Buckeye Defense Looks To Lead The Way

A lot has been said this season about the Buckeye offense, whether it's praise or criticism. One thing almost everyone has agreed upon this year is the Buckeye defense, also known as the "Silver Bullet" defense. However, I think a lot of fans have taken for granted how athletically gifted this defense is, playing in what many consider an athletically inept Big 10. That athleticism will be put to the test by an Oregon offense many experts consider to be among the best and fastest in the country.

How can Ohio State neutralize this potent Oregon offense? There are two perspectives to look at: the gameplan and the execution. Let's look at the gameplanning first. Generally, there are two types of defenses: read and react and aggressive. In Big 10 battles, Ohio State often has an athleticsm edge, and it allows defensive coordinator Jim Heacock to employ a read and react gameplan with a few blitz calls mixed in. However, against Oregon, it's important to not only blitz more often and employ a man-to-man secondary strategy, but to also include different defensive stunts and player movement.

What do I mean? When you watch Ohio State games, generally the defensive line rushes the quarterback or attacks the running back every play. To switch things up, Heacock should call linebacker stunts and have the defensive ends fall back into zone coverage. This is where Ohio State's defensive athleticism would comes into play. Spitler, Rolle, and Homan have all shown the ability this year to get to the quarterback, and Gibson and Heyward have shown the ability to make plays downfield. This would allow Heacock to blitz Rolle, Homan, or Spitler and drop Heyward or Gibson into zone. This would keep Oregon's offensive line scrambling to figure out where to protect and would also confuse Masoli on the option read play.

Execution. Even with the gameplan I outlined above, it wouldn't matter without execution from all 11 Buckeyes. If Gibson or Heyward is late getting back in zone or Spitler can't get to Masoli, then Oregon will be able to execute their gameplan effectively. The play of the secondary is extremely important when blitzing. If Chekwa and Torrence can play good press coverage it gives the linebackers and defensive line more time to attack Oregon. The most importation execution on the field for the Buckeyes Friday of any unit will be the linebackers. To negate the effectiveness of the option read, the linebacking corp will have to make correct reads on who has the football and play attacking football without allowing any broken tackles. In the last 3 Buckeye BCS bowl games, poor tackling has allowed too many big plays. LaMichael James and Jeremiah Masoli are incredibly successful at making tacklers miss, something that Spitler and Rolle both talked about during Ohio State's media day today. Spitler mentioned that the linebacking corp understands that the success of the Buckeye defensive gameplan revolves around the ability of them to make plays.

Oregon has shown all year that they have the ability to put up a lot of points, and if Ohio State wants to come back to Columbus as 2010 Rose Bowl champions, it will be the defense that needs to step up, like they have all year.