2019 tOSU Offense (Official Thread)

[ScriptOhio]

Morning Conversational: Is OSU’s Offensive Line Aware of the Concerns?

Any time the starting offensive line in the spring is entirely different than the starting lineup the season before, there are going to be concerns.

That was the situation this past spring for the Buckeyes as they lost four starters and were without starting left tackle Thayer Munford due to a back injury.

Despite the absence of Munford, there were still positives made on the offensive line in the spring. Redshirt sophomore Josh Myers continued to solidify his role at center. Fifth-year senior Branden Bowen established himself wherever he was needed. Redshirt sophomore right guard Wyatt Davis earned raves from the defensive line, which is usually a good sign. Tackles Josh Alabi and Nicholas Petit-Frere did well also.

It was a good spring overall, but Buckeyes’ head coach Ryan Day still left the spring having two major concerns on offense.

“The offensive line, we have four guys to replace there, and so that’s something that is probably the least experienced. That and quarterback are the two for me,” he said. “The O-line just because we lost four real guys there, and Thayer didn’t play in the spring. So how is that all going to look when we get in the preseason. We do have some guy coming in, which is good. The cavalry is coming, which is important, and then quarterback.”

Entire article: https://theozone.net/2019/05/ohio-state-ol-concerns/

 

[ScriptOhio]

 

[ScriptOhio]

OHIO STATE QUARTERBACKS JUSTIN FIELDS, GUNNAR HOAK MUST PUT IN WORK ON THEIR OWN THIS SUMMER TO BE READY TO PLAY THIS FALL

Justin Fields will have been on Ohio State’s campus for less than eight months, while Gunnar Hoak will have been on campus for less than three months, when the Buckeyes open their season against Florida Atlantic at Ohio Stadium on Aug. 31.

That’s far from an ideal amount of time for the top two quarterbacks on Ohio State’s depth chart to be able to learn the Buckeyes’ offense and work with their new coaches and teammates before they need to be ready to play this fall.

The limitations that college football coaches face on how much they are allowed to actually coach their players during the offseason makes that challenge even greater.

While Fields and Hoak are going through lifting and conditioning workouts led by Mickey Marotti and the rest of Ohio State’s strength and conditioning staff this summer, coaches are not allowed to conduct practices that include throwing and catching of actual footballs until preseason camp begins in late July or early August. They’re also limited to just eight hours per week in which they are allowed to meet with players during the summer.

New Ohio State head coach Ryan Day and quarterbacks coach/passing game coordinator Mike Yurcich will take advantage of as much time as they can between now and the start of the season to work with Fields, Hoak and the rest of Ohio State’s quarterbacks and accelerate their preparation as much as possible.

Since they can’t conduct practices or meet with their players as much as they would like right now, though, Day and Yurcich say it is crucial for their quarterbacks to spend time throwing to their receivers and studying the playbook on their own over the next couple months.

“There's throwing on his own with the receivers and the tight ends and running backs; he has to do that the summer on his own, we can't do that with him,” Day said Wednesday when asked specifically about Fields, though he added that was important for all of the Buckeyes’ quarterbacks. “You can actually take the iPads home and watch film, and we have so much film to go off of the last couple of years, studying it in your dorm. So it can't just be the eight hours of the week, it's got to be more than that on his own.”

Day said he has been pleased with the effort Fields has put into lifting and studying film this offseason. He appears to be putting in the necessary offseason work with his receivers, as well; during a portion of Ohio State’s football camp for high school prospects at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center on Thursday, Fields could be seen throwing passes inside the team’s indoor facility to a group of receivers that included seniors K.J. Hill, Austin Mack and Binjimen Victor.

While Fields has only been at Ohio State since January, he at least had the benefit of going through spring practices with the Buckeyes, giving him the opportunity to operate Ohio State’s offense and build rapport with his receivers on the practice field and inside Ohio Stadium during the spring game.

Hoak, who just arrived at Ohio State for summer classes after graduating from Kentucky in May, will not have the opportunity to go through any football practices with the Buckeyes until fall camp, forcing him to learn Ohio State’s offense and get ready for the start of the season on an even more accelerated timeline.

“You only have a certain amount of meeting times, so you hope the individual has that internal drive to be a guy who can work on his own and, really, be a football junkie on his own,” Yurcich said. “You try your best to be organized and maximize your meeting times. It’s important to do that. A lot of that has to be on their own.”

That’s a real cause for concern for the Buckeyes, as their only returning scholarship quarterback from last season is Chris Chugunov, a graduate transfer from West Virginia who was never expected to be a starter when he was brought in last summer. Fields is likely to be the starter and has tremendous upside, but whether he will have a full command of Ohio State's offense when the season begins remains a major question mark, and the Buckeyes need Hoak to be ready to play as needed, too.

