Ohio State Football: 9 Reasons Why the Buckeyes Struggled in 2011

The 2011 Ohio State season was the worst in terms of losses since before the turn of the 20th century, all the way back to 1897.

That's almost 115 years of good football that was tarnished in just one season of play.

Basically, almost anything that could go wrong did go wrong for Ohio State all year long.

And besides the obvious scandal that caused such turmoil all season long, the team was just unable to find an identity or any sort of sustained success.

Here are nine reasons why Ohio State finished at only 6-7.

No Terrelle Pryor

Two-time BCS bowl MVP Terrelle Pryor, who was at the epicenter of the tattoo scandal, decided to leave Ohio State early in June and head to the NFL.

Whether it was for selfish reasons or to protect his school by not being forced to talk to the NCAA about potentially more dangerous violations, Pryor's presence was something that some fans felt could easily be shrugged off.

But it became clear after OSU's close call to Toledo in Week 2 that Pryor meant so much more to the Buckeyes than people thought.

Urban Meyer said so before Ohio State's opener against Akron, and it took some time for fans and the country to see that.

That type of talent is just simply irreplaceable.

Trying to Replace Pryor with Joe Bauserman

After the blowout win against Akron when first-time starter Joe Bauserman looked much better than fans thought he would, it seemed like replacing Pryor wouldn't be so hard.

Then came the close call against Toledo, then the disaster at Miami and Bauserman's epic collapse at Nebraska. He would never see the field again.

He was, as Dennis Green said, who we thought he was.

Braxton Miller led the team the rest of the way, and he suffered plenty of growing pains and made some plays along the way.

The season could have been a whole lot worse if Bauserman had started every game the rest of the season instead of Miller.

An Offensive Offense

Losing Pryor meant more than just losing a quarterback, but also losing almost an entire offense.

The Ohio State offense looked absolutely porous for all but a handful of games all season long.

And it was the same set of problems sprinkled throughout the last decade combined into one: bad offensive line, predictable play-calling and undeveloped skill players.

The combination of all of those problems were magnified with the loss of Jim Tressel, who was perfect at calling the right play at the right time.

With that luxury gone, the offense looked just terrible in all but a couple of games: Akron, Nebraska, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Increase in Unnecessary Penalties

One of the trademarks of a Jim Tressel team was that it always seemed to play with control and purpose.

This year, that went largely out of the window.

As the season went on, probably due to inexperience, Ohio State committed an unusually large amount of unnecessary penalties, including untimely personal fouls.

Those penalties would come back to bite the team time and again and became a surprising problem that this team had not had in several years.

Luke Fickell's Inexperience

The appointment of Luke Fickell to head coach for the 2011 season seemed like a good move as he was a former player that led great defenses the previous two seasons.

But handcuffed by a poor offensive coaching staff, Fickell looked more and more lost as the season went on, making poor personnel decisions, including waiting too long to start Braxton Miller.

He seemed to have his team unprepared and getting off to slow starts more times than not, and his specialty, defense, looked surprisingly sloppy.

The biggest problem was he tried too hard to be Tressel and was unsuccessful at doing that.

Fickell will move back to being defensive coordinator and LB coach under Urban Meyer, a guy whom he can probably learn from about how to be a head coach in a different way than under Tressel.

Inconsistency on Defense

Ohio State's defense has been as good as there was in the country for the past several seasons.

But starting with the stunning collapse at Nebraska, the Buckeye defense made all kinds of unusual mistakes, especially on the perimeter of the defense.

The defense let Ohio State down several times during the season, including losses against Purdue and Penn State, games where the team had chances to win but surprisingly poor defense led to the losses.

The lack of a decent LB corps for most of the season was among the root of the problems, as well as poor defensive play-calling from former defensive coordinator Jim Heacock.

Lack of Senior Leadership

Ohio State's senior class, also known as the "Brew Crew," may have one of the biggest mixed bags of a legacy in recent memory.

While they helped win two BCS bowl games and three Big Ten titles (one of each was vacated in the 2010 season), they also not only made decisions that led to Ohio State's 2012 postseason ban, but also led to Ohio State's first losing season in more than 20 years.

Throughout the season, the senior class, including four suspended seniors, showed a tremendous lack of leadership in directing the team to its 6-7 season.

Probably the biggest black mark of their on-field legacy was being the first senior class since the seniors in 2003 to lose to Michigan.

It's a shame how one of the best recruiting classes in modern Buckeye history became a huge disappointment by their graduation.

Inability to Close Games

Jim Tressel's teams had a knack of making things happen at the end of their games in their favor almost every time.

This year was almost a complete 180 from the past 10 seasons.

The collapse loss at Nebraska was something that was almost unprecedented, and that started a downward spiral throughout the season.

Ohio State could not hold off Purdue in overtime, and failed to come back against Penn State and shut down Michigan when it needed to do so.

Tressel knew how to push the right buttons at the right time, and his absence became very apparent as the season went on.

Jim Bollman

One of the biggest problems throughout the season has been the exposure of former offensive coordinator Jim Bollman.

His poor coaching skills had been masked behind Tressel, but was shown when Tressel was forced out of his job.

He had been the offensive line coach for a decade and his poor coaching showed as the offensive line looked terrible, even with the type of talent Ohio State could bring in on the line.

His play-calling was predictable and he did a poor job of developing talent and protecting his quarterbacks.

Bollman is moving on to Boston College as the offensive line coach, and thankfully an era of poor offensive coaching is over at Ohio State.

Not too much is known about what new offensive coordinator Tom Herman, formerly at Rice and Iowa State, can do with good personnel.

However, it certainly will be—at worst—a little better than the 2011 offense.

Follow me on Twitter @bielik_tim for the latest college football news and updates.