lot better at individually and collectively," said Tressel.

The off-season banter has been that Tressel's offense was too limited, too one dimensional, too predictable. Actually, the offense included the Todd Boeckman plan followed by the Terrelle Pryor plan, and that's a lot of offense and a lot of diversity. The problem was that not all that offense got executed because of who was on the field and who wasn't. This year, it will be Pryor only, and to Tressel that means the offense will be less diverse if for no other reason than there will be fewer styles of play represented on the playing field at any one given moment.

"We might not be more diverse than we've been because we've had an unusual situation in that we had different style guys all playing," explained Tressel.

"Beanie was lets line up in the I and feed me the ball for a while, then we're back there in the shotgun spreading them all out.

"We may be a little more focused in although I don't ever want to get too thin at what we do, but I envision our future might be less diverse than it was a year ago."

Less diverse does not, in Tressel's mind, mean over-simplified or limited. It means knowing what you can and can't do, and doing the things you can do and not trying to do the things you can't.

"The conflict that we live in is that you know that when you keep it simple you can do it better, but on the other hand you better have enough to be competitive, so you get into that conflict of how much is enough and how much is too much," said Tressel.

"Whenever we've asked our players when they play the fastest they always tell us 'When they know what they're doing,' so you have that fine line of how much tinkering is enough and how much is too much."

Tressel's tinkering will be judicious, but there will definitely be some. He sent his coaches out this summer in search of new ideas that might help the Buckeyes.

"The coaches have had a chance to go out and visit some spring practices," said Tressel.

"The biggest trip we took was we had 14 guys go down to the research triangle in Raleigh-Durham and spend time at N. C. State, North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest so they could spread out and spend good quality time in close proximity.

"We decided before we went there that those are four pretty good coaching staffs right now. As you look at what they're doing, all four are doing a good job of teaching the game of football.

"A couple of our strength coaches went some additional places. Jeff Uhlenhake went to the University of Texas, Doug Davis to the University of Florida and Tampa Bay Bucs," Tressel said.

Tressel didn't elaborate on what his coaches found that might be of use for the Buckeyes, but you can be sure that whatever changes there in the OSU offense will revolve around quarterback Terrelle Pryor and what the coaching staff thinks Pryor will be able to execute this year after getting a baptism by fire last year.

"We've always taken the approach that the beginning of what you're going to do offensively begins at quarterback," said Tressel.

Last year's version of Pryor showed flashes of brilliant playmaking ability, but also at times looked like the freshman that he was, particularly in the passing game. At times Pryor was reluctant to throw the ball, a trait that had Tressel both smiling and frowning.

"If your quarterback is very careful with the football you're going to win games. You might not set records, but you're going to win games, and we're more interested in that (winning).

"I think he had his priorities in order, and his priority was that he was only going to throw it if he was sure (of not throwing an interception).

"I'd rather error on that side, but to get real good you have to get to the point of being 'pretty sure' and letting it go because then it might be on time."

Tressel would like to have at times seen a more aggressive Pryor in the passing game, but fully understands why that wasn't the case.

"When you've only seen these coverages a few times in your life and faced the various things a few times and don't even know our things, they're not branded in your brain yet, you're going to be a little hesitant," he said.

With a season of experience now under his belt Tressel is anxious to see Pryor continue to evolve and be able to execute more phases of the offense confidently. That, he reasons, will lead to more diversity.

"What you do with a guy like Terrelle or anybody else who has played some is you try to take what they already know and make sure we continue to do that well.

"Take what you think are some of the things you feel need to do but need to get a lot better at them so you can have confidence in all the phases of your offense you'd like to have confidence," he said.

To develop that confidence Pryor will get a ton of spring ball snaps this year, but so will Joe Bauserman who is now the backup at QB. Pryor and Bauserman will be asked to work on the passing game almost exclusively this spring, and not just because that is precisely where the offense needs to get better. There is the very practical consideration that the Buckeyes have just two quarterbacks on the roster this spring, and don't want either one of them missing a snap due to injury.

"We probably won't run the quarterbacks a whole bunch this spring because we only have two of them," said Tressel.

After the quarterback issue, Tressel sees the offensive line as one of the points of emphasis this spring, followed by a determination of what this group of players are best suited to execute on offense.

"If you had to say what have been the ones we've talked about and emphasized the most is probably making sure we're very, very physical up front, and making sure we have the right doses in our package," Tressel said.

"Probably the third thing that comes to mind is we've got to be better at scoring touchdowns in the red zone. We've talked a lot about that. We felt like there were too many field goals," said Tressel.

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