I wouldn't say there was a ton of insight into what's up with the offensive line, but Austin and I both tried to get some. Wanted to share those questions and answers with you here:
Austin asks him what it's like in the room, and what's the evaluation:
"Ohio State has a very high standard, so you're always pushing for that. Are we there yet? No. Are we working our way there? Yeah. There's been some improvement. There's some guys in the first group that have pulled away from the second group. But at the end of the day, you want the production. So no one is happy. There's a legitimate fight right now from the staff and the kids all together. I tell the kids all the time that we're doing this together. In practice, do I gotta cut it down back to basics and make it remedial? Yeah, I've done that a little bit this week. Everybody, coaches and players, has come out this week and talked ... the bad stuff is not because we're unable physically. There are some things going on that we need to correct, that we're capable and able to do it, but we're just not doing right now. So I have to simplify a scheme? Yeah, probably. Do they have to latch on and re-bite to scheme because they've gone too far, too fast? Yeah, some of them."
Austin followed up with whether it's hard to chart a course out of the struggles:
"No, you can let yourself get confused. It's getting back to the basics, the fundamentals and maybe the scheme — we'd really love to block them all, but maybe we get to these six. We have to put them in the right schemes so they can play faster and looser. Other times they say they got the scheme and they're gonna get better. In our room, the kids are diving back into themselves. There's no kicking back. From a coaching standpoint, I'm looking at how hard I'm coaching it, what I'm coaching, the details I'm giving to them, making sure I'm not spreading them too thin and then making sure they have the right schemes to go execute better."
I asked if it's possible that running the stretch play just doesn't suit this group:
"There are a lot of pieces that go into that. If it's just five-man, open stretch, there's a component of that. Then you add a tight end or fullback to it ... so you can add more pieces to it. Then you have more blocks and more reads. Are we just gonna cut it away? No. We've got banked reps and had times where we've run it really well, too. Then why isn't this one working? Is it personnel, like 12 or 13 versus 11? We gotta keep digging on it. To just say, wholesale, that it's not there, there's too much banked work. So we look at how do we find the right merge of five, then become six or seven, how does the back read it, and then put out guys in the right scheme that way."
I followed up with guys not getting to the second level:
"We gotta get displacement up front. We've gotta get more movement. Those guys (Maryland) played that 3-4 Okie front, so you gotta get moving on that first level. A lot of our play-action stuff hit, too, because there were a lot of guys down. That's the give and take. But, yes, we've gotta be more explosive in those. We only had two zero or negative yardage runs, but we had too many 3s and 2s. Getting the ball to the second level you have to ask whether it's the scheme, the personnel we're asking to do that scheme, or is there a different scheme we can open up? You look for that and you game plan every week. We gotta dive into it. We're all working on it."
Austin asks him what it's like in the room, and what's the evaluation:
"Ohio State has a very high standard, so you're always pushing for that. Are we there yet? No. Are we working our way there? Yeah. There's been some improvement. There's some guys in the first group that have pulled away from the second group. But at the end of the day, you want the production. So no one is happy. There's a legitimate fight right now from the staff and the kids all together. I tell the kids all the time that we're doing this together. In practice, do I gotta cut it down back to basics and make it remedial? Yeah, I've done that a little bit this week. Everybody, coaches and players, has come out this week and talked ... the bad stuff is not because we're unable physically. There are some things going on that we need to correct, that we're capable and able to do it, but we're just not doing right now. So I have to simplify a scheme? Yeah, probably. Do they have to latch on and re-bite to scheme because they've gone too far, too fast? Yeah, some of them."
Austin followed up with whether it's hard to chart a course out of the struggles:
"No, you can let yourself get confused. It's getting back to the basics, the fundamentals and maybe the scheme — we'd really love to block them all, but maybe we get to these six. We have to put them in the right schemes so they can play faster and looser. Other times they say they got the scheme and they're gonna get better. In our room, the kids are diving back into themselves. There's no kicking back. From a coaching standpoint, I'm looking at how hard I'm coaching it, what I'm coaching, the details I'm giving to them, making sure I'm not spreading them too thin and then making sure they have the right schemes to go execute better."
I asked if it's possible that running the stretch play just doesn't suit this group:
"There are a lot of pieces that go into that. If it's just five-man, open stretch, there's a component of that. Then you add a tight end or fullback to it ... so you can add more pieces to it. Then you have more blocks and more reads. Are we just gonna cut it away? No. We've got banked reps and had times where we've run it really well, too. Then why isn't this one working? Is it personnel, like 12 or 13 versus 11? We gotta keep digging on it. To just say, wholesale, that it's not there, there's too much banked work. So we look at how do we find the right merge of five, then become six or seven, how does the back read it, and then put out guys in the right scheme that way."
I followed up with guys not getting to the second level:
"We gotta get displacement up front. We've gotta get more movement. Those guys (Maryland) played that 3-4 Okie front, so you gotta get moving on that first level. A lot of our play-action stuff hit, too, because there were a lot of guys down. That's the give and take. But, yes, we've gotta be more explosive in those. We only had two zero or negative yardage runs, but we had too many 3s and 2s. Getting the ball to the second level you have to ask whether it's the scheme, the personnel we're asking to do that scheme, or is there a different scheme we can open up? You look for that and you game plan every week. We gotta dive into it. We're all working on it."
