The Blog of Electric Mayhem

So I went to the Texas-Ohio State game this weekend with my buddy Adam. We had a hell of a time, as we caught Robert E. Lee's game Friday night against Ohio's Colerain (sp?) High School, then the UT-Ohio State game on Saturday, then the Cleveland Browns home opener against the Cincinatti Bengals.

Here's my take on the Texas-Ohio State game. We came out strong, then Ohio State proceeded to whomp all over us, but never quite knocked us out, so we just lingered there waiting for an opportunity. Ohio State made about 4 mistakes that opened up the opportunity to win the game:

1. Removed Troy Smith (their 2nd QB), as he was running all over us for the 2nd quarter, and good portions of the 3rd too. I think Tressel took him out because they were unable to punch it in for the TD in the redzone, at least that’s what the OSU fans were thinking where I was sitting. Problem was, Zwyck had absolutely no pocket presence, as everytime he was in there we got great penetration and sacked (or hurried) him several times.

2. Attempted the 51-yd field goal. If they’d have punted, we would have gotten the ball most likely at the 20 yd line, at best. Our starting field position was horrid the entire game, and they could have stuffed us with a punt. Instead they went for the long field goal, missed, and gave us what was probably our best starting field position of the day somewhere around our 40. With the pass interference call that put us on the 48, and set up the drive for the score.

3. The fumble, unbelievably bad for obvious reasons.

4. All the fans, myself included, thought that OSU should have let us score the TD, rather than stop us on 4th-and-goal on the 1/2-yd line. If we scored the TD, they’d get the ball kicked to their special teams with 36 seconds to go, and their return man (Ginn) was averaging getting up to the OSU 40-50 yard line, which would at least have given them the opportunity to tie things up with some time on the clock. Instead they stuffed us, got the ball on the 1-yd line, and subsequently got sacked for a safety because Troy Smith (the QB who was having difficulty with the pass!!!) spent too long waiting for his WR’s to get open.

So yeah, Ohio State made a bevy of bad late-game decisions, but what killed them was that their defensive secondary was manning up on our WR’s, who were running wind sprints every other play, and their linebackers were stuffing the gaps to stop Vince on the run. That left nobody to cover the flats and gaps in the mid-field, where Vince got most of his passing yards with dump-passes to Jamaal Charles. Those passes to the flats absolutely killed OSU in the 3rd and 4th quarters, as they just ran out of people to cover that area sufficiently.



Here's a pic of a crazy kid who was screaming like all hell before and during the game. I sure wish I'd taken a picture of him in tears at the end. He reminded me of Chunk from The Goonies.