Senior writer Jeff Rapp takes a closer look at Ohio State's 21-10 win in Ann Arbor.
On the surface, Ohio State beat the last-place team in the Big Ten in Saturday’s 21-10 victory at Michigan. But digging deeper and examining what was at stake for the No. 9 Buckeyes shows that it took discipline, timely plays and a team effort for them to take down a desperate UM squad and finally be able to look ahead to a Jan. 1 date in the Rose Bowl.
The Buckeyes said all the right things earlier in the week and showed their archrival the proper respect but there was still the matter of staying focused and executing in front of more than 110,000 spectators in Michigan Stadium as well as a national television audience.
And after accomplishing that mission to improve to 10-2 overall and win the Big Ten outright with a 7-1 record, the Buckeyes know they defeated a bunch of Wolverines (5-7, 1-7) with a brighter future.
“They’re a good team,” defensive end Thaddeus Gibson said. “They played as hard as anyone this whole year. Look out. Those guys are good.”
Michigan fans, of course, would beg to differ after watching their team lose its seventh straight league game and commit five turnovers against Ohio State. Freshman quarterback Tate Forcier played like, well, a freshman, by throwing four interceptions and also fumbling in his own end zone to set up the first score of the game, a gift-wrapped touchdown on the recovery by defensive tackle Cameron Hyeward just 4:16 into the contest.
Still, Forcier also showed impressive pluck and creativity, like on his 18-yard touchdown pass to the backside of the field to speedy running back Vincent Smith and sprint out and flip to wideout Roy Roundtree that became a 43-yard play because of Forcier’s nimble feet and perfect timing on the pass.
Nine different Wolverines caught passes and UM totaled 309 yards which nearly offset OSU’s 318.
Longtime defensive coordinator Jim Heacock watched and instructed nervously from the booth and gave credit afterward to his players and defensive assistant coaches Luke Fickell, Paul Haynes and Taver Johnson.
“It’s a difficult offense,” Heacock said. “There’s no question. They do it all. They’re going to run the empty (set), they do the quarterback draw and then they bring 16 (Denard Robinson) in there and he’s a Wildcat guy and he runs it very well. It gives you a lot of problems, a lot of issues. Our guys prepared for it. You have to have confidence, you have to get the signals in early, I just thought Paul and Taver and Luke, those guys did a great job.”
The defense was too worn down to stop USC on its final drive in an 18-15 loss back on Sept. 12 that now seems like a season ago. The unit also had a subpar performance at Purdue in the stunning 26-18 loss there on Oct. 17. But the group also logged three shutouts this season, was among the Big Ten leaders in almost every defensive category and basically made sure the Buckeyes had no hiccups in November.
The defense held Penn State to seven points, came up huge in overtime in the narrow win over Iowa and frustrated a Michigan offense that came in averaging a conference-best 31.0 points per game.
“I’m really proud of the guys,” Heacock said. “They wanted to go out and show what they can do, and they’ve done that all year. I’m proud of this group. Going into the season we weren’t really sure. We lost some names, but these guys just kept battling away every game they played hard. The neatest thing about this defense is different people step it up in different games. You talk team, you talk team, but this truly has been a team effort.”
It certainly was on Saturday. The defensive line was stellar as Heyward scored, Gibson closed down the win with an interception and even reserve tackle John Simon came up with a couple tackles for loss. The linebacking corps was steady as usual. Ross Homan logged a game-high 12 tackles and Brian Rolle also was highly active with nine stops, three of them for loss.
Meanwhile, the secondary put in one of its better efforts, especially when it came to big plays. Senior strong safety Kurt Coleman was magnificent with two acrobatic interceptions and two more pass break-ups. Free safety Anderson Russell had five tackles including a touchdown-saver on the Roundtree play and also contributed a key pass break-up on third down. Also Devon Torrence, who quietly has earned more and more playing time at the corner spot opposite Chimdi Chekwa, finished with seven tackles and a huge interception in the end zone as the Wolverines were about to get back in the game.
“I wouldn’t say it was the nail in the coffin but it gave us some assurance,” said Torrence, a junior who arrived to Ohio State as a wide receiver. “They have a really good offense and they’re going to be trouble in the future, so we’ve just got to make sure we always prepare for those guys.
“We work hard in the secondary. We just really take that to heart whenever we go out on the field.”
Kudos go across to the offense as well, though.
Quarterback Terrelle Pryor and tailbacks Dan Herron and Brandon Saine all were effective rushing the ball for the third straight game. Herron had 96 yards on the ground and added a 12-yard touchdown catch that closed the scoring. Saine added 84 yards, a 29-yard scoring run and produced a healthy average of 7.0 yards per carry. Pryor netted 74 yards on the ground.
The offensive line had trouble with talented end Brandon Graham (four TFLs) but eventually got into a groove with its run blocking and had minimal mistakes and penalties.
