September 3 - The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Northern Illinois Recap

Welcome to the first edition of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. It’s my weekly critique of The Ohio State University football performance. Yesterday, OSU beat Northern Illinois 35-22 to kickoff the 2006 campaign.



THE GOOD

• Defensive Speed – OSU has nine new starters on defense. They look faster than last year’s team.


• Kickoffs – Pettrey consistently put the kickoff into the end zone. He has huge shoes to fill, but got off to a good start in this area.


• Few Penalties – The first penalty came with only 2:20 left in first half. OSU had only three penalties in the game.


• Chris Wells – This freshman looked like a slimmed down Pete Johnson the way he fought for the end zone.


• Troy Smith – His numbers speak for themselves, 18-25, 297 yards and 3 TDs.

THE BAD

• Missed tackles – The defense showed its inexperience and rust by attempting too many arm tackles.


• Big plays – The defense gave up a 51-yard run and a 65-yard reception to the speedy Wolfe Garrett. Garrett amassed 285 all-purpose yards. OSU should have put a defensive “Spy” on him. It seems to work well on my XBOX.


• Red Zone play calling - What about a QB bootleg? I heard Smith could run. He only had one rushing attempt in the game.


• Field Goal kicking - OSU was 0-2. I hope it was the weather and the distance and not a harbinger of things to come.

THE UGLY

• Fumbles – OSU fumbled twice as they were going in for scores. You cannot do that and expect to win games.


• New NCAA clock rules – The new NCAA rules reduced the number of plays from 141 to 126 yesterday. That is a 10% reduction. It wasn’t broken and it didn’t get fixed.

My WTF moment came with 7:53 left in the fourth quarter. Tressel decided to change QBs in the middle of a drive. OSU fumbled on the next play. The replay seemed to show that Zwick’s knee was down before the fumble. However OSU did not challenge the call. WTF on the QB change and WTF on the non-use of the replay.

But what really bothered me was that the TV announcers always have to mention Maurice Clarett. Do these same announcers bring up O.J. Simpson during USC games? Guys, move on. We have, Maurice has, and O.J. is still looking for the real killers.


Is Ohio State the real deal and should they be ranked #1? We will know in less than a week, as they invade Texas next Saturday night.