Entire article: https://www.elevenwarriors.com/ohio...-on-their-own-this-summer-to-be-ready-to-play

 

[ScriptOhio]

 

[ScriptOhio]

Bleacher Report ranks college football's best WR groups

9. OHIO STATE BUCKEYES

Bleacher Report: "Ohio State must replace more than 2,000 yards and 30 touchdowns, but few programs are better suited for this type of transition. K.J. Hill led the Buckeyes with 56 catches in 2017 and posted a personal-best 865 receiving yards as a junior. Binjimen Victor and Austin Mack both offered 300-yard outputs in reserve roles."

247Sports take: Stacked at the position with several draft picks last season, the Buckeyes made things easy on Dwayne Haskins, who led college football with 50 touchdown passes in 2018. Expect much of the same from the wideout spot this fall to help first-year starter Justin Fields at quarterback. Hill and Victor are players to watch, each capable of 60-plus catches and 1,000 yards with more reps in Columbus.

Entire article: https://247sports.com/college/ohio-...19-Clemson-Tee-Higgins-132809624/#132809624_2

At this point in the preseason, I'll say #9 isn't all that bad. Nobody else in the B1G is in their top 10.

 

[pnuts34]

Bleacher Report ranks college football's best WR groups

9. OHIO STATE BUCKEYES

Bleacher Report: "Ohio State must replace more than 2,000 yards and 30 touchdowns, but few programs are better suited for this type of transition. K.J. Hill led the Buckeyes with 56 catches in 2017 and posted a personal-best 865 receiving yards as a junior. Binjimen Victor and Austin Mack both offered 300-yard outputs in reserve roles."

247Sports take: Stacked at the position with several draft picks last season, the Buckeyes made things easy on Dwayne Haskins, who led college football with 50 touchdown passes in 2018. Expect much of the same from the wideout spot this fall to help first-year starter Justin Fields at quarterback. Hill and Victor are players to watch, each capable of 60-plus catches and 1,000 yards with more reps in Columbus.

Entire article: https://247sports.com/college/ohio-...19-Clemson-Tee-Higgins-132809624/#132809624_2

At this point in the preseason, I'll say #9 isn't all that bad. Nobody else in the B1G is in their top 10.

With only one of the 3 WRs being proven, I'd say 9 is pretty good place to be ranked. This ranking is on pure potential. Because if Mack and Victor can play to their true potential and stay, and match the production of Hill and Olave than we can definitely hang with anyone in the country

 

[ScriptOhio]

 

[ScriptOhio]

FILM STUDY: HOW OHIO STATE REVIVED A STRUGGLING RED ZONE OFFENSE IN THE FINAL MONTH OF THE 2018 SEASON

Despite re-writing countless records last fall, it's not as if Dwayne Haskins and the 2018 Ohio State offense was without its flaws. Though the Buckeyes led the nation in passing yards and trailed only the Oklahoma Sooners in total yards-per-game, there were still areas in which the team struggled.

Though Urban Meyer had always stressed the importance of scoring touchdowns once inside the red zone since taking over the program in 2012, the Buckeyes often fell short in their efforts to do so during what would be his final season in charge. Meyer was so committed to the cause that he put it on the first page of the playbook given to his team each and every season, outlining it in his 'Plan to Win.'

Yet while the Buckeyes had one of the nation's most explosive offenses in 2018, they were one of the worst once inside the 20. Last season, Ohio State entered the red zone on 70 occasions but only scored a touchdown 43 times.

OHIO STATE RED ZONE CONVERSIONS IN URBAN MEYER ERA

YEAR RED ZONE SCORE % NATIONAL RANK

2012 88.2% 16th
2013 95.2% 4th
2014 85.1% 49th
2015 82.5% 81st
2016 87.1% 40th
2017 89.7% 23rd
2018 77.1% 116th

After years of relying on the running abilities of Braxton Miller and J.T. Barrett, who combined to rack up 68 rushing touchdowns from the quarterback position under Meyer's watch, the switch to a pocket passer like Haskins meant the team would have to adapt. Through the first 10 games, however, that transformation had yet to take place.

Capped by a miserable, two-week stretch against Minnesota and Purdue in October during which the Buckeyes failed to score a touchdown after entering the red zone on eight straight attempts, it was clear that the OSU offense was in trouble. While the Buckeyes saw failures on both sides of the ball in their 49-20 loss at West Lafayette, it certainly didn't help that they entered the red zone five times that night and came away with only a pair of field goals while the Boilermakers found the end zone on all three of their trips.

