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I think I could cogently argue that Ohio State's last two teams to win national championships looked worse, at points, than they did yesterday.

I mean maybe. Defense is harder. But they've already given up over 30 points twice (in two games), and it certainly wasn't a fluke. Compare to the 02 team, which gave up 30 zero times and only 20 twice. The 14 team gave up 30 3 times, over 15 games. They were bad defensively the first game, but they were on the road, and missing some guys. Then they come home, get their guys back, and were even worse.

Some SOC thoughts on the Buckeyes:

LBs are pretty rough this year, but why do people say they were bad other years?  LBs were very good in 2019 and 2020.  For all the hate that Tuf Borland got, he probably would've prevented the 77 yard run and also stopped the frustrating run left run left offense in the red zone.  Run defense was good last year.  Right now this defense is like 2018 where they can't stop anything and give up many huge plays.

CBs are extremely encouraging.  Between Watts, Brown, and especially Burke, the Buckeyes are going to be very good.  They will also hopefully get Banks back at some point.  Please don't play Legend Cevajos in important spots though.  He is not ready.

Safety/Bullet will be a work in progress.  I like Ransom, but Proctor may be out for awhile and Shaw flashes sometimes, but was a key offender on the 77 yard run.  If we have to play Hooker....ugh kill me.

DLine is worse than I thought.  Harrison and Smith generated no pressure.  Garrett was fine, but we are obviously missing Togiai.  Probably need to increase PT for JTT and Sawyer.  JTT made some plays when he was in there.

Stroud is a 16 year old being given the keys to a Mercedes.  It is pretty scary to watch.  I think he will be pretty good eventually and probably just have to take the good with the bad.  Probably the most infuriating thing to me is Stroud scrambling out of a clean pocket for no reason.  That can be coached out of him eventually.

OLine was pretty disappointing.  Maybe having 4 tackles on one line isn't going to work out very well.  Seemed to have costly penalties that killed drives.  Dewand Jones had a back to earth game with 2 painful false starts.  I'm curious if they should shift Matt Jones back into the starting line-up, but that is probably an overreaction.

What is up with the field?  Players on both sides slipping a lot.

Refs were pretty upsetting.  Did they call any PI either way?  I guess they just decided they were going to pretend that rule didn't exist.  Also targeting desperately needs to be reworked and rethought.  It has become a farce like the NFL pass interference reviews a few years ago.  Or the NFL's survive the ground rule.  There is no consistency and no one can say what is targeting.  It's just a coin flip at this point.  

Anyhow, fix the field please.  Hopefully a lot of the other problems will get fixed during these 2 get right games.  I'm also now changing Rutgers from a 3rd get right game to a tough opponent.

As a Michigan fan it was entertaining to watch the Ducks upset the Buckeyes at home.   However, I know Ohio State will figure things out quickly and look like a national championship contender in a couple weeks, certainly by November.  

So I was out of town and not able to watch this game. I was getting text updates and of course when I return home on Sunday read quite a bit about the game.

Last night I found the entire game on YouTube and watched it and then again this morning before work and specifically watched a number of plays repeatedly.  Based on what I heard and read it wasn’t exactly what I expected when I watch the game.

Some observations: (if anything I say here sounds like an excuse, please disregard it because it is not intended that way at all.)

1.  Ohio State ran the ball fairly effectively. I was under the impression they didn’t.  With five minutes left in the first half and the score tied at seven Ohio State had effectively the same amount of rushing yards that Oregon did.  Later in the game they ran effectively but chose or were forced to run less often. They averaged 5 yards a carry which is pretty darn good. 

2. Stroud had a very solid game. He was mostly extremely accurate and pretty well protected until very late in the game when he received his only real sack and that was a coverage sack. Between the offensive production via the running game, which Oregon was focused on, and the pass protection which was excellent virtually all game, the offensive line had a very nice job on Saturday.

3.  Much happened early that ended up being big plays in the game.  Two long and good Ohio State drives ended with third down passes that were caught and then dropped. Each were great throws, would’ve been first downs, would’ve put Ohio State inside the red zone, but give Oregon credit because in both cases the receiver was hit after making the catch and did not hold on.  That ended up being a big deal because it didn’t allow Ohio State to use their offensive calling card -which is the other team never knows if they’re going to run or pass and force them to be more pass focused. 

