2010 tOSU Offense Discussion

[BB73]

For talk about the overall offense. There are specific thread for QB, RB, OL, TE, and WR, as well as threads for each individual player.

Please attempt to post comments in the most appropriate thread.

2010 QB

2010 RB

2010 OL

2010 TE

2010 WR

 

[Buckskin86]

Spring Outlook: Offense
Left tackle remains unsettled, tight end an open position, and depth at wide receiver and tailback will be key areas of interest.
By Brandon Castel

Don?t look now, but with Ohio State basketball fever taking over at the-Ozone in recent weeks, spring football is quietly sneaking in like the Chinese New Year.

Evan Turner and the boys occupied the headlines through the weekend, but now there are only two days left until the Buckeyes break for spring football camp. Jim Tressel?s group is coming off an 11-2 season in 2009 and a 26-17 victory over Oregon in the Rose Bowl.

For the first time in a few years, they return the majority of their offense intact from last season. It is a group that outgained the Ducks 419-260 in Pasadena. Quarterback Terrelle Pryor will once again be the focal point of the offense, but OSU returns nine starters that side of the ball, including both of their top wideouts, their top two tailbacks and four starters on the offensive line.

Key losses on offense: TE Jake Ballard, OT Jim Cordle, WR Ray Small, WR Lamaar Thomas

Left Tackle

The-Ozone, Ohio State Football, Wrestling, Softball, Basketball, Hockey, Baseball and More

 

[Buckskin86]

Projecting the Spring Depth Chart: Offense
By Brandon Castel

Spring is a time of change, and nothing changes quite like a football depth chart. How things look when Ohio State opens spring camp today will be far cry from how they look when the Buckeyes take the field against Marshall on Sept. 2 nd.

But spring is also a time of new beginnings. A time for competition; a time for new faces to step and challenge for the right to replace old ones.

The Buckeyes return nine starters on offense from a team that went 11-2 last season, including every starter at the skill positions. They also return four starters on the offensive line, but there will be plenty of competition (link to offensive competition story) for the open spots. There will also be plenty of competition in the backfield, where the Buckeyes look to have their deepest set of tailbacks in the Jim Tressel era.

Ohio State?s depth chart will be a fluid, changing entity, but here?s a projected view of what things will look like on offense this spring.

Key losses: TE Jake Ballard, OT Jim Cordle, WR Ray Small, WR Lamaar Thomas (Transfer)

Early enrollees: RB Carlos Hyde

QUARTERBACK

The-Ozone, Ohio State Football, Wrestling, Softball, Basketball, Hockey, Baseball and More

 

[schwab]

Yo, fake gangsters, just thought you should know

that we had the most potent O at the Rose Bowl

 

[Taosman]

Let's be realistic for a second.
Your JT and your looking at the whole offensive line coming back and more cohesive. Your seeing the best depth at running back you've had at OSU.
Do you really think we'll see another Rose Bowl-like passing game any time soon?
Uh, don't think so.

 

[matcar]

Let's be realistic for a second.
Your JT and your looking at the whole offensive line coming back and more cohesive. Your seeing the best depth at running back you've had at OSU.
Do you really think we'll see another Rose Bowl-like passing game any time soon?
Uh, don't think so.

Disagree. I think JT shoots for the fabled 250/200.

 

[pnuts34]

Disagree. I think JT shoots for the fabled 250/200.

I definitely agree on that one! JT's gonna open up the offense and we'll see greater balance this coming year. Our offense is too potent not too, we have speed and high levels of talent at all skill positions and our line should be very good. Personally I hope Adams is the starter at LT and proves all of his doubters wrong. But if not we won't miss a beat if we put Shugarts at LT and Hall RT.
:osu:

 

[MUBuck]

Let's be realistic for a second.
Your JT and your looking at the whole offensive line coming back and more cohesive. Your seeing the best depth at running back you've had at OSU.
Do you really think we'll see another Rose Bowl-like passing game any time soon?
Uh, don't think so.

That's you're opinion.

