2012 ohio state

Go Blue. Beat Ohio.

Bullet:

• Desmond Morgan should be back.

--------------------------

file

Opening remarks:

“Happy Thanksgiving, number one. I know some of you have turkeys in your ovens so I’ll be brief today. I thought we had a good practice yesterday. I thought our intensity was what it should be when you play Ohio. The way our guys went to work was very industrious. It was a physical day like Tuesdays and Wednesdays are, and I thought our guys did a nice job.”

Will Desmond Morgan play Saturday?

“Yes.”

Is there a different buzz about this week as you’d expect?

“Yeah. Always is. I think is the 109^th time we’ve faced each other. I think that rivalry and just the excitement that follows with it and the passion that people have, I think it spills over.”

The players have talked about driving into the stadium and seeing the fans make … gestures. What’s that like?

“I think when you go to any of those great institutions that have great passion and passionate fans -- I can remember being at Oregon State and going into the Civil War and going down to Eugene. That rivalry, obviously when we go to East Lansing, I think you get the same thing. When you go to Notre Dame. But I think they’re just passionate about their team. They don’t like you, and that’s okay. They’re not supposed to.”

Will you do a walk-through on the field?

“Yeah, we’re going to Friday. We go back and forth a little bit. Most of the time we practice here and go late, but we’re going to do some things in the stadium.”

Do you talk about Nebraska-Iowa on Friday?

“No, not really. I think I mentioned it once. We can control only one thing. That’s the important thing, and that’s going to play our hearts out for our seniors and our hearts out for Michigan on Saturday afternoon at 12:01.”

MGoQuestion: What do you make of Ohio State’s success on special teams this season?

“I think they’ve got good athletes, and that’s where it starts. It always starts there, and I think they’ve done a nice job putting them in the right places to execute and to be successful.”

MGoMootFollowup: Are there ways to counteract their effectiveness?

“Play harder. Play better. Play with better technique.”

How has Denard’s week of practice been?

“Good. It’s been great.”

Doing everything?

“Yes.”

Who are you starting at quarterback?

“It’s day to day.”

Russell Bellomy?

“He’s doing great.”

Is he available to play?

“Oh yeah.”

Is Jack still the backup?

“Jack’s on the travel team with us, yeah.”

Does it change your preparation having a holiday?

“Not really, you know. We’ll change because we’ll practice tomorrow morning, and then at one we’ll have over 500 family members and team having Thanksgiving together. It’s pretty neat.”

What was that like last year?

“Awesome. It’s neat. It’s neat to see all the families.”

How’s Thomas Rawls?

“Great. He’s done a nice job.”

Does he seem ready to shoulder this responsibility? Would Vincent Smith also be in the mix to get some more carries?

“Yeah. Those two. And I don’t know if Thomas has a choice.”

How has he handled that pressure?

“Seems fine. Pretty confident. Most guys who have ability at this level, they’re pretty confident in their abilities.”

Anything you can take from Ohio State’s film from last year?

“Not really. Not from a defensive standpoint besides from the elusiveness that their quarterback has. I think Carlos Hyde, and I don’t even know if he -- played a couple plays, maybe. I don’t think he played much. I know the other guy who’s a back, can’t remember his name right now --”

Boom Herron?

“Boom. Herron was back. But you try and look at the guys that are all a year older, the ones who have played. The offense is obviously a different scheme, but last year’s film really is irrelevant.”

MGoQuestion: James Ross had a good game last Saturday, but a couple times when he tried tackling a bigger back like Mark Weisman he got carried downfield. Is that a concern against someone like Carlos Hyde?

“No. You always tackle really well when you have more than one guy tackling.”

Will Desmond start at that spot?

“We’ll see. Right now they’re competing.”

How many friends and families will you have Saturday?

“I don’t know. Over 500.”

How often do you get to spend with players’ families?

“Not often during the season. Once in a while on a Sunday, once in a while early Friday morning, but not very often.”

Are you going to have over 500 family and friends at the game?

“Who me? Personally? Oh.”

Yeah. I was going to say. You’re more popular than I thought.

“No. No idea. I’m not in the ticket business. Mrs. Hoke handles all those things. She’ll tell me sometime Thursday night over pizza who’s coming.”

You expect to have some people?

“Yeah. We’ll be represented.”

Keep better contain than this, plz

In Columbus, Michigan faces their toughest test since the season opener against Alabama. An undefeated Ohio State squad awaits—can Michigan spoil their hopes for the Big Ten title BCS championship AP national title? After watching the Buckeyes struggle to put up points on Wisconsin, ultimately winning 21-14 in overtime, I think they've got a good shot. Let's go to the breakdown:

OFFENSE

Spread, Pro-Style, or Hybrid? Spread, of course. Urban Meyer's run-heavy offense operates pretty much exclusively from the shotgun.

Basketball on Grass or MANBALL? OSU's rush offense is mostly zone-predicated though they'll throw in some gap blocking wrinkles, including one I'll cover in the play breakdown.

Hurry it up or grind it out? The Buckeyes rarely huddle, though they don't quite run Oregon pace either; you'll see the offense get to the line and then look over to the sideline for a playcall, much like Michigan did under Rich Rodriguez.

Quarterback Dilithium Level (Scale: 1 [Navarre] to 10 [Denard]): I probably don't need to tell you about Braxton Miller, who leads the Buckeyes with 1214 rushing yards on 207 carries and is second to Carlos Hyde (15) with 13 rushing TDs. While he doesn't have the straight-ahead speed of Denard or Taylor Martinez, he's got more power than either of those two and shows impressive vision. He gets a 9, with a bullet.

