Previously: Offense, Last Year

Resources: My charting, Ohio State game notes, Ohio State roster, CFBstats, 11W's snap counts

Author's Note: Late and unedited because I suffered a scratched cornea, had to go to the ER last night, and am doing this all with one eye. I couldn't in this state get the grand annual intro to where I wanted it. Maybe I'll post it tomorrow.

The film: I charted them against Michigan State earlier in the season in the hopes of getting some value from watching the MSU offense, and of course the Buckeyes' latest game against Penn State.

Personnel: My diagram:

PDF Version, full-size version (or click on the image)

And as is OSU tradition, chart:

Pos	#	Name	vs Run	Cov	Snaps	24/7
WDE	2	Chase Young	+49.5/-1	+0/-3	126	7th
SDE	11	Tyreke Smith	+9.5/-2		50	34th
DT	9	Jashon Cornell	+18.5/-7.5		69	95th
DT	53	Davon Hamilton	+6/-4.5		57	998th
MLB	32	Tuf Borland	+13/-6.5	+0/-7	68	324th
WLB	39	Malik Harrison	+17.5/-10	+3/-4	119	683rd
Bullet	20	Pete Werner	+10/-3	+4/-10	106	277th
CB	3	Damon Arnette	+0/-1	+4/-7	97	653
CB	1	Jeffrey Okudah	+1/-0	+6/-7.5	123	8th
Nk	24	Shaun Wade	+5.5/-1	+4/-10	122	17th
S	4	Jordan Fuller	+3/-6	+4/-1	123	134th
BENCH:
Pos	#	Name	vs Run	Cov	Snaps	24/7 Cmp
MLB	5	Baron Browning	+14.5/-4	+3/-2	77	11th
NT	67	Robert Landers	+15/-3		45	481st
SDE	33	Zach Harrison	+7.5/-6.5		36	12th
DE	54	Tyler Friday	+2/-1.5		18	93rd
DE	8	Javontae Jean-Baptiste	+0/-0		13	219th
DT	72	Tommy Togiai	+1/-1		22	55th
DT	52	Antwuan Jackson Jr.	+2/-1		31	51st
DT	92	Haskell Garrett	+2/-0		19	68th
DB	26	Cameron Brown	+2/-0	+4/-3	18	323rd

The starters run the gamut from would be in a battle to start at Michigan to my pick for this year's Heisman. WDE Chase Young is certainly the most productive player I've ever scouted. He's Chase Winovich but fast. For reasons surpassing understanding Frames Janklin left Will "'ol turnstile" Fries singled on Young. He also feasted on MSU, but then so would most Group of Five ends.

Young will often flip to SDE so they can play the true freshman phenom Zach Harrison, a major pass rushing threat who's still raw in advanced run protection and still raw in our hearts from being a Michigan silent until the awful things happened. Starter Tyreke Smith (Jon Cooper has been out most of the year) is the opposite of his platoonmate: steady against the run but just an occasional contributor in pass rush. Former run-stopping DE Jashon Cornell moved inside this year; he makes enough plays and doesn't get clunked, but is still a bit End-y.

The NT rotation is solid: massive Davon Hamilton will spend most of the game disinterestedly immobile then pull a Mike Martin outta nowhere:

Little Robert Landers is a Rob Renes type who's vastly underused.

Lately they've mostly pushed out the various high-stars like Tommy Togiai and Antwuan Jackson. Various four-star backup DEs (and one of their tight ends) got on the field when Young was suspended but none of them as of yet is that remarkable.

The linebackers from last year all returned, better coached, For WLB Malik Harrison that's paid promise that NFL scouts would appreciate a full year of running (really quickly) in the right direction, which he now does most times. Tuf Borland is still the nominal starter at MLB but is on the field less than top 10 recruit Baron Browning and all that talent Bama got outbid for. The HSP remains Pete Werner, a Khaleke-like but worse in coverage than Khaleke.

The cornerback depth chart now includes the strong safety, though that guy remains Shaun Wade, who was NOT GOOD as a freshman last year, and is still just a ball of talent, but has cut down on enough of his mistakes to lose the cyan ring. Damon Arnette hasn't changed; he is still one of the worst cornerbacks off the snap but so fast that doesn't matter except on slants and stuff. They can give those guys a lot of protection because Jeffrey Okudah is going in the first ten picks of the draft. The one official safety Jordan Fuller (another bad beat for Michigan in recruiting) is also the same guy as last year: smart in coverage, athletic enough to get where he needs to go, and prone to a bad angle or two per game. 

