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Vo. 1, No. 28
This week in Ohio State football, we learned Julian Sayin can grow facial hair, at least some facial hair anyway.
Was that the most important development?
No, but it might not be far off.
Julian Sayin, unshaved
Fortunately there are 12 more practices and the spring game to come over the next five weeks…
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Seeing how guys develop from one year to the next is obviously a big part of covering college football.
This is Sayin’s third spring in Columbus, but we did not really see much of him that first year.
He was still pretty baby-faced last year so this feels like his true sophomore season.
He came into the interview room Thursday looking like a pretty different guy, but only time will tell how his game has evolved.
Unfortunately he’s already too well trained for media interviews to say much worth quoting, but we did find out he’s put on a few pounds of muscle, is willing to run more when necessary and wants to learn from his mistakes last season.
The running quarterback discussion has gotten kinda weird at Ohio State over the past decade or so.
I feel like we’ve come full circle two or three times by now since I started actually getting paid to watch the Buckeyes.
Before that, I watched John Cooper treat running quarterbacks as a curiosity, which was not uncommon in the 1980s and ‘90s. (There were offseason stories about how they were going to revamp the offense for Steve Bellisari; that meant more sprint-outs.)
Jim Tressel’s quarterbacks often came in two distinct flavors: Athletes learning to play QB and traditional drop-back guys (Troy Smith and Justin Zwick in 2002, for instance). He liked to do it that way so he could give both types of looks to the defense on the scout team (depending on who was next on the schedule), plus I think the floor was higher with the drop-back passers while the athletic guys had more potential.
Later on in Tressel’s tenure, he made mobility more of a non-negotiable in recruiting in a nod to the way offenses were evolving, but he and his staff never made the conversion to a true spread offense.
That took hiring Urban Meyer, who inherited Braxton Miller from Tressel. That turned out to be a perfect pairing, which did not come as much of a surprise.
(In an ironic twist, Meyer was on the call for ESPN when Miller made his Ohio State debut in 2011. Even though Joe Bauserman started and actually played well, I’ve always pictured Meyer in the booth seeing Braxton and feeling like Tim McGraw when he sees the girl in “Something Like That” for the first time — it was even Labor Day weekend, and BBQ was part of the media menu. “A heart don’t forget something like that”? No, it does not…)
Since Ryan Day arrived as offensive coordinator, Ohio State is back to passing being the most important thing by far again for the quarter back with running as an after thought.
Truly that is the case insomuch as it is thought about, but not until long after everything else.
That begs the question: Should it be considered earlier?
Probably not.
People worry too much about Ohio State quarterbacks running now. They aren’t designed to do it, so they don’t, but they should probably run a tad more than they do.
Just never missing open receivers would probably be more valuable in Sayin’s development, though, and that is even on the table.
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We did not get to speak to coordinators Matt Patricia or Arthur Smith, but Day provided some insight into why he likes the way the staff is structured.
Long story short: He wants to be able to focus on everything going on in the program and needs those guys to manage their halves of the staff.
(To wit, Day was pretty hands-on during practice, including getting into a ball security drill with the running backs.)
As a bonus, Smith and Patricia have a lot of good ideas regarding football strategy, but the general staff infrastructure might be more important. A lot goes into game-planning, and the assistants need to be doing grunt work so the coordinator is able to best utilize the talent on hand against the specific strengths and weaknesses of the opponent every week.
Being able to tell recruits they have “an NFL model” probably doesn’t hurt either, even if they might not even fully comprehend what that means.
As far as actual football, it’s hard to learn much from the two hours we got to see of practice.
That is sort of by design since most of it is stretching and individual drills, but we do at least see how guys move and get a general idea of what the depth chart is to begin with.
Of course most of the guys look good in individual drills. They were recruited because they have elite athletic ability.
I will say the offensive linemen were definitely working a lot on combo blocks (like for zone blocking) and the quarterbacks and running backs and running backs were working a lot on taking a snap and handing off from under center for what that is worth.
We saw some of the transfers definitely get involved. Christian Alliegro, the linebacker from Wisconsin, was with the first team defense at times (along with Payton Pierce and TJ Alford).
Safeties Earl Little Jr. (Florida State) and Terry Malone (Duke) had some run with the No. 1 defense in 7 on 7, as one would expect (with LeRoy Roker moving up from second team), but there is a long time to go before the season-opener and lots is likely to changes…
That’s all for this week, but if you like what you’re reading, please share the link on social media or send someone this link.
NOTE: While both basketball teams are set to playin the NCAA Tournament, Ohio State football will be off next week for spring break so we’ll probably skip a week of TWiOSUFB. You can look for some March Madness coverage, though, especially with the women’s team likely to be playing at home in the first two rounds.
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