 

[Buckskin86]

Buckeyes making sure veteran offense has a spring in its step during drills
By Doug Lesmerises, The Plain Dealer
April 13, 2010

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Spring practice typically signifies the fresh start of a new season. That's not how the Ohio State offense saw it this year.

Halfway through spring ball, with practice eight of 15 taking place Tuesday afternoon, the Buckeyes, with experience throughout the offense, are thinking of this as Rose Bowl, Part II.

"A lot of times, when you start the beginning of a spring or fall, you start from the beginning," wide receivers and assistant head coach Darrell Hazell said Tuesday. "Our mindset as an offense was we don't want to start from the beginning, we wanted to start where we ended. We wanted to continue off where we finished in the bowl. We want to come out fast, we want to come out strong, we want to be accurate, and that was our mindset as a staff before we started spring football."

That's a huge leap for an offense that was looking to find himself throughout much of last season, moving to more of a spread look in mid-season, then to more of a power run game at the end of the year. Finally, and successfully, the Buckeyes emerged as a more fully-rounded offense in a 26-17 Rose Bowl win over Oregon that included 417 yards of offense, including 266 passing yards.

What Hazell is saying, and what the players are feeling, is that this April, Ohio State already has a much stronger grasp of what it wants to do, and will be able to do, in September.

"That's a huge step," Hazell said. "It's always been, 'OK, let's put this in nice and slow.' We weren't going to take that approach. We said, 'OK, front-end load, put it all in, see how much they can handle, see how well they can handle it, and we'll take inventory as we go.'"

Buckeyes making sure veteran offense has a spring in its step during drills | cleveland.com

 

[martinss01]

Let's be realistic for a second.
Your JT and your looking at the whole offensive line coming back and more cohesive. Your seeing the best depth at running back you've had at OSU.
Do you really think we'll see another Rose Bowl-like passing game any time soon?
Uh, don't think so.

thats a pretty safe bet considering we don't have many oregon's on the schedule this year. but i don't see us passing for less than 100 yrds many times this season either. jt has proved the playbook opens when the offense has proved they can handle it. i think the rose bowl went a long way to doing exactly that. this isn't going to be last years offense.

 

[DaddyBigBucks]

Someone at CFN weighs in on the OSU Offense:

After last year?s aerial explosion in the Rose Bowl, many fans and writers alike seem to believe that Terrelle Pryor?s coming out party will result in a ?shock and awe? campaign this year of five wide-outs and one-back sets. While Pryor certainly had arguably his best game as a Buckeye, there are a few reasons to believe that this season might best resemble a calculated, efficient operation rather than a blitzkrieg.
...

 

[Poe McKnoe]

So I just realized that this is probably the offensive line for 2010:

LT: Adams
LG: Boren
C: Brewster
RG: Browning
RT: Shugarts

That makes me happy. That is all.

I never talk about how the offensive line is going to be good, but this year has the potential to be REALLY good.

Hopefully.

 

[Buckskin86]

Pieces in place for wide-open offense
With plenty of experienced players returning, could Tressel break away from running game?
Sunday, May 9, 2010
By Ken Gordon
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Neal C. Lauron | DISPATCH
Quarterback Terrelle Pryor, coming off an MVP performance in the Rose Bowl, directed a no-huddle offense in the spring game. He also was allowed to call plays at the line.

Chris Russell | DISPATCH
Tight end Jake Stoneburner could add a dimension that the OSU offense has been missing under coach Jim Tressel.

This spring, Terrelle Pryor was discussing how comfortable he now feels running the offense when he said, "Then you've got to worry about the shot clock."

Wait a minute. Did he just drop a basketball reference while talking about the 30-second clock between plays?

"We call it the shot clock," the Ohio State quarterback said, grinning.

The term conjures images of a fast-break, fast-paced offense, which would be shocking to see coming from Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel.

If anyone thought Pryor just had a slip of the tongue, the spring game provided hints of what the Buckeyes might be working on for this fall. Pryor spent his three series directing a no-huddle offense. Coaches often simply gave him a formation, and let him scan the defense and call the actual play.

And of course, OSU's Rose Bowl win over Oregon featured Pryor throwing a career-high 37 passes.