Even though the 11-point win was workmanlike, it was a result of consistent effort and execution on both sides of the ball – and respect for the Wolverines.
“Those guys are going to give it everything they have until there are zeroes on the clock, and we knew that coming into this game,” Gibson said. “With that being said we had to keep it going after that and we knew we had to go back on the field, pin our ears back and keep going.”
Drive Killers
The OSU defense entered the game with 28 takeaways, second in the Big Ten to Indiana’s 29, and added five to that total against Michigan. That compared to OSU’s one turnover – an interception by Jonas Mouton of a Pryor pass – improved the Buckeyes’ Big Ten-best turnover margin to plus-16.
Not only that, all of the takeaways took the air out of the homestanding Wolverines. Forcier’s fumble, for example, came moments into UM’s first possession of the game and caused the capacity crowd to emit a collective groan. His first interception came on the first play after Ohio State took a 14-3 lead as the freshman QB heaved a deep pass that Coleman grabbed 48 yards from the line of scrimmage. The other three picks came in the fourth quarter as Forcier was trying feverishly to help his team cut into the 21-10 deficit.
The most timely of those three thefts was the pick by Torrence with 8:09 to play. Michigan had a second-and-5 from the OSU 6 when Forcier looked right and came back to the left side of the end zone but didn’t see No. 10 in his throwback white uniform. Torrence was in perfect position in a Cover 2 defense and darted out to the OSU 19-yard line to put OSU out of danger.
“I don’t know if you could say that was definitely the swing play but it seemed like it to me,” Heacock said. “We really needed it right there because they were moving the ball a little bit. It was big.”
The capper came at the 3:34 mark as Gibson backed off the line and baited Forcier to throw the ball into the left flat, where he was waiting like a lion ready to pounce.
Rolle said the effort to harass and confuse the young QB began up front.
“I credit the D-line,” he said. “Our D-line did a great job of getting in the backfield, creating a new line of scrimmage and forcing him to run the ball and force the ball up.
“Guys prepared hard and they moved the ball at times but our guys kept hanging in there and kept battling,” Heacock said. “We called on the front in the second half and said ‘We need to get four-man pressure because we need to do a little better job of covering.’ They just kept battling, even when there was some movement and some activity and we had some big interceptions. They’re down in the red zone there and knocking on the door, but for our guys the next play is always the most important. They never really got caught up in what happened if they had a bad play or anything like that.”
Not only did Torrence excel in his first real Michigan experience, so did nickel back Jermale Hines and Rolle, who each had nine tackles.
“My first time starting against Michigan, and it was a great feeling to go out there and play my butt off and come out with the victory,” said Rolle, OSU’s diminutive but fearless middle linebacker. “I think we just had an attitude and the coaches did a great job of getting us prepared.”
The defense also kept UM to a net of 80 yards rushing and just 2.6 yards per carry. Robinson came in with success against just about everyone Michigan had faced bu he was held to 31 yards rushing on 10 carries, was sacked once and completed 2 of 4 passes for just 9 yards.
The Michigan attack was varied and balanced but never really taxed the Buckeyes.
“We have a great coaching staff so we knew what they were going to do,” Gibson said. “We prepared for everything. Everything they threw at us we were ready for. They made some plays, which we knew they were going to do. They’re a great team, but for the most part we were prepared for every play. Hats off to our defensive coaches for getting us prepared and ready to play.”
The only flare-up came on Forcier’s 18-yard TD pass. The Buckeyes didn’t get completely lined up before the snap and then didn’t account for Smith in the right flat after Forcier began to scramble.
“I think there were some things that happened in the back end of the deal,” Gibson said. “Some guys may have lined up wrong or whatnot.”
When he was asked what happened on that play, Rolle said, “I’m not sure. I don’t want to say it was a broken coverage. He did a great job of scrambling and one of his guys happened to get open and he made a great play of getting the ball to him.”
Several other Buckeyes also came away impressed with the playmaking ability of young Forcier, who is listed 6-1 and may be no taller that 5-11. He finished 23 of 38 for 226 yards.
“I take my hat off to the kid,” Gibson said. “He went out there and played a good game. To be a true freshman and to play that well, there’s good things to come and it’s only going to get better.”
Back To Basics
The offense, meanwhile, didn’t exactly explode but continued to play solid, fundamental football. It was a continuation of a group effort to gain consistency since the loss at Purdue.
“We had a poor game against Purdue and we kind of changed some tactics a little bit and went back to some basics and kept working on them,” offensive coordinator Jim Bollman said. “And then today was kind of a reversal, where some of the two-back stuff was kind of getting stuffed and we had to go back to some iso things.”
