The Roots of Ohio State's Problems, Part Seven: "Tresselball"

What can Ohio State do to remedy this? Easy...like it or not, Jim Tressel needs to find a young, bright offensive mind from OUTSIDE the program. A young coordinator that will bring in new ideas and philosophies to this coaching staff. A coordinator who will use the Ohio State offensive coordinator position to ADVANCE to a head coaching position somewhere else!

That's right—coaching turnover within a coaching regime means that you have the best young minds in college coaching on your staff, your program is winning, and other programs want these young coaches for their program.

Florida has that, USC does too, and Texas as well. All of these schools not only have head coaches, but assistants who are young, hungry, and learning everything they can to advance in their profession.

Jim Tressel needs to find this individual that he meshes with and feels can grow that working relationship with—a coordinator that he can learn to trust to focus entirely upon the offense, focus on game planning and game calling, and who is also a good recruiter.

Hopefully taking this step will open this offense back up and improve the recruiting at the wide receiver and quarterback positions on a more consistent basis, though I do give the Buckeyes kudos for the haul of wide receivers they've gotten the last two years now—and of course, Terrelle Pryor is Terrelle Pryor.

But this momentum in recruiting needs to continue. Remember that it's not always the talent that you bring in, but how you use the talent.

I hope that a new coordinator with a new scheme will open up aspects that have been lost on "Tresselball" for seemingly years now. Maybe use the tight end in the passing game, instead of strictly as a glorified offensive tackle? How about a quick slant to the wide receivers? Or even pass routes that cross the middle of the field?

I've even been told before that you can put offensive personnel in motion prior to the snap to try to create confusion for a defense and even personnel mismatches in coverage!

All this said, there must be changes THIS offseason. I know Jim Tressel is a proud man, I know he is a good coach, and he is a good man. But the philosophy isn't working, and the stats I gave you above show as much. This philosophy has affected recruiting certain talent to Ohio State.

This team and these fans deserve to risk for victory, rather than to safely go down in defeat. As the cliché goes, "If you're going to go down, go down swinging." You've recruited better the last two years, there is more talent forming around this offense...open the playbook, trust your talent, and go down swinging.

As always, thanks for reading...please pass the word on this series and feel free to discuss and leave comments.

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