Statistical Analysis, Part 4: Ohio State Offense and the Prediction

The fourth and final part of the statistical analysis of each unit in the Texas-Ohio State Fiesta Bowl. Part one dealt with the Buckeye defense, part two dealt with the Texas offense, and part three covered the Longhorn defense. Finally, we deal with the much-maligned (and justifiably so) Buckeye offense.
So many pies, so little time.

This won't be an easy column to write. Throughout the majority of its history, Ohio State has never been a versatile offensive team. If it can't run the ball, it usually cannot win. I'm not sure why we're so shockingly consistent in having a stellar running game with a meh, but not terrible passing game. With the exception of a few years under Walt Harris' explosive, talent-laden offenses in the 90's, this has been the case. It hasn't always been just three yards and a cloud of dust, but when the going got tough, that's what it would go back to more often than not. Brian Cook, dirty hippie and MGoBlogger extraordinare, quantified Michigan's conservative offensive schemes as "throwing rock", because rock always wins and paper and scissors are for commie faggots. Not his exact language, but you get the idea. It began with Bo for Michigan, and it began with Woody for the good guys. It hasn't ended yet, and won't change under Jim Tressel, barring a cataclysmic offensive coordinator hire and the ceding of playcalling duties to said offensive coordinator.

It wasn't considered hyperbole in the preseason magazine to label this the most talented team Jim Tressel has coached, and all the accolades were not reserved for future first rounders James Laurinaitis and Malcolm Jenkins. The offense was seen as a complete package that wouldn't put its defense in bad positions and generally get the job done "managing the game", as the cliche so often runs. It was expected to do a very good job of what Jim Tressel asks his offenses to do, and in the end, it kindasorta did, but in the ugliest fashion it could manage (pun not intended). What was surprising was the frequency with which the offense utterly failed; there is That One Game Out West, the Penn State slugfest, and even the Purdue game. Purdue gave up 41 points to Michigan people. Michigan. The offense alternated between mediocre and bad, which is mostly fine for Tressel, because mediocre has described every offense not led by Troy Smith under his direction.

Time for the wonktastic Google Docs chart. Apologies. Again, I'm discounting the Youngstown game, for all the obvious reasons.



So, yeah, this shouldn't surprise any of you. Ohio State's passing game is anemic, with flashes of competence. In fact, the only times it passed for more yards than the opposing defenses typically allowed, it lost. Thankfully, only one of those games can be attributed to a team letting up off the pedal: USC was up 21-3 at halftime and knew it merely needed to breathe to win in the second half. However, this is not a particularly inspiring set of statistics. There are some things to consider: in blowouts like NW and MSU, and in relatively one-sided affairs like Minnesota and Illinois, Tressel abandons the pass once he gets up ten or more. The passing statistics are softened by Tressel's innate cro-magness, the id within him that believes anything beyond a 10-point vic is achieved only by running up the score. When Ohio State needed a passing game, against Penn State, it had a good deal of success. Of course, Mark Sanchez showed that's not a particularly tall task just last night, but it isn't entirely hopeless for Ohio State. I think that when needed, Jim Tressel can come up with a reasonable facsimile of a passing game. I think he has learned at least a little bit from the Florida debacle in that respect; Ohio State moved the ball through the air fairly well against USC, Penn State, and even last year in the title game against LSU. Of course, it could be argued with two of those three that most of those yards came with Ohio State passing (or attempting to pass) its way out of a deficit. Regardless, I think that if forced to, Ohio State can move the ball through the air against Texas; it did reasonably well against a far better pass D in Penn State.

The problem is the running game. Texas' defense is downright nasty against the run. It's better than Penn State, which does not bode well for the Ohio State running attack. But as you can see, Ohio State went on a tear on the ground in its last three games. One game was against a bad rush D in Illinois, a mediocre one in Texas, and a rather good (top 40) rush defense in Northwestern. If the offensive line plays about as well as it did in the last three games, Ohio State has a very good shot at the upset.

As a final sidebar before I move onto the prediction; has anyone else noticed that a lot of the bowl season has seen the supposedly stellar Big 12 QBs struggling against OOC defenses? Chase Daniel looked lost for most of the game against Northwestern, Graham Harrell threw two picks and attempted nearly 60 passes against Ole Miss and lost, and Zac Robinson dropped a deuce into the Oregon secondary. I'm not calling the Big 12 "overrated" anytime soon, mostly due to hatred of the term, but it hasn't been an impressive postseason for its signal callers.

Of course, I'd die if Teeps threw four touchdowns to two picks against the 'Horns, as Harrell did against DAREBBAHS, so perhaps I'm making a mountain out of a molehill. It's as encouraging to me as the Big Ten's postseason struggles in general are for Texas fans.

So, a prediction. I've worked on these columns for the better part of a month, and I still don't think I have a great feel for the game. Why? Because I did similar things - for shiggles, mostly, not for blogging - for the Florida and LSU debacles, and predicted games far different from the way they ended up shaking out. I thought Ohio State would trounce Florida, and lose close to the Tigers, and was wrong both times.

