Wisconsin Recap: OSU Offensive Review

The Ohio State Offense cannot take the primary blame for the disappointing loss Saturday.  Once the coaching staff figured out how Wisconsin was defending the Buckeyes, they made the necessary adjustments and OSU was able to fairly successfully move the football.  Unfortunately, by that point OSU was already down 21-0.  The offense did allow OSU to crawl back to 21-18 and put OSU in a position to win.  But in a game where OSU needed the offense to carry the team, they were unable to do it.  Instead, inconsistency at several positions and within the scheme held back OSU just enough to prevent a victory.   OSU controlled the line of scrimmage running right at Wisconsin in the third quarter, making one wonder what would have happened had OSU come out running against the Wisconsin front.

The Wisconsin Game Plan:  Take Away the Pass

Unfortunately (in retrospect), Wisconsin took me up on my question of whether a defense would try a different strategy against Ohio State other than bringing a safety into the box to stop the running game. 

Wisconsin broke the mold.  They played primary a 4-3 over (or a 4-3 stack against the I formation), with 2 deep safeties. 

This allowed Wisconsin to play different coverages than previous defenses OSU has faced this year.  Wisconsin took advantage, playing cover 4 coverage (see below), but also quarter-quarter-half, and cover 2, among others.

Cover 4 at its simplest means that the defensive backs split the field into quarters and are each responsible for that 1/4 of the field.  As Brophy states, it

provides a defense an aggressive safety-support run defense (because of a simple read for both safeties) as well as a fail-safe answer to two-man receiver game on the perimeter/vertical.

This is helpful against OSU because it keeps two deep safeties, especially with the amount of twins OSU likes to use, but simultaneously allows those safeties to be involved in run support.

Ohio State:  Trying to Find the Right Mix

Judging by the initial OSU gameplan, OSU seemed to expect the Wisconsin defense to instead employ the same defensive style that OSU has seen this  year.  OSU came out featuring Terrelle Pryor running and throwing from the shotgun.  Indeed, OSU did not feature an inside hand-off until the game's third series.  Once OSU was able to take advantage of what Wisconsin was doing, they were able to feature a balanced offense that kept Wisconsin off-balance.  Specifically, OSU featured a '20 personnel' (2 RB, O TE, 3 WR)  'Pistol' formation.  From that, OSU ran basic, smash mouth isolation plays.  

This put Wisconsin in a bind.  They began by playing the 4-3 over with the 'Will' LBer walked out over Dane in the slot.  But this put 6 in the box to OSU's 6--a great matchup.  Eventually, Wisconsin switched to the stack against the 20 personnel, but this then gave OSU favorable pass numbers.  

OSU was thus able to dictate matchups to Wisconsin, rather than the beginning of the game, when Wisconsin was able to mix and match coverages that kept the OSU passing game confused and sputtering.  OSU was able to control the ball the majority of the third quarter, wearing Wisconsin down and putting themselves in a position to win the football game if they could have gotten a defensive stop. 

The Trenches:  The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

            Paradoxically, one can argue that Ohio State both had a chance to win the football game against Wisconsin, and yet could not quite get over the hump, because of the offensive line play.  For starters, the offensive line physically handled Wisconsin in the inside run game.  As noted, one could only wonder what would have happened if OSU began the game running right at Wisconsin. 

The interior of the offensive line, in particular, did a great job of both establishing double teams that created holes, and getting off to the second level and establishing blocks on linebackers.  The line has struggled with this latter facet at times this year, and this was the best I have seen them working in unison on tandem blocks.  Mike Brewster in particular deserves some credit.  As someone who, I believe, has had difficulties this year with handling defensive tackles in single-man blocking situations, he did a very nice job this game at the point of attack on isolation plays.  Of course, Boom Herron also deserves credit for running both with more authority, and more vision, than I have seen thus far of him this year.   I cannot determine if he feels more comfortable running north and south isolation plays from the pistol, or simply whether he is gaining confidence with more carries, but he played by far his best game.  As coaches have long said, one way to deal with a safety coming up in run support is that your tailback simply needs to run over or around him.  This was the first game this year where the OSU tailbacks were able to accomplish this task.

 On the flip side, the OSU run game continues to be hampered by an inability to handle linebackers shooting backside gaps.  This was the only way Wisconsin was able to slow down the Ohio State run game.  This is simply a technique and recognition issue.  On zone plays, the Guard and Tackle, for example, are essentially responsible for two gaps, which will end up meaning the defensive lineman between the two offensive lineman, and the linebacker in that bubble.  Now, what generally happens is that the linemen farthest from the play will fight to get to the playside defensive linemen's front shoulder, while his counterpart towards the play will ‘post' that DLineman until his backside lineman establishes his block, and then he goes to the linebacker. 

