Young Buckeyes Survive Fourth Quarter Naval Assualt

For the first time since the 1930's Ohio State hosted a military academy and a record crowd was there to welcome Navy and the start of the 2009 season. Ohio State entered the game with the Week Two visit of USC looming on the horizon and the Midshipmen were fully aware of this.

"If Ohio State comes in totally focused on us, we had no chance... We felt like we had them in the perfect storm." Navy coach Ken Niumatalolo said.

The Ohio State defense was faced with a serious problem entering the game, preparing for the Triple Option attack lead by relatively unknown QB Ricky Dobbs while preparing their defense for the multifaceted pro-style attack of USC.

The Buckeye defense had their adjustment period against Navy's opening drive, forcing several third downs but failed to make that one extra play to stop the drive. Navy marched down the field to the endzone.

After Navy's opening drive Ohio State's defense began to find that final play and shut down the Naval offense in the first half. The Buckeye defensive line took over this game in the first half, absolutely dominating the line of scrimmage. Thaddeus Gibson and Doug Worthington were constantly disrupting plays in the backfield and creating positive plays for the Buckeye defense.

The Navy offense was very well known for being a run-first and pass-never offense of late, famously finishing a game last season without a single pass attempt but they are attempting to tap into talents of QB Ricky Dobbs this season. At the start of the game the Buckeye defense was simply lining up man-to-man, and athlete-to-athlete which worked for much of the game. For much of the game the OSU secondary just shut down the Navy receivers.

But as the game progressed Navy exploited this one-on-one matchups on the outside, targeting particularly safety Anderson Russell who surrendered 101 yards and two touchdowns to RB Marcus Curry on two blown coverages. While distressing to Ohio State fans these two blown coverages seem very much the product of week one dysfunction and an observation, determined opponent.

With the dimension of the pass added to the Navy offense, the Buckeye defense seemed to get caught guessing on several occasions and what really saved the game was the composure of Kurt Coleman, who ripped out a fumble and made an astounding diving interception to kill two key Navy drives.

In the final stages of the game the Ohio State defense bent but did not break, while surrendering the touchdown, Brian Rolle intercepted a possible game tying two-point conversion a taking it to the house.

The Ohio State offense started the game impressively with 20 points scored in the first half, featuring a very improved passer in Terrelle Pryor and two promising young targets in Duron Carter and Devir Posey.

At the end of the first half Pryor was replaced by the backup QB Joe Bauserman. While it resulted in a field goal and got Bauserman valuable playing experience it clearly distributed the offense moving forward, as the Buckeyes failed to score in third quarter.

The most alarming aspect of the offense was the play of the offensive line against the blitz. The line struggled to read and pick up the blitz and the result was defenders quickly entering the backfield and pressuring passing plays. Also the lack of run blocking in obvious running plays was also concerning and smacks of last season when OSU struggled to take control of the line of scrimmage and create gaps for the running game.

The failure to convert on 4th and 2 late in the game that lead directly to the Navy comeback creates a nervous feeling concerning the running game heading into to USC game despite the 153 rushing yards totally by Ohio State.

The comeback staged by Navy happened for two primary reasons, one was poor coaching. Tressel took a major misstep going for that late 4th down instead of cementing the game with a field goal, it opened the door for a Navy team that was determined not to gently fade away. This coaching failure lead to the second reason, the Ohio State Buckeyes are a young team and they panicked.

They tightened up, the pressed the issue and as a result they made mental and physical mistakes that allowed Navy to close the gap. But through upperclassmen leadership, Coleman forcing a fumble, Worthington fighting for said fumble and Rolle's interception from sitting back and reading the QB's eyes the Buckeyes regained their heads and prevailed.

While several aspects of this game are concerning to fans and fodder to the wealth of Ohio State haters, much of the reaction needs to contained. It is very hard to take a read of this Ohio State team based on this game, the Navy defense is so specialized they are able to make a living out of confusing DI defenses and the Ohio State offense is so very young it is going to have its growing pains.

In the end Ohio State looked much as they were expected to, the defense's strengths are clearly defensive line and safety and the corners and linebackers are going to be a bit of the project.

On offense the expectations of line play was down played coming into the season because of Mike Adam's failure to make weight or crack the starting lineup but I think most fans were shocked by some of the protection problems that occurred. Pryor looked outstanding as a passer and the wide receivers seem as talent and as young as advertised and the running game will be an inconsistent portion of the offense this year.

The questions of who will be the new stars to emerge to support the known commodities and where will the points come from where not answered. These questions will be debated very heavily in Columbus the upcoming weeks, the answers will be made plain after the game with USC.