Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Quick Hits on the BCS Title Game

I know everyone in the world has already said their bit about the championship, but I consider myself an avid college football fan, so here's my quick hit thoughts on the game.

Troy Smith got owned


Everytime he dropped back to pass, I was worried he was going to get sacked (yes, I was cheering against Florida). Even when he was in the shotgun, he had trouble getting off solid passes.
Give a lot of credit to Florida's line for that. The Gators didn't have to do a lot of fancy blitzes, because their ends had no problem running by the offensive line.

Good-bye smashmouth OSU football?

OSU has long been known for smashmouth, run the ball up the gut, style football, but they completely abandoned the running game yesterday. Antonio Pittman had only 10 carries; naturally you would assume he had so few carries because he couldn't run the ball effectively. The funny thing is he averaged 6.2 ypc. OSU tried airing the ball out too much at the start, and once they fell behind they forgot the running game.

Zone defense against an accurate passer = gross.

The Buckeyes refused to get out of a zone scheme and Chris Leak absolutely picked apart the secondary. He gashed the defense for 6 and 7 yard passes and OSU was helpless to stop him.

Injuries can hurt.

If Teddy Ginn played the whole game, he no doubt would have made an impact, but it wouldn't have been enough. Unless they decided to put him on the line to block Harvey, and then put a headset on him and have him call a non-zone defense, then maybe, he could have won the game for the Buckeyes.

Where was Tressel?

Senor Sweater Vest was pretty much absent from this game. The only memorable move he made was that 4th-1 call on the OSU 29 yard line. I actually liked that move, but I didn't like the play they called. I fully expected Tressel to change tactics and light a fire under his team in the second half, but there was no such change.

Big ups and respecc to Florida.

They played a complete game. Their defense was early-season Bears-esque, the special teams was solid, as was the offense. They totally earned the win, but I still feel like OSU is the better team, maybe it's my Big Ten bias, but I felt like this game was the perfect storm for Florida. They just happened to have their best game (again, props for that) in the championship, while OSU had by and large their worst game.

Love for the kicker.

Florida kicker, Chris Heltand was 4-13 on the season and had the world's shortest leash coming into the game, but he came through with two 40+ yard field goals.

The most fitting half-time show ever.















Did anyone notice that the OSU band played "My Heart Will Go On" during the break? I'd say that was the most fitting song, for the occasion. The OSU juggernaut was taking on water at that point and completely sunk in the second half.

I wonder if the band director had two songs for the band to perform. The Titanic one if the Buckeyes were losing and a different song if they were winning or at least in the game.

1 Comments:

Blogger Boski93 said...

I too did see that and I thought it would have been nice if the Florida band had marched back out in an iceberg formation. I think OSU can lay this loss on the band and its decision to perform that song.

1/10/2007 4:55 PM  

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