After that loss, panic began to set in. Though Haskins was racking up passing yards like no other signal caller in scarlet and gray had done before, many in central Ohio were clamoring for a two-quarterback system. The reason for such a shift was clear: without a running threat at QB, the Buckeye running game was too predictable, allowing teams to focus on stuffing the efforts of J.K. Dobbins and Mike Weber.

"Running Dwayne down there really isn't as much of an option as it used to be with J.T.," Ryan Day said to the press that following week. But while backup Tate Martell did get a handful of chances to play near the goal line come November, his presence wasn't what revived the OSU red zone offense.

After weeks of hand-wringing, the Buckeyes quietly turned things around at just the right time. During the final four games, they scored touchdowns on 17 of 24 red zone attempts, finding ways to pound the ball in once near the goal line.

First and foremost, an added diversity in scheme helped revive the running game. Though Ohio State has long run the common Power scheme in which the backside guard pulls around to lead a runner through the front-side B-gap, they added a C-gap variation often only seen in Wing-T systems.

While everyone from the center to the tight blocks down on the front side, the pulling guard kicks out the defensive end, creating a crease between he and the tight end and allowing the back to hit the edge. As seen below in the Rose Bowl, however, this lateral flow also created cutback lanes that allowed a back with the vision and agility of Dobbins to bend the play back and waltz into the end zone.



Though Haskins wasn't much of a runner, Day and the staff still found ways to incorporate him into the option game and create a numbers advantage near the goal line. Instead of taking a passive role and only keeping to run himself if the defense committed to stopping Dobbins or Weber, the Buckeyes became the aggressors and forced defenders to commit to Haskins via the speed option.



Entire article: https://www.elevenwarriors.com/ohio...offense-in-the-final-month-of-the-2018-season

 

[ScriptOhio]

Why Hasn’t Justin Fields Been Named The Starter Yet?

When Ohio State Head Coach Ryan Day added former Georgia quarterback Justin Fields from the transfer portal in February, all assumptions were that Fields was going to be the guy and would become the starting quarterback at Ohio State, contingent on his NCAA hardship waiver being approved.

The question now becomes is that if that was the case then why hasn’t he been named the starting quarterback yet?

Fields, a 5-star quarterback, No. 2 overall in the 2018 class, was one of the highest-ranked quarterbacks Ohio State has ever had and he came to OSU in its time of need, just as the Buckeyes were losing three scholarships quarterbacks from the 2018 quarterback room.

On January 7, Dwayne Haskins announced he was entering the NFL Draft. On January 10, Tate Martell’s name appeared in the transfer portal and he transferred to the University of Miami just six days later. Fields announced his transfer to Ohio State on January 4 and his immediate eligibility was approved on February 8th. In April, after competing with Fields for the starting job, Matthew Baldwin announced he was leaving Ohio State and put his name in the transfer portal.

At one point in time, Fields was the only option for Ohio State as it was just him and graduate transfer Chris Chugunov on scholarship in the quarterback room.

Although on April 27, Kentucky graduate quarterback Gunnar Hoak announced his transfer to the Buckeyes. The assumption has still been that Fields will be the starting quarterback for Ohio State this fall. But Day said that he will not just be given that role, no matter his pedigree.

“One of our core philosophies is that you don’t just get given the starting position, you have to earn everything you get around here and he hasn’t done that,” Day said.

“I think the hard thing for everybody to realize is that he’s coming off of the heels of Dwayne Haskins. So I know a lot of people think Dwayne went from 0-60 so fast and he just kind of jumped into the Heisman Trophy race and that all happened well that was a very different scenario than Justin Fields,” Day said.

“So Justin hasn’t won the job yet, I mean that’s the first step in all of this. I know everybody wants to get way ahead of themselves and start talking about the Heisman, but how about win the starting quarterback job first? You can’t win the job when you’re still learning the offense.”

Day said that Fields is a step ahead of Hoak in terms of learning the offense because Hoak just got to Columbus and didn’t get to go through a spring with the Buckeyes, but the two will still be competing when camp opens on August 2.

“August is going to be one of those times where we have to move,” Day said. “We have to take big steps forward. The first time we play in that first game the quarterback is going to be throwing his first pass and then his first touchdown pass. All of the things are for the first time.”

Entire article: https://theozone.net/2019/07/why-hasnt-justin-fields-been-named-the-starter-yet/

 

[ScriptOhio]

Football: Young receivers hope to help replicate 2018 success

Strip away every reception by non-wide receivers on Ohio State’s 2018 offense and the Buckeyes still break the team passing record by 612 yards in 2018.