One of Strouds few off target throws came at a critical time- On their attempted game tying touchdown Dr. he slightly over threw an easy touchdown pass to a wide-open Garrett Wilson.

4.  So much criticism of the players on Ohio State’s defense but I have to be honest and say a lot of it is not deserved at all.  Never have I seen that many plays run into the boundary side of the field, which Oregon did almost exclusively all day long.  Joe Moorehead personified.
I don’t know what the percentage is but usually 60 or 70% of plays in the college game or run to the field side and I’m guessing that in this game 90% if not more were run to the boundary side.  Why that’s important is that’s the weakness that got exposed early in the game.

Ohio State was not sealing the edge to the boundary side and four of Oregon’s five touchdowns came on either a run or a fake run pass to that side of the field.  Contrary to what I read Ohio State did make one adjustment late in the second quarter. The defensive and had been crashing down all game and Oregon had been formation wise putting triple to the field.  That forces the Defense to tilt to the field side. When you do that you need your defensive and to move up field and Seal - but they did not crash down and Oregon took advantage of the fact that Ohio State was not doing that. 

It’s literally embarrassing that they did not make an adjustment until the second quarter late, and for a while it worked.  But then they used that against Ohio State for the long 77 yard touchdown run in the third quarter by simply putting a tight end in motion and dragging the one linebacker who would fill the A gap with him.  It left a hole you could drive a truck through.

It forced Ohio State to go back to their standard defensive scheme and then re-exposed that boundary side for additional yardage and big plays later in the game.  Just a horrible coaching game and lack of preparation which is on Ryan day and the coaches. I can’t believe they didn’t move to a cover 2 or even a cover 3–but they didn’t.

With that one exception Ohio State was actually stuffing the run very well in the middle of the field. So because they did not make an adjustment Oregon just kept attacking the boundary side whenever they needed critical first down or decent size gain in the passing gain. 

5. I have heard a lot of complaints about the lack of pressure on the quarterback for Oregon but after watching the game I understand it because he either rolled out or got rid of the ball immediately with very few exceptions. Later in the game he did have a few drop backs and they actually did get a little bit of pressure on him but by this time they were so off-balance because they could not stop that simple boundary side running play.

6. Despite the poor defensive showing particularly as far as scheme, Ohio state still had numerous chances to win the game late and there were several very questionable calls which may or may not have been accurate but certainly impacted the game.  Both of them took away first downs for Ohio State and basically ended up being Dr. killers.  The defense actually came through with some great performance near the end of the game when it counted the most.

As a fan of this team I actually feel better having watched it because there is good news and bad news.

The good news is despite playing poorly on defense  this team looks like they could hang with anybody and the other good news is, they need a few tweaks to their scheme defensively and they need a few tweaks to their ability to disguise their scheme.

The bad news is I don’t have faith that the defensive coaching staff will make those tweaks. On the other hand Ryan day will look at this film and if the defensive staff does not make the necessary tweaks I think he will. 

Lastly let’s take our hats off to Oregon. They were crisp, energetic, had fantastic execution and played hard from start to finish.

They had a fantastic game plan and even better in game adjustments even if it only required a few.

I think a really good defensive coach could take the existing players and their base defense and with a few small adjustments make them one of the better defenses in the country. The players are way better than a lot of the fans are giving them credit for but the coaching staff deserves all of the ripping that’s coming at them. It’s almost like they didn’t properly prepare for Oregon, well Oregon was very very prepared.

kind of surprised that Zach Harrison hasn't turned out to be a Joey/Nick Bosa or Chase Young type. He's got more athletic ability than any of them. Thinking that talk of him in HS that he was a freak athlete but not much else might be true. It happens. Some guys are freakish athletes but can't play the game at a high level.

I wouldn’t write him off just yet.  He had a game impacting strip sack against Minnesota last week and if you watch the game film Oregon did a nice job of optioning around him in this particular game.  He was the crashing defensive end they schemed around.