Canadian Fan

Not sure I agree there aren't young players to be excited about. Both our OL and DL are showing a lot of promise.

More worrisome are our WR, DB and LB classes who have been hammered by injuries and transfers.  In the defensive backfield alone, the loss of all the Florida kids may take a couple of years to overcome.

The one item I would point to is that we need to stop recruiting kids with "great instincts and average speed" at the skills positions and linebacker.  If you want to beat teams like OSU, you can't have your players exactly where they are supposed to be based on the play call, then have their players constantly outrunning your players.  So when making your offers we need to target the kids with the higher athletic ceiling and lower instincts and hope we can teach them their positions over time...and also accept that you may have a higher failure/attrition rate because you are taking more chances on more high risk/high return kids.  I'll leave commentary on our rash of injuries to others who are more informed that I am, but I would add that pattern is of concern and has certainly impacted our roster depth, especially amongst the younger kids.

Just a question for those on Chin (and for the record you guys may be right based on his long term record), but how many teams do you think will play OSU this year, and being -2 on turnovers will allow less than 45 points?  

By the way, if I were going to criticize a coordinator, I think our offensive coaches continuing to try to run plays East-West vs North-South was far more disappointing as that played against our roster strengths, into their roster strengths, and cost us a number of key 3-and-outs.  That, far more than any DB cushion, was a strategic failure of scheme and play calling and something I would call the coaches onto the carpet for.

Long-time lurker, but first post....

To briefly re-hash some of what has already been said: definitelyDL improvement, OL improvement (except Farniok's whiffs which were surprising), truly AWFUL officiating were all pretty clear, as was improved S&C.

Three other takes:

1.  On offence I think the staff knew that that there was a major mismatch between our ability to pass the ball to our WR's and their ability to defend the pass. Based on that, I think they the made determination they needed to play ball control offense and not put Martinez (in particular) in a position where he had to make a lot of deeper passes as they didn't trust his accuracy and couldn't afford a bunch of INT's. Based on what I saw, I wouldn't have tried to throw it deep either. I would have continued to try to methodically pound the ball and concentrate my OL against their DL.  Unfortunately the combination of the two QB fumbles and the truly obnoxious officiating let the ball game run away from them.

2. On defense I don't think the complaints about Chin are justified.  With Fields being a top-3 NFL draft pick and their WR's being clearly faster than our DB's, the only choice is to try to keep the WR's in front of them. If he tried to play them tight, the same people complaining on the cushions would have complained about making it too easy on the deep balls.  In this case I think Chin realistically did not have the horses to play their WR the way he would have liked so tried to play conservatively and hope for some mistakes.  Sadly Fields didn't fumble, hit 95%+ on his throws, and even his two tipped balls still ended up in his receivers hands.  Bottom Line is with the discrepancy in the WR-DB talent, I would conted that Chin's game plan have them the best chance to stay competitive.  Play bump and.run or press's and I think they could have easily thrown for 400 yards on us.

3.  After re-watching all the penalty calls, it truly feels like the B1G officials were given guidelines to ensure Ohio State won.  Besides the obvious targeting calls, the missed 'knee on the turf' which would have put them into 4th down, the missed holding calls against their OL at critical junctures and even ball spotting was truly awful.  After today's display, it truly appears we're in the doghouse everywhere the corporate office has influence and that could make the season a real challenge.

All in all though, after last year, I was really proud of the kids.  I think there are some significantly positive things to build on after a huge challenge in game 1 against the best QB they'll play all year.