So, five chances for me to look like a jackalope come Tuesday:

- Less than 100 yards rushing for Beanie Wells
- More than 200 yards passing for Terrelle Pryor
- "Overrated" chants begin at 10:00 left in the third quarter. Mark May climaxes at 9:50.
- The Buckeyes will pull a Tiller put up a garbage touchdown or two, inspiring Texas to put one last TD on the board to make a point
- Final score: Texas 44, Ohio State 27

Sittin' on top of the world, part 1

The first in a three part series about - you guessed it - the last three years of Ohio State football

November 18, 2006. If you're an Ohio State fan and that date does not resonate with you in some way, you are dead to me, and the rest of the fan base. Number one versus number two, two evenly matched, excellent teams trading body blows for four quarters and the good guys emerging victorious. I was sitting there, Section 10B, row 13, seat 35, both arms raised in the air in a show of absolute joy - all my doubts, fears, and questions about the team erased with this one seemingly final triumph - as Antonio Pittman took the ball left for a first down, defiantly raising his muscular arm into the air and extending his index finger into the crisp autumn Columbus air. Only one more game to go and then we can officially call this the golden era of Ohio State football.

I was also there, couch, middle of my living room, Worthington, Ohio on January 8th, 2007, when the courage of men failed. When we forsook our friends and broke all bonds of fellowship. An hour of wolves and shattered shields when the age of men came crashing down.

Alright, it wasn't that bad. But nonetheless, the dream season came to an end with both the deadening bang of 41-14 and the whimper of David Patterson crying on the sidelines. 22 angry alligators swallowed up the Book of Dreams before the last page could be written. I bear Florida no grudges - they took advantage of our weaknesses and played to their strengths. Despite what people say about them, the Gator fans who lived in Columbus showed a lot of class with their win, even when the final score essentially demanded a heavy round of razzing for their Ohio State fan friends. I can't say I wouldn't have talked occasional shit to them had the score been reversed, though I know I would have done it facetiously.

The ensuing offseason was an odd one. 41-14 was the 4114lb gorilla in the room, taking a giant dump all over great memories from the win at Texas and Buckageddon and flinging monstrous flecks of shit at optimism for the upcoming season, which looked to be a year of heavy rebuilding before the big one in 2008.

But there was an undeniable seed planted. Whatever worked against a down Big Ten and a rebuilding Texas didn't work - like, at all - against a Florida team that struggled to put away basically everyone it played. Florida walked into Tempe and beat #1 Ohio State, with Troy, Teddy Ballgame, Gonzo, Little Animal, MJ, Alex Boone, and Beanie freaking Wells by as much as it had beaten Southern Miss (Dr. S, if you're reading this, I mean no offense). While many fans were willing to call the game a fluke, blaming it on Troy Smith and his tasty cheeseburgers, and the offensive line and their tasty baconchocolatecakecoronoarystravaganzas, and the general fact that most of the time no one gives a team a change in a game, said chance-less team comes out and after four quarters, all of the favored's team base are belong to them. Personally, I didn't know what to think. My Scout and Rivals-addled 17 year old brain called it was "a fluke", insisting that 9 times out of ten Ohio State would win that game. This is what Scout does to you, people. That is your brain on Scout. I stopped reading and contributing consistently to Scout the day after the championship game. I couldn't bring myself to stop reading and posting altogether until sometime in the next season, unfortunately.

2006 ended in disappointment. 2007 didn't have much promise, being a rebuilding year with seemingly tough games at Penn State and Michigan. If there was any time to be fatalistic about the team if not the program, this was probably it. I missed the boat. I didn't think the team would be great, but I didn't think the program was dead either. Just another 10-2 season and a BCS game, no?

Mardy Gilyard's name rhymes with retar- oh, wait.

So, I was looking to do a very juvenile, sophomoric hitpiece on Cincinnati Bearcats Wide Receiver Mardy Gilyard for his comments in this video:



(I don't know what's with the white space on the video above, apparently directly copying the embed code from palestra breaks the internets)


Having heard of him only in passing ESPN highlights prior to this game, I was getting ready to light into him for calling out a team that met his own as recently as 2006 in a 37-7 Ohio State pasting. Gilyard, for some reason, had redshirted that year (likely out of fear of being covered by the truely fearsome - I'm dead serious raight hurr - Antonio Smith, a former walk-on). Anyway, prior to finding the video embedded above, I found this:



And I stopped. I had an entire diatribe cooked up specifically for Mardy McFly Gilyard. Instead, I'll talk about one thing he said and approach it reasonably. Have no fear: "reason" and "rationality" have little place in Ohio State fandom, and accordingly, will be shown the door - for a while - after this post.

Gilyard alleges that UC is seen as a little brother to big bad Ohio State. Not only has no one on Ohio State's current roster or coaching staff labeled them as such, but Cincinnati football is so far removed from the football consciousness of the state that the last time these teams met, no one considered it a rivalry. Like, at all. Cincinnati scored the first touchdown and immediately began supplying the butt to Troy, Teddy and Co. and Ohio State won in a walk typical of a MACrifice.

This all happened after Cincinnati nearly knocked Special K and the Silver Bullets' title run clean off the tracks in 2002, when a last-minute interception prevented a Cincinnati touchdown and sealed the Ohio State win, preserving the Greatest Season in the History of Sport (Marty Schottenheimer Calls It Sport, So I Call It Sport). This is not a rivalry even on par with the joke that is the MSU-UM rivalry, in which UM dominates and MSU picks up the scraps when UM is down. There is as much of a rivalry between Ohio State and Cincy as there is between Florida and USF. It simply doesn't exist. Don't try to start one by being dbags and calling us out. Penn State has tried that and we (or at least I) still don't really consider it a rivalry game, hurdled bags of piss or no. Don't be Penn State. The next thing you know Brian Kelly will develop an insatiable hunger for brains and half your starting line-up will be behind bars. And Italian. Don't be Penn State.

That's my closest approximation of reasonableness, by the way.