The Buckeyes stubbornly ran into a Michigan defense that put eight men up in the box but eventually found some creases. OSU stumbled onto an effective play when Pryor made plays out of the zone read, which allows him to hand off or pull the ball back out and look for an opening.
“We kind of got away from it all this year until this game and it really wasn’t in the game plan to do our zone read, but we ran it a couple times and they just kept giving it to us, so we kept taking it,” left tackle Jim Cordle said.
The senior was then asked why the coaches had abandoned the play for much of the season.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s obviously a good play when you’ve got a good running quarterback like that. We’ve called a lot of keeps where he would keep it and a lot of times it might have looked like a zone read and they didn’t give him the zone read option, but the defense still had to play it. We must have run it half the time today.”
Pryor sat out the second half of the 45-0 win over New Mexico State and ran a total of just 13 times in the games with Penn State and Iowa as he was nursing a sore ankle and other bumps and bruises. Ironically, he ran the zone read, Michigan’s bread-and-butter play, better than Forcier and Robinson.
“Michigan is a lot of zone read and we line up and get in the ‘I’ and run some power plays,” Cordle said. “I guess it is a lot of formations, so as far as the defense goes it is a changeup. Our backs were running hard and Terrelle was running hard when he was running. So it was a team effort and a coaching effort. They saw what was working and didn’t go away from it.”
When Pryor handed off to Herron and Saine they also made things happen, just as they have for weeks now.
“There’s no secrets,” Bollman said. “This isn’t like playing Nintendo. Guys get better or guys get worse. That’s one of the things that we try to do, continually improve toward the end of the season and try to be as good as we can be. We’re not there yet, but that’s the direction were headed. And we’ve got to keep getting better.”
“I think the offensive line has been a major factor,” Saine said. “They’ve been killing out there. Props to them. Without them we’d be nothing.
“Plus, we have a pretty diverse offense, but when we talked about the Michigan game earlier in the week, Coach Tressel was always saying the rushing battle is one of the big things. We knew going into the game we were going to need to run the ball. It feels good knowing as a tailback you played a crucial part in winning the game. But the defense really saved us a couple times down there. They played a great game, too.”
Saine started the game and gained just 1 yard on two caries in the first series. By the time he carried again midway through the second period he was ready to do some damage and put a mark on the game with a 14-yard run up the middle, carrying several UM defenders along the way.
“They weren’t wrapping up completely,” he said. “But I wasn’t doing it by myself. The offensive linemen were right there pushing me. And being fresh really helped on that run.”
Notes
* Much has been made of the 8-1 record head coach Jim Tressel now has against Michigan and the fact that the upper classmen on the team are undefeated in the rivalry. But young players like Posey are on the right side of the record books as well.
“For me personally this is definitely big for me,” said Posey, who led OSU with five catches for 38 yards. “It’s my second time beating Michigan, me second pair of Gold Pants, second Big Ten championship. In a perfect world I would like to go out like our seniors did in my time here with winning the Big Ten championship and beating Michigan all those years and I feel like I’m on a good start for that.
“When you really take an outside view and really look at this, this is the era that Ohio State has dominated Michigan and these guys are at the head of that – DougWorthington and Coleman and Spitler and guys like James Laurinaitis and Robiskie. They spearheaded this and it’s up to us, the younger classes of ’08 and ’07 to keep this up and keep it going.”
* Tressel is now 81-6 when leading or tied at the half and 86-6 when leading or tied going into the fourth quarter in his Ohio State career.
* Tressel, Thad Matta (men’s basketball) and Jim Foster, (women’s basketball) are a combined 27-2 against Michigan teams during their tenure at Ohio State. Tressel is 8-1, Matta 9-1 and Foster 10-0.
* Michigan has scored just 20 points in the last three games against the Buckeyes.
* With 251 yards rushing, the Buckeyes went over 200 yards for the eighth time this season, the most in a season of the Tressel era.
* With 141 yards of total offense, Pryor passed Cornelius Green (4,414) for 11th place (4,477) on Ohio State’s all-time list.
* Saine went over 1,000 career rushing yards in the game and Herron is at 997 for his career
* The OSU defense came into the game averaging 5.8 three-and-outs per game and recorded seven more, brining the season total to 69.
* The interceptions by Torrence and Gibson were the first of their careers.
* Ohio State has not allowed a 100-yard rusher over its past 21 games, the second-longest streak in the nation. Alabama is first at 28 games.
* The Buckeyes came across as a bit low-key in their celebration after the game and during their postgame comments.
“We were talking about that in the locker room that it doesn’t seem the same,” Gibson said. “We knew going into this game that it was one of the biggest rivalry games in college football and those guys are going to give it everything they had, but for some reason we kept our cool. We knew what was at stake and played hard and kept fighting.”
Posey said his celebrating will come later.
“We get a week off for Thanksgiving,” he said. “I’m going to eat a lot and then go back to work.”