Dangerman: Yeah, it's Miller. The offense is based around the threat of his legs, especially on the edge, which opens up room both for the running backs on the interior and the downfield passing game.

Zook Factor: Urban Meyer didn't make any egregiously bad decisions in this game, so I'll note that Bret Bielema punted from the Ohio State 30-yard line(!!!) in the first half instead of kicking a 47-yard field goal or throwing on 4th-and-12. The punt, of course, went for a touchback, netting a whopping ten yards.

HenneChart: I'm making the tweak that Brian is strongly considering for next season and counting scrambles as a positive when calculating Downfield Success Rate; with Braxton Miller, it's certainly appropriate. Even with that adjustment, Miller did not have a great performance against Wisconsin:

A quick sanity check against Miller's final numbers: 10/18, 97 yards. With a couple throws by Miller that easily could've been intercepted, that sounds about right. Most of his throws came either off play-action or on designed rollouts, and most of the routes were of the short or intermediate variety. There were a couple attempted deep shots—again, off play-action—but nothing that connected.

[Hit THE JUMP for the rest of the breakdown.]

Here in the Midwest we are blessed to have all sorts of great names left over from our pre-Columbian civilizations, for example the Ojibwan word "mishigama" means "great lake" while their word for "dude who speaks normally" (i.e. not French) is "irenwe-wa" which the French wrote down as "illinois" and Sufjan Stevens wrote as "Illinoise."

But lots of Native American names aren't what people called themselves so much as whatever their enemy tribes called them when we asked. Thus a few choice expletives, their meanings now lost to centuries of mouths washed out with soap, remain today as obscure, vowelistic epithets for the modern degenerate inhabitants of those lands. Iowa and Ohio: four-letter words. Q.E.D.

How this works again:

1. Wednesdays I put up a winnable prize that consists of a desirable good.
2. You guess the final scores of this weekend's designated game (football or hoops, depending on the season), and put it in the comments. First person to post a particular score has it.
3. If you got it right, we contact you. If not, go to (5)
4. The desirable good arrives at the address you give us.
5. Non-winners can acquire the same desirable good by trading currency for it. BONUS THIS WEEK: We donate to Mott if you do so!

About last week:

The Iowa tribe were Sioux, but they were named that by Dakotas. It's from the Lakota "ayuhwa" which literally means "gray people." Some translate this as "sleepy folk" but tradition has it that it comes from the Iowa peoples covering their faces with ashes while awaiting the drawn out end game of successful, longtime coaches' careers. Indeed Michigan cheated by dastardly not running I-form ISOs all game, allowing the final score to finally meet the expectations of our perpetual optimists. Duval Wolverine took home two t-shirts. Weirdly people chose 41-17 and 43-17 before the actual score. STOP BELIEVING BRIAN HE PREDICTS SCORES IN FACTORS OF PI!

This Week's Game:

"Ohio" comes from the Iroquois word for the place they dumped their sewage. Michigan will travel down there to play something called simply "The Game."

And on the Line…

As Michael once said before he got too weird: Just beat it.

If you can read this you don't need glasses: One entry per user. First user to choose a set of scores wins, determined by the timestamp of your entry (for my ease I prefer if you don't post it as a reply to another person's score--if you do it won't help or hurt you). If nobody gets the score, this week's prize carries over to the following week's. Deadline for entries is 24 hours before the start of the game (since I won't have time to pull them on gamedays). MGoEmployees and Moderators--anyone else with moderator privileges--are exempt from winning because you could change your timestamp. If you choose the score that Brian published in the official preview and it actually ends up the final score, well, that would be pretty amazing because Brian picks scores like 29-11 all the time. We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves. The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly finds Jesus.This is not the algorithm. This is close.

file

“Ah. How we doin’?”

Good.

“Got a full house today! Wonder why’s that?”

You draw a crowd.

“I’m being Elvis.”

Speaking of a full house … what is it that you call your formation with Denard in the backfield?

“We call it, ‘Denard in the backfield.’ How about the word of the day? We have to take care of that.”

What’s the word of the day? [Chantel Jennings would like to point out that this is not an MGoQuestion.]

“Resolve. Heiko, any technical questions?”

MGo: Uh …

“The finer points of attacking quarters coverage, maybe?”

MGo: Actually, yeah.

“That was stupid. That’s the stupidest thing I could have said. Go ahead.”

MGoQuestion: Virginia Tech’s aggressive quarters coverage made it hard for you to run the quarterback last year. Do you see that as a problem against Ohio State?

“They play totally different than Virginia Tech. Their structure is different defense. Really is. Now they may take a little bit of the same mentality, but from an X and O perspective, it’s a different.”

MGoFollowup: But in terms of having aggressive opposing safeties, does that make you hesitant to run the QB at all?

“Nope. Nope. Nooo.”

How many possibilities can there be having both Denard and Devin on the field?

“I don’t know.”

Legitimately you don’t know? Or do you just not want to answer?

“I don’t want to answer.”

file

How much film can you use from last year? Can you take anything from it?

“No. No. It’s everything, and usually with most teams we don’t watch last year’s. The only thing we might watch is against ourselves, if it’s the same opponent type deal, but everything’s for this year.”

What do you take from that in terms of slowing down Braxton Miller?

“He’s a great talent. Obviously I think they’re the number one offense in the country right now. It’s going to be a great challenge for us. He’s a great football player. The good news is we’ve played against some really really good quarterbacks this year, and we play against a great one every day in practice. So we’ll be ready to go.”