and- wildly inconsistent? Oh my. Some great games and some poor games..a little up and down perhaps, but far more consistent than most teams.
you don't play a full 12 game schedule, including the East Division in the Big where you beat great defense at MSU/UM/PSU , and end up with the results they have.
Being #1 in Offense, scoring, Rushing, First downs, pass efficiency, total yards, etc.. they are in the top 3-10 in the nation in all of those categories except one. In fact- it would be hard to argue that they are not the most balanced, high output offense in the nation. Nobody I can find comes close.
-6 yards in the first quarter vs UM, a horrible first half vs IU, total disaster at Iowa, Oklahoma pretty much a no show (and their defense is not good) Mike Weber 1 carry the entire first half vs UM, Dobbins doesn't touch the rock in the late 3rd to 4th quarters vs OU. 17 points in the first half vs Army.
Now we did get really fat stats against ILL, Nebraska, UNLV, Rutgers, Maryland and Nebraska. but who cares, we're supposed to, none of those teams have a defense. The MSU game is the 1 game were we blew the doors off a good defense. and why did we do that? for 1, we didn't run near as much read option because of the total outrage of not getting the RBs the ball against Iowa.
I think the problem with this offense is they still don't know what they want to be. All offseason they wanted to be a team that just wanted to throw it deep, work the deep ball. then it didn't work, we better run it. then out of necessity we did throw well against Penn St and fell in love with the pass game again. then that blew up against Iowa so back to the RBs vs MSU.
so season long we probably do look fairly balanced, but I would argue game to game it's fluctuated quite a bit.
I would agree with the identity thing and the fluctuations you speak of.
On the other hand, I look at Indiana, a conference road game, (who opens with a conference road game) and our WRs were brand new, facing a healthy, extremely experienced set of 4 DBs for Indiana.
Same on offense....our really inexperienced DBs versus a great WR Corp led by Cobbs, a QB that had his most accurate night of the year, probably because they had WEEKs to prepare ( and he hit a number of throws where the WR was actually well covered.
And even with this,when crunch time came, OSU adjusted and blew them out.
Do you remember the score of the Oklahoma game mid third quarter? Teams were tied.
Then the inexperienced LBs at least Worley and Booker)and DBs could not handle the RPOs and run fakes. Again, the OSU passing game was not clicking. Barrett had little to throw to as the Sooners got ahead and just dropped into a zone, after OSU had spent nearly all of fall camp preparing their WRs for man beaters. Oklahoma was just better. And they have proven to be one of the best.
Oklahoma was the better team, period.
But blaming Barrett is misguided.
Yes, the pick six to start Iowa was Horrible. To the Hawkeyes coaching credit, they absolutely baited him into it based on what OSU did to PennState.
But let's not forget, Barret made some great throws and runs to get OSU back to tied at 17 large in the first half. But OSU came in flat, and Bosa's ejection took the air out.
The entire off season for OSU was pointed at Penn State. They won that game in exhausting and emotional fashion, thanks to Barrett. IOwa meantime. Had one blackout game planned all year. They were fired up and focused as was their crowd. They are famous for elevating their game at home when they play highly ranked teams. This was the game they had circled on the schedule. Road games are tough enough, but after a huge emotional win, Buckeyes ran into a buzz saw. I saw it coming, but not to that degree. Iowa broke all kinds of tendencies on offense, and the Buckey coaches were unprepared. That's On Meyer, a guy known to be one of the best at having his team prepared emotionally and scheme wise. Not that day. But if they played again, who would you bet on with a gun to your head? You know who. Unfortunately that's not how it works.
Now, let's look at the wins, the endless list of wins that Barrett led, and in so many cases, bailed out OSU. Who has done better? Are they 4-0 with him as a starter against UM in spite of him, or at least partly because of him?
You want to talk about having lesser stats against better teams? Well of course!! That's how it works for everyone. The idea is, can they be stopped completely?
Maybe, but hard to do. Much harder than teams that don't have a highly competent, true dual threat QB.