All of that would seem to offer tantalizing clues that Tressel must have enough trust in Pryor, who's now entering his third year as a starter, to employ a much more wide-open offensive style.

"It's all as you grow," Pryor said. "I remember back in the day, when Troy (Smith) started off handing the ball off, and then as he got older, (his role) expanded.

"So I feel after you start getting a little respect that you have to earn, it's all about decision-making. And I feel if you make great decisions, you can toss the ball a lot."

If ever a season were set up for the Buckeyes to be more adventurous on offense, this would seem to be it.

OSU returns nine starters offensively. Seven experienced linemen return (four of them starters), providing hope that the Buckeyes can avoid their recent early-season struggles up front.

The top two receivers, four tailbacks and two fullbacks are back.

Ohio State football: Pieces in place for wide-open offense | BuckeyeXtra

 

[DaddyBigBucks]

I'm usually not around during the off-season; but this year is different. The 2010 Buckeyes have tremendous potential all over the roster. The prospects of whether that potential will be realized should be worthy of a great deal of discussion. This thread should be the most fertile ground for discussion during the summer of 2010.

For starters, Pryor enters the season with more experience in the Tressel system under his belt than any quarterback in the Tressel era. Let me say that again... No quarterback has ever started the season with more experience in Tressel's system under his belt than what TP starts 2010 with.

Krenzel in '03 you say? No. He started The Game and the ill-fated Bowl in 2001, then all of 2002.

How about Troy in '06? Still no. He started half of '04 and most of '05.

TP is the only quarterback to start a season having already started 1 and 3/4 seasons under the Tressel system.

Then there is the fact that TP is among the favorites for the Heisman Trophy. People out there with no affinity for the Buckeyes whatsoever are calling TP the front runner. Some of you will scoff, but it is being discussed seriously by people who think and write about college football for a living.

That brings me to the point where this discussion is... or is it a discussion? In the tags, the idea was put forward that this might be the best OSU offense under Tressel. As this was done with a question mark, it seemed only to deem it a possibility. Other tags though, seem to suggest that it is so far out of the realm of possibility that it is not worthy of discussion. Either it's "loopy" to simply ask the question, or it's a legitimate question. I'll take the latter side in this discussion of course. If I accepted the former, there would be no discussion.

Clearly, the only previous offense that we need to consider here is the 2006 offense. Only one other offense in the Tressel era was top 25 in scoring offense or Differential Scoring Offense (DSO), and that was 2005. In 2006, the Buckeyes were #6 in the nation in scoring offense and #5 in DSO. So the question is, can the 2010 Buckeyes be top-5?

To put it another way: Can the 2010 Buckeyes be the first offense in the Tressel era to average 35 points per game against FBS competition? I think it is possible. I won't claim expectation one way or the other until I've seen the boys play, but the topic is at least worthy of discussion in my opinion.

Or do we want to consider yards gained and not just points? If so, the bar is even lower. No Tressel offense has ever placed in the Top 25 in Total offense or Differential Total Offense (considering only FBS vs. FBS games). Can this edition of the Ohio State Offense be the first? I think it can, and I'll go on record right now that I think they will.

As already discussed, TP is entering the year with experience. We saw him calling plays at the line in the Spring Game. He has more experience than Troy had in 2006, so I don't see why they wouldn't let him call plays (audibles) at the line at least to the extent that Troy did that year.

But it's more than just Pryor. There are 9 starters back on offense. And let's face it, the two spots from whence starters departed (LT and TE) just might be upgraded despite new starters taking over. There is, in my opinion, a legitimate possibility that there will be an upgrade in the level of play at all 11 positions on the offense over last year.

Without question, this year marks the best opportunity for improvement on offense in the Tressel era. The only other year when such an improvement was possible was 2005. From 2004 to 2005, the Buckeyes improved by 8 and 1/2 points per game. The Buckeyes can miss that mark by 2 and 1/2 points and still be the first team in the Tressel era to average 35 points per game.

Call me crazy, even loopy; but I think it is very possible that the Buckeyes will have their best offense since 1998 this year.

 

[BB73]

Marcus Hartman blogs about the 2010 offense.

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