Football
Buckeye Loss Marked by Unexpected Failures
By John PorentasThere's only one thing that is dissected more finely that a Buckeye win. That's a Buckeye loss.
People want to know what happened in a win. In a loss however they want to not only what happened, but why it happened.
Not surprisingly, OSU's 18-15, last-minute loss to USC is no exception. What is surprising are the ovious conclusions as to why the Buckeyes lost the game.
What it wasn't:
Headed into the game there were concerns about the OSU offensive front and the OSU defense. There is very little fault to be found with the OSU defense, even though is allowed that final drive.
The OSU defense essentially held USC to 11 points. The Trojans got seven more by virtue of a mistake by the offense when Terrelle Pryor's first-quarter pass interception gave USC the football two-yard line. The Trojans scored that early easy touchdown, but it took them four plays to do it against a determined OSU defense. After that USC managed just 11 more points. That's a remarkable performance against an offense which some observers say has four first-round draft choices on the offensive line and playmakers like Joe McKnight. Don't put the OSU defense, any part of it, including the coaching, into the "culprit" category when looking for the reasons for this OSU loss.
The biggest area of concern headed into the game was the OSU offensive line. OSU's offensive line did not dominate in the game, but they didn't stink it up either. They allowed just one sack, four less than they did last year against USC, and gave Pryor adequate time in the passing game. OSU's rushing attack averaged just 2.9 yards per carry, but USC's rushing offense, behind an offensive line with four first-round draft picks, didn't do much better. For the game, they averaged 3.0 yards per rush and gave up two sacks. OSU's offensive line was not spectacular, but it wasn't inadequate either. OSU's offensive line did not lose the football game.
What it was:
So if it wasn't the usual suspects, who were the guilty parties? Startingly, one of the obvious answers is a position thought going into the game to be a Buckeye strength, the quarterback position.
Terrelle Pryor needed to make plays for OSU to win the football game, and while he did make some, their number was not nearly enough to bring OSU victory. Pryor's 11 of 25 passing (44 percent) was pedestrian at best, and his one big mistake, the first-quarter interception, was returned and then converted into a USC touchdown. Pryor's passing was better than it was last season, but not good enough to produce a win in a big game against a quality opponent. To be totally honest though, not many people expected Pryor's arm to win the game, but there was a lot expected from his legs, and that's where he came up short.
USC's defensive game plan was to not allow Pryor to use his speed on the edges of the defense. They were successful at executing that strategy, a fact that surprised even them. Pryor's lone big play as a runner came late in a game on a 17-yard run between the tackles to keep a drive alive. He was credited with nine other rushes, and those nine rushes totalled 19 yards. In fairness, one of those rushes was a sack in the passing game that resulted in a four-yard loss. Still, his remaining eight rushes resulted in 23 yards, hardly the kind of stats that will fuel an offense and turn a ball game.
"We didn't think we would be able to take him (Pryor) out of the game as a runner," said USC Head Coach Pete Carroll.
"We thought we could just try to control him, though we did really well except for that last draw that he got in the second-to-last drive."
Pryor could not make the plays with his arm or his legs, but it was by far his lack of productivity as a rusher that hurt OSU's chances for the win.
OSU's second weakpoint was offensive coaching, though in fairness, that wasn't a total loss either. The Buckeyes really had their way with the Trojan defense early, rolling up 148 yards of total offense in the first period. Much of that success can be laid directly at the doorstep of the OSU offensive coaching staff. They put together a gameplan that took the USC defense by surprise and worked extremely well for a quarter.
"We had seen so much different offense from them over the past two years and we weren't quite sure how they were going to go about it," admitted Carroll.
OSU had the Trojan defense guessing and it showed. Unfortunately, that resulted in just a 7-7 tie at the end of the quarter due to the interception and runback that led to USC's first score. Still, the OSU offensive coaching staff had it going in the first 15 minutes. In the next 15 minutes, however, it was a different story. OSU managed just 12 yards of total offense in the second quarter once the element of surprise was gone.
"Once we settled into what was going on I felt like we adjusted really well," said Carroll.
"Our guys are really bright. We were able to do a lot of things differently as the game progressed and it helped us."
Once the USC defense tightened up, so did the OSU offense, and that is where the biggest problem lies.
OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel brought "Tressel-ball" to Ohio State in 2001, and in 2002 "Tressel-ball" earned the passion and admiration of Buckeye fans when it resulted in a national championship. OSU fans were in love with "Tressel-ball", but the "Tressel-ball" honeymoon is over. It's seven years later and the seven-year itch has set in. Like people in a stale marriage, OSU fans are looking for excitement elsewhere, because the glow of "Tressel-ball" has worn off, and now the glow is even turning into contempt after five-consecutive losses in what are perceived to be high-profile games.
Tressel's fundamental tenent is that an offense should at all cost not make mistakes that can cost the game. How much you win by, the theory goes, is irrelevant, so long as you don't beat yourself and win the game. That makes sense unless you become so paralyzed by conservatism that the offense becomes hobbled. That is what has happened at OSU, and the net result is that the OSU offense conducts itself in a way that leaves absolutely no margin for error.
That was fine in 2002 when OSU's opponents made more mistakes than the Buckeyes and OSU went undefeated, but if you look at the last three losses by the Buckeyes, those tables got turned, and since there was no cushion created by the offense, when OSU made a mistake the Buckeyes went down to defeat. Against Penn State, a single turnover determeinced the outcome of the game. Against Texas, it was a single missed tackle, and against USC, a single interception. The lack of aggressive offense left the Buckieyes vulnerable, and when it was they who made the mstake, it was them who went down to defeat, not the opposition.
"Tressel-ball" will undboutedly win some games in the future, but it's fundamental weakness has been exposed. In an effort to take risk out of the game, it interjects an element of risk into the eventual outcome by not building a cushion, a margin of error. The conservative approach in theory protects the offense from catastrophic mistake, but at the same time requires a level of perfection in all the other phases of the game that is unreasonable. And when the offense does make the occassional mistake ( a fumble vs. Penn State, and interception vs. USC), the results are predictable.
Another loss.
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