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

Base Set: Mostly what Michigan was last year. They're a base 4-3 over defense except they can call themselves a 4-2-5 because there's "hybrid" (like Khaleke he's fully linebacker-sized) LB who relates to tight ends. What OSU does differently is they've taken to "slot cornerback" for the safety job that's basically a nickel corner, while the single-high safety is, as it was for most of football history, back to being called "safety."

I have to admit this is good terminology. And it's true: the slot cornerback shares a depth chart with the cornerbacks.

vs MSU and PSU	D Shift					Safeties			Rushers
Situation	Over	Eagle	Under	Okie		1-high	2-high		3	4	5	6+
Normal Downs (78)	80%	12%	8%	-		100%	-		-	66%	29%	5%
Passing Downs (56)	46%	21%	20%	13%		89%	11%		7%	69%	18%	5%
Total (134)	87	21	17	7		126	6		4	88	32	7

As last year's Michigan once believed, when you're this good you can just run the same thing every play. Their Cover 1 uses some Alabama-style pattern-matching and switches. They also use the 1 shaded to Arnette's side, since Okudah has yet to meet a receiver he can't match up with. No reason to change that now, right?

They pulled out the four-DE "Rushmen" personnel package again this game a few times, and debuted a four-cornerback dime, but usually they stuck with the base nickel personnel. There were two alignments they commonly played on passing downs. The more common was the old Woody Hayes Eagle:

The DTs are at 3-tech (guard's outside shoulder) and 5-tech (tackle's outside shoulder) with the DEs winged out and a middle linebacker rolled up on the line—if you know your formations history you'll recognize the predecessor of the 4-3, when they played an extra linebacker at "guard" just like this. They even went double eagle once.

The other thing they used was an Okie package, with a nose (always Robert Landers) in a 0 tech and two DEs in 5-technique.

What Shall We Call the Hybrid Today? Bullet. It's an exact copy—by their own admission—of how Michigan uses the viper. That is, he relates to the tight end in coverage, and is responsible for setting the edge of the run game.

Man or zone coverage: Man to man. There isn't anybody they've played who can match up with them. I regret not giving Cody White a star but OSU shut him down so easily. Nobody can be man all day however, and Ohio State can trap you sometimes when they pattern-match:

Pressure: GERG or DR BLITZ:

Why blitz when you have Chase Young? Ohio State graded out higher in Pressure than any team I've scouted this year. When they do blitz it's from the middle linebackers, which is why I think Browning is getting more play than Borland at MLB since he's very good at it.

Dangerman:

Chase Young is the best player in the country. He's too fast, and gets too low to block him on a pass rush with fewer than two guys, and he's ample strong enough to win every rep on the edge against any but the kind of OT Georgia gives hundreds of thousands of dollars from its coaches' salaries to switch from Michigan. Against the kind of kid you can convince to go to Michigan State it's more like three guys:

The thing he can't do yet is coverage; every time they dropped him against PSU the Lions took advantage. Penn State also tried to deal with him by zone reads, but that's also a sucker's bet because he can shuffle in further and still beat your QB to the edge, which means on a give he's still getting to the running back's legs after a couple of yards at most. It's still preferable to trying to block him, since he also can make a tackle irrelevant:

It's a good thing he suddenly decided to report the money he got from an agent when he did because Maryland and Rutgers were the two games on the schedule he really wasn't needed. Amazing how things work out sometimes when your AD is the chairman of the NCAA committee on infractions.

OVERVIEW:

This is the best defense in the country because it's the most talented. I think the linebacker coaching is a credit to Al Washington, and they've certainly adopted a lot of the concepts that Michigan used with its talent last year. That main concept was "just keep things simple and your guys can play fast." That's the byword of this defense, and it makes sense, both because they have the horses to do that, and because when they do switch things up their guys are not very good at roles they aren't repping all the time, e.g. Arnette isn't a safety:

The small-y young defensive linemen could be got with traps and the like:

But the way to beat the Buckeyes is as simple as their defensive structure: win one on one matchups. They're going to be there, and they're going to bet that Michigan, like everybody else they've played, doesn't have the horses.