2024-25 Football Season (Arkansas & other game recaps)

[OSU_Sports_Nut]

08/31/24 oSu vs SDSU

OFFENSE
1) Blocking needs to improve. We ran a lot of zone read option plays. When we are doing this, it's hard to run a lot of gap scheme plays. I would rather see Dunn call designed gap scheme run plays or play action passes.

2) Ollie needs to hit the hole hard and fast. He spent way too much time dancing around at the line of scrimmage and not going full speed. He needs to be way more decisive in his reads. Running more gap scheme plays will help in this area too.

3) At times the oSu offense was running at a break neck pace and the SDSU defense couldn't keep up. There MUST be a rule change after this season regarding players faking injuries to slow down offenses. I think Gundy's idea is the best. He believes anybody that is "hurt" on defense (where an official time out is used) shouldn't be allowed to play for the rest of that series unless a team uses one of their own timeouts. Today's game was slowed down over half a dozen times due to injured players or cramping players. This rule needs to change because it's ruining the game of football.

4) Our time management needs to improve. Why in the world are we still running a hurry up offense in the 4th quarter with a lead and refuse to pass the ball against a stacked box? I believe we had 3 three-and-outs and ran very little time off the clock. I remember seeing Bowman snap the ball with 20-25 seconds on the clock multiple times in the fourth quarter while simultaneously trying to run the ball to run out the clock. This makes no sense. The coaches and the players can do better.

5) Bowman played much better in the season opener than he did most of last season, but we will face better defensive lines who will give him a lot more pressure. I don't remember seeing him throw off his back foot, which is a great thing to see. He did have one play where the ball should have had been intercepted. He needs to learn to throw the ball to where only his receiver can catch it or it goes out of bounds. This may have been the reason for his inaccuracies to Stribling yesterday. If it wasn't for Stribling's incredible hands most receivers would not have made those three incredible catches.

6) We have three legitimate NFL receivers in Stribling, Presley, and Owens. I don't know if all of them will get drafted to, but they will all make an NFL roster or practice squad. Hopefully Stribling will stick around for another year.

7) Anytime we are up by 4 scores in the 4th quarter or up by 3 scores with less than 10 minutes remaining, we need to try and get Flores some game action. He is a very talented kid and needs experience in games. This way when he is needed he has game experience and isn't overwhelmed by the moment.

DEFENSE
1) Tackling is once again an issue for oSu. SDSU missed very few tackles. This is a coaching issue and needs to be fixed in practice with tackling drills. I know Gundy is always worried about players getting hurt, but tackle freshman who aren't going to be playing in the games. They can be tackling dummies.

2) There is still too much confusion in the secondary. This leads to way too many huge gains when receivers are running wide open.

3) Our DB's are going to get abused against a good team. I think we are the only college team whose corners are taught to play the receiver and not the ball. This makes absolutely no sense. Look at the NFL, do you see corners playing the receiver or do they turn their head to play the ball? Watch Alabama and Georgia, pay attention to what their corners do. I think this is an issue with our DB coach. Gundy needs to get with him to change his philosophy to match what we see in the NFL and the great defenses in the college game.

4) Our safeties cannot defend 12 yards off the ball in man-to-man. Why is this still an issue every year? We are not disguising our coverages and teams know how to exploit this. We need to mix up our coverages on third and long and run more zone (as long as we still rush at least four people).

5) I would love to see us go back to some bump and run coverages in the secondary. This throws off the timing of offenses and allows our defense to disguise our coverages when we are playing man-to-man or zone.

6) What I miss the most about those Jim Knowles defenses is his attacking style. I loved how he used a lot of bump and run coverages in the secondary, but the thing I miss the most were those blitz disguises. Pre-snap the opposing team offenses never knew where the pressure was coming from or when.

Here are the SDSU game highlights.

 

[OSU_Sports_Nut]

09/07/24 oSu vs Arkansas

OFFENSE
1) The bad news is our blocking still needs to improve. The good news is it can be fixed by changing the scheme. Last year we went from zone scheme to gap scheme and it completely changed our season. So far this year we've been running a ton of zone scheme, so that we have the option to pass. It is a lot harder for an offensive lineman to pass block and run block at the same time. When you run block you can cross the line of scrimmage, but when you pass block a lineman can't cross the line of scrimmage more than one yard. In gap scheme you can blow your guy up and push him into tomorrow. This makes it very difficult because most lineman don't know if the quarterback is going to hand off for a run play or pass the ball for a pass play. If you look at Rule 8, Article 8, Section 3 it details the rule. Lineman are allowed to drive the defensive player back as long as they are engaged with them within one yard of the line of scrimmage. If the defender successfully disengages the lineman is not allowed to move past the line of scrimmage before the ball is thrown without it being a penalty. As soon as the ball leaves the passer's hand ineligible receivers are safe to move as much as they'd like.

