Please look at our avg yard gained (our offense) and average yards given up (our defense) on the ground in the games that we lost in 2013. List them game by game.
Then, in light of those stats, tell me how an argument that nothing was wrong, that we shouldn't have tried something...almost anything...different is an intelligent one.
I do, however, admire the "BUTM" tattoo that you have in large letters on your forehead.
Monroe, you keep maintaining that Ohio consistently ran the ball up the middle, even though it wasn't working, and never tried anything different. The problem is, your observation is wrong. If you go back and check the play by play for the games, you will find that Ohio was NOT consistently running BUTM, and especially in the losses they were not doing that, with the exception of Kent, where they were doing it early in the game. The most extreme example is the BG game. In that game Beau carried the ball on the first carry of the game, and then did not touch the ball again until Ohio's last play of the first quarter, and had 3 more carries in the 2d quarter, and one more in the first ten minutes of the 3d quarter. The bulk of Ohio's rushing attempts came after Ohio was down 42-0, when Ohio was just running the clock out.
The fact is that Ohio is historically a run-first team, and normally runs 55-60% of the time, and probably 65% of the time on first down. When they can successfully rush the ball, they rarely lose. When they can't run the ball, wins are hard to come by, but contrary to your claims that they just keep running the ball, they do try different things. In the five losses, Ohio only rushed the ball on only 48% of the plays, and that counts sacks and scrambles as rushes, so really, Ohio was passing most of the time, not running BUTM.
So, when the rushes were not working, Ohio did shift to passing the majority of the time, but, unfortunately, when the run isn't working, the pass rarely works all that well, either. While Ohio averaged 8.8 yards per passing attempt in games they won last year, they only averaged 5.1 yards per pass in the four regular season losses. Worse, in the 5 losses, Ohio had a total of 8 turnovers, all 8 of which came on passing plays.
In case you were preparing to reply "but on first down, its always BUTM", in those five losses 53% of the plays on first down were rushes, and 47% were passes, far below their normal historical percentage. Even more interesting, in the three games that bother you the most, BG, Buffalo, and Kent, when Ohio rushed the ball on first down, they averaged 3.8 yards a carry with no turnovers. When they passed on first down they averaged 2.9 yards per attempt, and had several turnovers. Passing put Ohio in the hole on first down more than rushing did.
I try to stay out of the speculation on how often that they should run various plays because I don't know exactly what they offensive coordinator is trying to accomplish, and what keys they use to determine the appropriate play to audible to, but I can tell from going over the play-by-play that the coaches had very different strategies in different games.
Last Edited: 2/3/2014 1:56:14 PM by L.C.