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Football
Five Best of 2009 - Can the Buckeyes Do it Again?
By Brandon Castel

Typically when a team goes 11-2 with a conference championship in and a BCS Bowl Win a lot of things went right.

For the Buckeyes of Jim Tressel, 2009 was just business as usual. With Tressel at the helm, Ohio State has become used to three things: beating Michigan, winning Big Ten titles and playing in big-time bowls. They did all three of those a year ago, winning their sixth straight against that school up north on their way to a fifth straight conference championship.

They knocked off Pac-10 champion Oregon in the Rose Bowl for their first win in Pasadena since the days of Joe Germaine and David Boston, and they did it the Jim Tressel way, at least in part.

In a two-part series, we take a look at the five best and five worst areas for the 2009 Buckeyes with an eye on how those areas are shaping up for 2010. 

Five Best for the Buckeyes

Total Defense – The Buckeyes lost some big names off their defense following the 2008 season, but it didn’t slow them down a bit in 2009. After finishing third in the Big Ten in total defense in ’08, Ohio State regained the top spot as the best defensive team in the conference a year ago. They allowed opponents to gain just 262 yards a game against them, including just 260 to the high-powered Oregon offense (by comparison Pryor threw for 266 yards himself). They allowed 12 fewer yards per game than Penn State, the No. 2 defense in the conference as they finished fifth in the country in total defense behind fellow BCS teams TCU, Alabama, Texas and Florida. They finished second in the Big Ten in passing defense (171.5 yards per game) and third in rushing defense (90.77 yards). They return six starters from that defense and should be stout again on defense in 2010.

Third Down Defense – A big part of being a great defense is getting off the field on third down, something the Buckeyes learned the hard way against LSU in the 2008 BCS National Championship game. The OSU defense allowed opponents to convert third downs 35 percent of the time in 2008 and they were even better in 2009, finishing atop the Big Ten at 30.85 percent as teams converted only 58 of their 188 tries. It might not seem as important as some of the other defensive statistics, but it’s actually one of the most telling stats in the game. Teams that get off the field on third down are almost always the more successful ones. Just look at the top five teams in that statistic a year ago: Ohio State, Penn State, Northwester, Wisconsin and Iowa vs. the bottom five: Michigan, Purdue, Michigan State, Minnesota, Illinois Indiana. 

Turnover Margin – If you can’t stop teams on third down you better be able to create turnovers, but the Buckeyes did that exceptionally well too a year ago. Not only were their 35 takeaways the most in the Big Ten, but they were the third most in all of college football behind only Texas and Ohio University (no, that is not a misprint). They had 24 interceptions and recovered 11 fumbles, but they were also one of the best in the country at ball security. Although Pryor threw 11 picks, the Buckeyes lost only seven fumbles all year and finished with a +1.31 turnover margin, tops in the Big Ten and fifth best in the country.

Scoring Defense – It might seem like overkill to keep going down the line on defensive statistics, but defenses that don’t give up a lot of yards, get off the field on third down and turn the ball over tend not to give up a lot of points. That was certainly the case for Ohio State in 2009, where they did not allow more than 27 points all season long. Even their two losses, an 18-15 defeat at the hands of USC and a 26-18 humbling loss at Purdue, were low-scoring affairs. Navy’s triple option attack put up the most points against OSU in a 31-27  Buckeye win  in the season-opener. Only three teams scored in the 20s against an Ohio State defense that finished second in the Big Ten and fifth in the country in scoring at 12.5 points allowed per game.

Rushing Offense – While it was obviously another defensively dominated season for Ohio State in 2009, the offense wasn’t all bad for the Rose Bowl champions. Thanks to that high turnover margin, the Buckeyes scored 30 points or more seven times last season, but it was the way they ran the ball down the stretch that solidified a solid season in 2009. They didn’t score more than 27 points over their final four games, but knocked off three top-11 teams and archrival Michigan in Ann Arbor thanks to a dominant rushing attack. With Brandon Saine and Boom Herron leading the way, Ohio State averaged 195.92 yards per game on the ground, including 236 in the month of November against two of the top defenses in the conference in Penn State and Iowa. They finished second in the Big Ten and 18th nationally in rushing, but that number is a lot higher without Pryor handing off one time in the second half of the Purdue game. Saine (779), Herron (600) and Pryor (779) all finished in the top 10 in rushing in the Big Ten and all three are back in 2010 along with youngsters Jordan Hall, Jaamal Berry, Carlos Hyde and potentially Roderick Smith. A big part of that rushing attack was the improved play of the offensive line, which returns four starters from a year ago.

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