Tressel Tales: 1st Spring Game Was Quintessential Tresselball

Hello and welcome to another edition of Cus Words Sports!

Today we continue The Tressel Tales, a year-long look at the first season of Ohio State football under the direction of head coach Jim Tressel as it unfolded 25 years ago.

The 2001 Oho State football spring game is one of the few in this century I didn’t attend¹, but fortunately we have the trusty Buckeye Sports Bulletin archives to provide a full recap and coverage from every angle.

Those who did go to Crew Stadium — and there were more than 20,000 according to the May issue of BSB — saw a perfect preview of the style of play people would come to know and love from Tressel’s Buckeyes over the next 10 seasons.

Yes, that's right: The top tailbacks carried the ball twice, and the quarterbacks threw it 57 times while running 16 times themselves.

Does that sound like classic Tresselball or what?

Oh, sorry, that’s not the foreshadowing part.

No, the real reason that first spring game made for an appropriate Tressel era prequel is the Scarlet won despite doing nothing on offense for three quarters.

And how did they pull that off? By scoring two touchdowns and a safety as a result of not one, not two but three gaffes by the Gray punting units in the fourth quarter: Return men Bam Childress and Maurice Lee both muffed punts that were recovered by the Scarlet to set up touchdown drives, and in between punter B.J. Sander dropped a punt snap in the end zone that went for a safety.

Yes, really!

Although all these years later no evidence has arisen to prove Tressel engineered this outcome, we can’t rule it out.

We do know he came away pleased with what he saw, though.

Hey, if that is not a Jim Tressel quote, I’ve never heard one!

All right, the actual outcome of a spring game rarely means anything in the long run, and this one is no different.

What else was there to take away from it?

Multiple players talked about the prospect of opening up the offense under their new coach throughout the spring, and the spring game showed they weren’t just making it up.

That serves as a reminder Tressel and offensive coordinator Jim Bollman really had a playbook that included a little bit of everything — they just chose not to use a lot of it very often.

We know now the I formation with twins to the field (both receivers on the wide side) was their favorite way to line up, but in the spring of 2001, anything felt possible.

Just ask redshirt freshman receiver John Hollins:

“I think we’re going to spread it out more. We wanted to get the receivers and quarterbacks some more practice. I know we’ll be mixing it up in fall.”

Well, we’ll see about that, but at least one thing did transfer from the spring game (eventually)…

Entering spring, the only thing most Ohio State fans probably knew about Craig Krenzel was he came from Sterling Heights, Michigan, and that is only because Ohio State recruiting players from that state was and remains rare.

He was part of a four-man quarterback battle headlined by incumbent Steve Bellisari and generally considered the No. 3 guy in the race behind also Scott McMullen, who was already garnering notice for his quick release.

Rick McFadden, a 6-5, 210-pound true freshman from Struthers, also made some headlines in the spring thanks to both is physical stature and being the shiny new toy, so it was easy to ignore Krenzel.

And yet… Krenzel was the guy who made the plays to win the game. He also happened to carry the ball 11 times, another nice bit of foreshadowing if you know how a certain game in Arizona worked out in January 2003.

Krenzel completed only 3 of 10 passes, though one was a 21-yarder to Chris Vance.

He ran four straight times on the game-winning drive, including a 4-yard touchdown on a draw, then later observed the comeback said a lot about the offense, which was assembled by a pregame draft rather than pitting first team offense against first team defense, second team against second team, etc.

Meanwhile, McMullen was 6 for 14 for 42 yards with a touchdown while McFadden went 9 for 13 for 90 yards and a touchdown.

Bellisari was 11 for 17 for 122 yards and two touchdowns, but in one last bit of foreshadowing, he had a chance to play hero following Krenzel’s heroics and went 1-for-5 on the final drive before turning the ball over on downs.

As for the receivers, Vance had only one catch, but he established himself as one of the breakout players of the spring.

Hollins, a Wayne High School graduate who was a significant recruit in the class of 2000, logged six catches for 84 yards to lead the Scarlet while young tight end Ben Hartsock had three catches for 51 yards to lead the gray.

Bellisari also caught a pass that went for a one-yard loss after mysteriously lining up at tailback on two plays on a drive in the third quarter.

On the other side of the ball, Mark Dantonio said he was able to install about 85% of the defensive scheme.

The spring reinforced that Ohio State looked strong up the middle with tackle Mike Collins, all three starting linebackers and both safeties back from John Cooper’s final season.

The new defensive ends — including Will Smith, Darrion Scott and Kenny Peterson — showed promise while cornerback remained a major concern.

All-Big Ten linebacker Joe Cooper had five tackles while Peterson and David Thompson each had two sacks for the Scarlet.

Tressel Tales: Dantonio takes reins of defense

We will break down the offense and the defense further in future issues, but one last thing of note this week.

Another Tressel special, the spring game draft created a fun opportunity for potentially viral content — complete with Tressel on the mic directing the action like a gameshow host — before that was a thing.

It also provided an interesting window into how the players viewed the roster themselves because they were obviously going to draft the best players first — at least the players they saw as the best.

In this case, they went for offensive linemen first because there were only a few proven ones to go around.

After that, Drew Carter was the first receiver picked. He was followed by Vance then Childress.

(Remember seniors were already divvied up on each side.)

At defensive tackle, David Thompson went first, ahead of Tim Anderson, while walk-ons Rob Stover and Raheem Shabazz were both chosen ahead of young scholarship players Will Allen and Thomas Mathews at safety.

Can you imagine a spring game draft nowadays?

Tressel Tales: First hints of what Tresselball would be

That’s all for now, but keep an eye out for This Week in Ohio State Football on Friday and more Tressel Tales in the future!

Thanks for reading!

— Marcus