My Take: Ohio

[EuclidBred]

Good morning boys & girls - always good to wake up on Sunday after an Orange W. I said many times over the month of August that this was such a silly game for the Cuse admin to schedule. Tough travel, typically strong MAC team, and (at the time) a coaching legend that always has his teams ready to play. In many regards, this game was a lose-lose for Cuse because if you win, you're supposed to win and if you lose, well...

BUT in my eyes, a win is a win. Yes it wasn't the prettiest of wins but Dino and crew needed to leave Athens with a W in the worst way and we did. Kudos to the team for battling and making it out relatively healthy as well.

5 Positives:

• No turnovers on O - hard to lose when you don't turn the ball over
• 8-12 on third down - much improved from the past few seasons
• 283 rushing yards - Tucker is a beast but more impressive to me DeVito with 50 yards on the ground
• OL did well run blocking against undersized DL
• Chestnut - not just the obvious but he is an EXCEPTIONAL tackler. Early on, Ohio could have done more damage if it wasn't for his open field tackling

5 Things To Work On:

• Red Zone play calling still left a ton of points on the board
• Pass rush - Ohio's QBs were weak - we are going to need to get some better pressure moving forward
• Defensive Depth - it didn't seem like we played very many guys on D.
• Still had a few stupid penalties that could have hurt us (Hanna - real dumb & DL roughing - questionable)
• No Shraeder until late - surprising considering our O stalling a few times in the third

With all this being said, and I know this is quite an ask for this board, we need to keep realistic expectations. This Ohio team was very poorly coached last night. Not entirely sure what their plan was on offense - if they had one. Their DL and LBs were undersized. That D actually did a good job all things considered. I would venture to guess they are no better than 3rd in the MAC East. So while on paper this was a great G5 opponent to kickoff the season against, be careful to raise expectations too high after this one.

The next one will tell us a lot. Temple stinks so RU and their fans could fall into the same trap SU and our fans could. But this is a Big Ten team coming to the Dome for the first home game post-covid/renovations. Hoping the place will be electric and we learn what this team really is after a drubbing of the Scarlet Knights!

 

[SUskibum]

5 Positives:

• No turnovers on O - hard to lose when you don't turn the ball over
• 8-12 on third down - much improved from the past few seasons
• 283 rushing yards - Tucker is a beast but more impressive to me DeVito with 50 yards on the ground He actually ran for 60 and was sacked once for -10
• OL did well run blocking against undersized DL
• Chestnut - not just the obvious but he is an EXCEPTIONAL tackler. Early on, Ohio could have done more damage if it wasn't for his open field tackling

5 Things To Work On:

• Red Zone play calling still left a ton of points on the board 27 points in 5 trips left 8 points on the board so we converted 77% of total possible points. I only had an issue with 1 play call which was the 3rd down pass play with 2 receivers in route, shoulda ran it.
• Pass rush - Ohio's QBs were weak - we are going to need to get some better pressure moving forward agreed
• Defensive Depth - it didn't seem like we played very many guys on D. We played 5 DL, 5 SafErie’s and 4 LBs, not too bad
• Still had a few stupid penalties that could have hurt us (Hanna - real dumb & DL roughing - questionable) agreed though a couple were questionable like you say
• No Shraeder until late - surprising considering our O stalling a few times in the third We only punted once and scored 17 points in 4 possessions in the second half