Ohio State v Ohio: Offensive Review UPDATED With Play-By-Play

The OU Defensive Plan

The OU defense apparently decided to take what Miami did against Ohio State and put it on steroids  OU generally played one of two fronts against OSU:  the 4-3 stack, or a 4-3 'open plus' (featuring a strongside 3 and 5 technique with a walked up linebacker over the tight end and the other linebackers stacked).  With the 4-3 stack OU would walk the safety up to the strength, with the 4-3 open plus, the safety would walk up to the weakside. 

If this sounds familiar it should; Miami employed the former, and Oregon the latter against the Buckeyes.  Regardless of whether Oregon played one or two deep safeties, those safeties keep their toes within ten yards of the line of scrimmage and reacted aggressively to run action.

The Ohio State Response

Ohio State responded accordingly.  Here is the First Half breakdown:

As those familiar with the Buckeyes know , those are fairly rare figures for Jim Tressel led squads.  But as I discussed earlier, this simply reflects Ohio State reacting to the run-first looks OU gave and seeking to achieve a yards-maximizing equilibrium.  According to Jeff Amey, Ohio State averaged 3.9 ypc and 7.7 yards per pass attempt.  Now, these numbers are a crude measure, as the yards per carry contain sack numbers--but this may be counterbalanced by the fact that Terrelle Pryor's scrambles are counted as rushing yards where they should be more accurately counted with yards per pass attempt.  Nonetheless, this disparity demonstarates that Ohio State was correct in their pass-first philosophy and may have passed too little.  This largely reflects, however, that Ohio State ran the ball when the game was put away.  One can only imagine that OSU would have kept slingin' it if necessary.

Ohio State's Go-To Plays

Ohio State responded in a similar way to how they attacked Miami--using specific formations that pull a defense that wants to bunch within the tackle box horizontally, and then further stretch that defense with horizontal stretches in the passing game (multiple receivers stretch a defenders along an East-West plane so that those defenders cannot cover every receiver).  In particular, OSU again turned to two favored plays:  the drive route, and the spacing bunch route.  The 'drive route' is a shallow crossing route that can be run from multiple two-back and one-back formations. 

This route allows a wide receiver (generally Sanzenbacher) to come quickly underneath across the field and let Stoneburner settle in on a square-in behind the cross.  Posey then works to the single receiver side (in the clip below, Posey works a separate type of shallow cross route, a mesh route).  By my count Ohio State ran this combination seven times through three quarters.  The play is equally adaptable from either an I formation or from an OSU favorite, tight trips.   

Ohio State uses spacing, by contrast, from a tight bunch formation.

This formation again stretches a defense that wants to bunch inside, providing six gaps to the bunch side of the center.  For Ohio State, it also gives them an opportunity to put Brandon Saine in the inside slot and get him a free release behind the spacing mini-curls (think of Saine running the wheel route against Miami).  OSU will often put Posey to the single receiver side to try to get an individual match-up.

OSU also took steps to attack the OU defense with the run game.  Like Miami, OSU turned to running the football to the formation's weakside, attacking the area where OU was weaker in numbers, given their over front to the formation.  Lead zone, particularly to the weak side, is quickly becoming Ohio State's run play of choice.  OSU gets a better number's look against a bunched-up defense and still gets the lead block from Z. Boren. 

One impeachable bright spot amongst the criticism of the OSU run game is OSU's success in short yardage.  It's clear that when push comes to shove OSU is a "left-handed" run team.  This is largely because Justin Boren is clearly OSU's best run blocker.  But not far behind him is Mike Adams, whose run blocking has been impressive thus far.   These two have been able to control the left side and change the line of scrimmage, particularly in the short yardage run game.

Ultimately though, OSU wisely decided to attack the OU defensive plan through the air.  What will be interesting going forward is whether teams will continue to play this style against OSU.  Ohio State has shown a preference for putting the ball in Pryor's hands in the dropback and play-action passing game with him having the ability to make plays either through the air or scrambling.  Teams have not had much success ganging up on the OSU run game and puttting the game on the shoulders of OSU's primary playmaker.  As such, it will be worth monitoring as the year moves forward whether teams continue to play Ohio State in this manner.

UPDATE:  Here is the Play-by-Play Through the 3d Quarter (The First Team Offense)