But, those two offensive linemen must also have their eyes on a swivel.  If that linebacker chooses to shoot the gap, the backside lineman must pick him up, and the front side offensive lineman will stay on the defensive lineman.  The problem OSU is having is that the backside linemen are not keeping their eyes up and picking up these shooting linebackers, instead still trying to get to the defensive lineman.  OSU has had problems with this all year and this problem continues.  It reared its ugly head on the goalline when OSU had to settle for a field goal.  At the time, I was critical of OSU's play calling in this situation, specifically running Terrelle Pryor laterally.  I am still not a fan of the play calls, but these plays would have both been successful if the offensive line would have executed properly.  Both times shooting linebackers were able to stop the plays for no gain. 

            The offensive line also largely did a nice job in pass protection, but the offensive tackles had key breakdowns in crucial situations-most notably the third down sack that turned a chip shot field goal into a long attempt.  I recognize that J.B. Shugarts has a significant foot injury.  But the result is that he has a lot of difficulty moving his feet in pass protection.  OSU had to respond by using a tight end to chip to help out Shugarts, altering the pass game.  In sum, the offensive line was certainly not the cause of OSU's problems, but they had the same inconsistency as many others Saturday.

Terrelle Pryor and the OSU Offensive Identity

Terrelle Pryor was another  inconsistent performer.  Just as with the offensive line, Pryor made plays that kept Ohio State in the football game, but simultaneously had breakdowns that prevented the OSU offense from overcoming the OSU defense's difficulties.

In my opinion, the Wisconsin game helped clarify the direction for the OSU offense going forward.  To me, Terrelle Pryor is a dynamic player within the context of the offense, but we perhaps got ahead of ourselves in declaring that Terrelle Pryor should be the offense's identity.  This is the case for two primary reasons.  First, the way Wisconsin defended OSU versus how OSU has been defended this year demonstrates that Pryor as a passer is not ready to carry the offense in all situations.  The variety of zone looks Wisconsin provided clearly caused Pryor some frustrations.  He has excelled far better this year when a defense had to commit additional players to the run game and thus limited that team to either playing middle of the field cover 1 or cover 3.  One only look at the difference in Pryor's first and second half Wisconsin stats.  Once OSU established the running game and Wisconsin had to commit their linebackers and safeties to stop the run game, this opened up the intermediate throws for TP .  Of course this is true for many quarterbacks.  And Pryor did not receive a lot of help from his No. 1 targer, Devier Posey, who had multiple drops, and has inexplicitly seemed mentally detached in both road contents.  Nonetheless, this demonstrates that OSU needs a viable inside running game threat to make its passing game function--it cannot depend on Pryor to drive the bus alone.

Second, Wisconsin demonstrated that Pryor should not be the rushing game's focal point, unlike some other spread quarterbacks.   He simply does not look comfortable running pre-designed run plays, particularly inside the tackle box.  Pryor is far more deadly when he can get out in open field.  Particularly on third down, his ability to scramble and move the chains is immeasurable.  But when Pryor is the primary ball carrier in the called run game, it can be a sputtering affair.

So what does this mean  for the Ohio State offense?  Personally, I think it should entail a bit of a retrenchment from being an offense that goes entirely through Pryor, into one where opportunities are opened with the inside run game that Pryor can then exploit.  Even if teams scheme to take that run game away and it does not produce big numbers, Pryor can attack the resulting defensive weaknesses.   In other words, it means taking advantage of Pryor's talents within the offense, rather than making him the offensive identity.

More specifically, I would like to see a move back to less shotgun 3 and 4 wide receiver threats, and  an increased use of pro-style formations, both because of scheme and personnel.  Schematically, as noted above, it gives OSU an opportunity to dictate match-ups to the defense.  When teams see Z. Boren in the game, they automatically think run.  This provides OSU more favorable coverages for Pryor to discern, and also makes for a more balanced run-pass threat.  It also puts TP in advantageous positions to run, either through scrambles, or bootleg passes where is he is naturally put on the edge with a run/pass threat.  Such a situation puts the defensive force players in a bind, one that I think OSU should exploit more. 

From shotgun, Pryor must necessarily become the primary ball-carrier .  While I like OSU's use of the zone read, which often gets Pryor to the edge and also has a nice play-action component, extending much beyond that puts TP in run situations he is unable to consistently exploit, particularly when defenses scheme against it.  Often he runs laterally on plays that are designed to go inside.  So on the goalline, for example, I would much prefer to see OSU have the inside run game threat, and then use Pryor on bootleg and rollout off of that threat (as they did in the third quarter) rather than in the shotgun running laterally.

In addition, OSU's personnel from "21" and "12" personnel groupings-namely, Stoneburner, Zach Boren, and Brandon Saine-are much more versatile and make a defense defend both the run and the pass, than OSU's third and fourth wide receivers.   Plus, Zach Boren is now such a devastating blocker its just hard for me to think he should be taken off the field.  

Of course, this is not an either/or proposition in terms of shotgun versus pro-style, but rather shades of gray.  It is simply a realization that OSU's offense and Terrelle Pryor function best when OSU presents the threat of a downhill running game, rather than making the OSU identity entirely a QB-based run and pass offense.  Judging by the second half, it appears that the OSU coaching staff agreed, and OSU succeeded moving the football when put in these situations.