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Vo. 1, No. 14
This week in Ohio State football, we are suffering from rivalry brain.
Like drowning in it pretty much.
At least I am. I don’t know about you, but this is my newsletter, so I guess that’s what matters most for the purposes of this exercise.
What should we expect to see Saturday when the Buckeyes take the field in Ann Arbor?
I mean, there are some obvious answers from the data, and I think they mostly line up with the eye test.
We will get to those later in this piece… but does it even matter?
How can I trust my eyes (or data, or logic…) when they have also been laid upon the last 35 or so editions of The Game?
Last year was the biggest upset in the history of the rivalry, but I never took any edition of The Game as a gimme for Ohio State even when the Wolverines were down in the dumps. Some path to victory, however harebrained, always seemed to exist in the 2000s and 2010s (even if Michigan rarely actually found it).
Certainly there are paths to victory for Michigan this Saturday even if they mostly require breadcrumbs from Ohio State starting with the coaching staff.
So let’s start there (after the ad break).
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Will Ryan Day have the Buckeyes ready to play their best?
I think everyone agrees that is the biggest question of the week. It trumps who has the better blockers and tacklers. It’s more important than who is in and who is out.
I tend to think Day will do his part.
He seemed to have a good demeanor after the win over Rutgers, and against Tuesday and Wednesday.
He even nearly quoted my favorite author when asked about how the infamous team meeting that followed the loss to Michigan last year and is credited with being the foundation for Ohio State’s playoff run had changed him personally.
“I don't know. You know, we're all a sum of our experiences, and you learn from things and you grow from things and you just try to do everything you can, again, to put your guys in a situation to be successful. And that's it.”
“We’re all the sum of our experiences” made me think of, “Each of us is all the sums he has not counted.”
That is from Thomas Wolfe in his first novel, Look Homeward, Angel (a.k.a. the greatest book ever written).
Wolfe is best known for You Can’t Go Home Again, but this quote is the one that got me hooked when I first came across it in the library and media center at Cedarville High School circa 1999 or so.
The meaning, of course, is not the same, but I still see some overlap.
Wolfe’s quote is about the intertwining of the past, present and future (everything he wrote was), and isn’t that what we’re doing in between football games all season?
Especially this week, we spend all our time looking at what has happened, considering what we know from that and trying to figure out what will be even if those things sometimes have no correlation.
It’s often a fool’s errand, but it’s really all we’ve got, right?
“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted: subtract us into nakedness and night again, and you shall see begin in Crete four thousand years ago the love that ended yesterday in Texas…
“Each moment is the fruit of 40,000 years. The minute-winning days, like flies, buzz home to death, and every moment is a window on all time. This is a moment:”
“Each of us is all the sums he has not counted.” We are what we do next based on what we have done?
Now, back to the football coach:
“And we're going to rely on our experiences going into this week.
“I can't really say [how he has changed]. We all grow. We do things well. We we have our failures, but you got to grow from them and that's it. And so, you know, this team right here is a different team. They have a great look in their eye. I think that's the most important thing here. And so that's the focus.
“And, again, what has happened in the past really has nothing to do with what's going on right now, and what goes on today is the most important thing. And I know it sounds like a cliche again and to say it over and over again, but that has to be it.
“And then we have to go do it in the game. And that's it. We have to field kicks. We have to make our kicks. We have to take care of the football — all the things that we work on because if we don't, we put ourselves at risk. And so that's it. Everyone's got to do their job in making sure we're prepared to go.”
So what does being prepared to go look like?
Weather permitting, it likely means airing it out.
Ohio State’s best path to victory seems fairly obvious. Day needs to have Julian Sayin getting the ball out quickly to avoid Michigan’s pass rush and take advantage of Ohio State’s skill players, especially if the group active Saturday includes Jeremiah Smith and/or Carnell Tate.
In an interesting twist, Michigan is great at preventing big plays but somewhat susceptible to giving up consistent gains (64th in success rate allowed according to CollegeFootballData.com). Ohio State has not relied on big plays much at all this season, so that could work in the Buckeyes’ favor Saturday.
Perhaps Michigan anticipates this and changes its style for this game. Maybe the Wolverines come up and challenge Ohio State’s receivers, consequences be damned (an easier and smarter play if the studs are out, of course).
Or perhaps they give Ohio State light boxes repeatedly and dare them to run. I doubt that happens, but if they do then it’s up to the offensive line to win its individual matchups and the running backs to hit the holes and get all the yardage that is there. (You know, the thing they’ve been working on for the last month or so…)
Michigan needs to do some extraordinary things to win, and the Wolverines very well could. Ohio State needs to play its game and avoid major mistakes — like the ones that gave away valuable points to the Wolverines each of the last two games.
On the other side of the ball, Michigan has a methodical offense, but trying to lean on Ohio State might not be the way to go. Perhaps they also try to push the issue knowing 13 points probably won’t be enough to win this year. That could go very well, or it could backfire.
For every logical conclusion, there is the specter of this being The Game, where logic often goes to die and the opposite of what we expect is actually what happens.
See? Rivalry brain at work…
What else is going on this week?
I began the week examining the mindset for Day and the Buckeyes at Press Pros Magazine.
I also wrote about that from a couple of different angles earlier here, so I guess we got that covered!
And if you ever wondered how often a perfect record has been ruined in this game, how true freshmen quarterbacks have fared or any number of other facts, figures and records, I have you covered here:
For the Associated Press, I wrote a feature on Arvell Reese and Caleb Downs, who give Matt Patricia a lot of options to keep Underwood guessing as to what to expect when the Wolverines have the ball.
And if you want to see for yourself what Day’s demeanor was like, you can always find videos at my YouTube page.
There’s also a preview from the perspective of Day and the players every Wednesday night.
Lastly, please keep sharing this newsletter with anyone you think might be interested!
I depend on you to help this thing grow, and if you can keep clicking those ads that helps me a lot, too, because I get compensation when you do (and you don’t have to do anything else).
As always, thanks for reading! I hope you have a great weekend, and you can look forward to hearing from me after The Game (um, again weather permitting).