September 17 - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Cincinnati Recap

Welcome to this week’s edition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. It’s my weekly critique of The Ohio State University football performance. OSU beat Cincinnati 37-7 to maintain it’s #1 ranking and improve their record to 3-0. The team started slow and was only ahead 13-7 at halftime.

THE GOOD

• Scoring Defense – OSU held Cincinnati to 7 points. The scoring defense is now 8th in the country. The defense accumulated 8 sacks.


• Turnovers – Offense had no turnovers for the week in a row.


• Troy Smith – He put up “Heisman Candidate” numbers for the third week in a row. 21-30, and 2 TDs.


• Antonia Pittman – He finally got rolling with a 155 yard performance and a 9.7 yard per carry average.


• Special Teams – 3 for 3 in FGs.

THE BAD

• Missed tackles – The defense again missed too many tackles. It improved over week one and two, but I’m concerned as the season goes deeper.


• Teddy Ginn – He does too much juking and jiving and carrying the football like a loaf of bread. North- South running will get the job done.

THE UGLY

• Penalties – OSU has eight penalties for the second game in the game.


• The turf – Some fungus made the OSU playing surface look more like my back yard than the premier venue in the country.

My WTF moment came late in the second half. Conventional wisdom was the Ohio State would not “run up the score” (see September 10 post.) My wisdom was determined to be un-conventional. With 1:14 to go in the game and OSU up 34-7, Tressel decided to kick a 52-yard field goal. The successful kick put OSU up by 30 points and busted the Las Vegas betting line that had Ohio State favored by 29.5 points.

This week, Penn State comes to town. I’ll be attending the festivities and will be “Room-Gating” at the Holiday Inn. Those that will be in town are welcome to attend.

The early line has Ohio State favored by 16.5 points. I have no idea what to expect. Penn State lost to Notre Dame 41-17 and Notre Dame lost to Michigan 47-21.

As they say, “On any given Saturday…”

GO BUCKS.