Then redshirt-sophomore quarterback Dwayne Haskins completed 70 percent of his throws and earned a trip to New York City as a Heisman Trophy finalist, but he enjoyed tremendous contributions from his receiving corps. Three of the top four players at the position, in terms of yardage, are gone — two selected before round four of the 2019 NFL draft.

Now, sophomore quarterback Justin Fields rolls in from Georgia with a mixed bag of veterans and unproven high-end talent trying to adjust to a new quarterback who’s learning the offense.

“I had three great leaders in the receiver room. I followed them,” redshirt senior receiver K.J. Hill said. “Now I want to fill those shoes and have the young guys look up to me like I looked up to them, so we can keep the standard in the receiving room and raise the bar. ”

Hill was selected by coach Ryan Day to represent the program at Big Ten Media Day, a returning senior who stands 48 catches from eclipsing David Boston’s school career receptions record.

Joining him are seniors Austin Mack and Binjimen Victor, each possessing more than 20 games’ experience at the position while in Columbus. They started as part of a six-man receiving rotation in 2018.

When it comes to upperclassmen, however, those are the only three wideouts to have started a game at Ohio State — and Day still plans to go at least six deep.

“When you look at who we have coming back, I think we have a chance for that same thing,” Day said. “Not as much experience, but when you look at Austin and Ben, they’ve played there before, K.J. has got a ton of experience, and then Chris Olave came on at the end of the season. So we want to get to that six, seven-man rotation if we can.”

That’s why Hill, Mack and Victor have placed an emphasis on bringing the younger players up to speed as fast as possible, to keep a fresh, productive receiving corps that grinds defenses down into the fourth quarter. It aligns with a vision Day stated earlier in the press conference.

“We’ve been grabbing the young receivers to come out, workout, show them the ropes really,” Hill said.

After being asked what young players stood out to him, Hill beamed and started rattling off names. Redshirt sophomores Jaylen Harris and Elijah Gardiner combine for four catches in two years each in Columbus.

Hill forecasts a change in that trend.

“[They’re both] turning from a boy to a man,” he said. “I can see it in their eyes, they’re thinking different.”

Many are anxious to see if sophomore receiver Chris Olave can replicate the success he found after replacing an injured Mack at the end of 2018.

Playing as a true freshman, Olave dismantled the nation’s No. 1 pass defense in Michigan for two 24-yard touchdown grabs, each showcasing a unique trait within his abilities. The first score came on a short crossing route where he simply outran the defense playing man coverage behind, the second on a deep ball that he tracked through the air around a defender.

In one final showcase of speed, he blocked a third quarter punt that resulted in another touchdown.

“We already knew he could do that, because we seen it every day in practice, he just got his opportunity and made the most of it,” Hill said. “I expect a big season from Chris, we’re gonna need him. Chris been out there also, with us, throwing and catching, and putting in the extra work.”

Entire article: https://www.thelantern.com/2019/07/football-young-receivers-hope-to-help-replicate-2018-success/

The Lantern is still cranking out the articles:

 

[MGMT]

Si what’s your predicted 6-deep at receiver?

Hill
Mack
Olave
Wilson
Harris
Victor

Perhaps swap Victor with Olave. Olave has shown a bit more, imo. Mack has some bouncing back to do.

Definitely some talented question marks; will make for an interesting camp.

And no, I didn’t mean to start my post with Spanish.

 

[1926Buckeyes]

Si what’s your predicted 6-deep at receiver?

Hill
Mack
Olave
Wilson
Harris
Victor

Perhaps swap Victor with Olave. Olave has shown a bit more, imo. Mack has some bouncing back to do.

Definitely some talented question marks; will make for an interesting camp.

And no, I didn’t mean to start my post with Spanish.

X - Mack, Victor

Y - Olave, Wilson

H - Hill, Gill

Seems like Gill has been getting some praise, and he seems closest to Campbell in speed, just more used to playing WR at this stage.

Also would expect McCall to play into the H rotation, but only occasionally, so Gill should get more snaps at the position.

 

[Oh8ch]

Don't sleep on Saunders.

 

[Jaxbuck]

X - Mack, Victor

Y - Olave, Wilson

H - Hill, Gill

Seems like Gill has been getting some praise, and he seems closest to Campbell in speed, just more used to playing WR at this stage.

Also would expect McCall to play into the H rotation, but only occasionally, so Gill should get more snaps at the position.

Don't forget the use of Ruckert as a "big H"

I think the option to have a security blanket like that for a new QB could be huge

 

[bukIpower]

Don't forget the use of Ruckert as a "big H"

I think the option to have a security blanket like that for a new QB could be huge

Came here to say that.

The TEs will play a lot this year considering how we also want to lean on Dobbins early.