The past two games we've run a lot of zone read option plays and we've struggled. I would rather us utilize gap scheme run plays, then utilize play action for pass plays. This way the offensive lineman know ahead of time whether they need to block for a pass or a run. This is how we can commit 100% to running the football. Right now we are half committed to running the ball and that's the MAIN PROBLEM.

If you watch Arkansas, they ran a lot of gap scheme against us. I'd love to see us doing more of this and run a lot of counters and ISOs where we pull different linemen. This gives the lineman a lot more momentum to block a defender in the gap.

Additionally, our slow developing outside zone runs are NOT effective. I'd love to see us pitch the ball outside more and use Presley a couple of times a game on a jet sweeps.

2) I'm going to say this about the receivers and offensive playcalling. The offensive play caller needs to only call certain routes for certain receivers.

For example, Owens is the only proven reliable as a receiver to go deep on go and fade routes. He's got great size, strength, and the ability to high point the ball in the air and adjust to the ball over his shoulder. He's also good on other routes too. The biggest issue I saw yesterday is him giving less than 100% effort and then having to make up for that by giving 100% effort only to come up slightly short on a deep throw. The throw that was intercepted was not on him, that defender was always deeper than him and Bowman should not have thrown that ball.

Stribling seems to be good on every route except for deep fades. He has a hard time adjusting to the ball over his shoulder and doesn't know how to high point a ball. He is excellent on slant, outs, posts, drags, etc (pretty much anything else).

Presley is great with just about every route, but you don't want him getting into a jump ball situation because of his size. You can loft him a deep pass on a post route or corner route, but I would stay away from go and fades routes.

3) Once again our time management came into play at the end of the game. This time I'm going to give coach Gundy points for what he tried to do to run the clock out, but the refs from the SEC did not understand what was going on with defensive offsides and called our offense for a false start. However, we still need to get better when we have the lead and we're snapping the ball with more than 3 seconds on the clock. This game went into overtime because Arkansas was able to move the ball down the field and kick a field goal with 2 seconds left. Granted they shouldn't have been able to do this if the refs had actually made the correct call on the defense being offsides. However, we can't control the refs but we can control when we snap the ball. We need to get better in this area when we have a lead late in a game.

DEFENSE
1) I think we finally learned who we can rely on the opposite of Oliver to pressure the quarterback. I was very impressed by Ezeigbo. Does anyone know how long Oliver will be out? With these guys lined up across from each other, we should be able to get consistent pressure the quarterback with only four defensive lineman.

2) Now regarding the secondary, we need to GET 0 OFF THE FIELD. The team last week and the team this week picked on number 0. Even when they didn't complete a pass, it wasn't because of the defender making a play and it was more about an inaccurate pass. I know Kobe Hylton is the main issue when it comes to breakdowns in our secondary. Surely we can find somebody else and give them a shot.

3) Tackling was better, but is still an issue for oSu. I know Gundy is always worried about players getting hurt, but tackle freshman who aren't going to be playing in the games. They can be tackling dummies.

4) We need to go back to a traditional 4-3 with ONLY 2 SAFETIES. There is still too much confusion in the secondary, especially at safety. This leads to way too many huge gains when receivers are running wide open. oSu needs to find some slot corners that can cover, so maybe it's time to give some of the youngsters a chance.

5) We are the only college team whose corners are taught to play the receiver and not the ball. Look at NFL corners and watch how they put a hand on the receiver (so they know where the receiver is located) and turn their head to play the ball.

6) We need to be taught to play zone better because our safeties cannot defend 12 yards off the ball in man-to-man. Additionally, our pre-snap alignment gives us away every game.

7) We need to go back to SOME bump and run coverages in the secondary. This throws off the timing of offenses and allows our defense to disguise our coverages, especially when we are playing zone.

Here are the Arkansas game highlights.