It's a fairly bad comparison overall (I thought that as I was reading that comment), but this current Buckeye D isn't good. And to the poster's point, and to the responses as well, it's just probably not a good idea to try to compare OSU defenses over the years. (So 11 W probably shouldn't do it in the first place and certainly not with this current D.) Just don't do it. It's rather pointless, bc it's often apples to oranges at least to some degree. Admire what great offenses or defenses did during their time and leave it at that.

Yes, if OSU doesn't get this D "fixed" (which I keep hearing about), then I do think it's a distinct possibility that we could end up finding ourselves fighting for our lives in a game in the second half of the season. A few miscues here and there in any or all 3 phases of the game, and a small number of questionable calls/penalties and voilà, panic sets in & we're trying to score at the end of a game to pull out a desperate W. When you find yourself in that situation, none of the plays that came before it matter & it can very well come down to one play in the closing seconds of a game to determine who wins or who loses. You can analyze the mistakes & woulda/shoulda/coulda plays afterward, but in that moment you have to make a play to win or lose.

I'm old enough to remember when people everywhere ridiculed and laughed at the awful defense in the Big 12 and sky-high scores.

Agreed. Yeah the middle of the field looked like a vacant parking lot. I thought that was one of the benefits of having Chip up in the booth/box, so he could get that whole view. Sometimes we don't see things that are right in front of our faces. Take what they give you, right? Well, they were giving us the middle of the field & with our speedy receivers who knows. And the TO we still had. That's part of the OPI issue as well. CB was trying so hard to take sideline away from JJ that once JJ took the quick steps in as if to slant, CB was way out of position & off-balance, creates the contact & JJ easily shrugs him off bc the CB's momentum was already going that way & he was so off-balance (not a good athletic base bc his upper body was way out over his lower body) so JJ just barely had to do anything & the CB goes off that direction & JJ curls back out for the wide open target & catch. We know what happened from there.

Was going to say something similar earlier about it becoming a word game of semantics, which can be fun at times but in these cases can be annoying - wake-up call, shocking, surprising, eye-opening, or just well we have a lot to work on. Whatever you want to call it, whether we all had this game circled & knew it would be tough or not, I think it's a wake-up call that OSU D gave up 500 yards of O in less than 27 minutes ToP, did not create 1 TO & almost no impact plays to speak of at all against the Ducks. Yeah we lost by 1 point, & the Offense played extremely well but certainly not perfect or clean but still put up 470 yards & 31 points & still needed a score at the end to win it. We didn't get it so we lost. Oregon's offense is very good, I have no problem saying that. And to give up 300 or even maybe 400 yards, ok, but 500 in 27 minutes. Likely the best offense we see all year but we still have difficult games ahead. Hopefully, Bucks continue to work very hard on the right things & the D can finally get some things really figured out & "fixed" & the O can play just a little cleaner & we will be very difficult to beat. This better be a wake up call because while we still have all of our goals in front of us, if we stumble at all the second half then some of the goals start disappearing.

Good one daytrain.

And everyone I would hope already knew that we had a lot of shit to improve on. But we're not. The damn wake up up call is you better try something different because what you're doing isn't working especially against matchup opponents. You want to be the man you got to beat the man. And OSU is NOT beating the men, whether by 1 point or 50.

Um seems like a wake up call when a lot of people foolishly thought this defense was much better than it really is halfway through the season. You don't have to get your ass smoked against a cupcake for it to be a wake up call.

Weak ass call. Period. It's football candy asses. Oregon CB misplayed it from the snap, was out of position as JJ starts to cut inside, then initiates the contact with JJ to impede his route and gets his hands up into JJ's chest/shoulders, and proceeds to get his ass handed to him by JJ as JJ's superior quickness, size, strength & stronger hands allow him to disengage from the punkass CB & ref bails the inferior player out who completely misplayed the damn play/route. Oregon CB was overmatched. Not the ref's job to bail out a player who puts himself into a bad spot against a superior player & then gets made to look like a fool and oversells it as well. And Blackledge the OSU hater said something asinine like JJ's strength hurt him in that situation (instead of saying Oregon CB initiated the contact because he was out of position due to JJ's superior size & athleticism). Yeah you're right, nobody wants to recruit guys who are bigger, faster, stronger....to get an athletic advantage over inferior players. Refs let play go on all night in the secondary then call that at the end of the game.

Obviously the rule needs to be changed and should have been already given how it's handled in the NFL. That is why The Rules Committee needs to careful vet the rules and run through every single scenario in which a rule could be perverted and turned on it's head to reward the team committing the penalty. They know coaching staffs are going to attempt to do these kinds of things so Rules Committee needs to be smarter than them and get ahead of these situations. Obviously this is not the intent of the rule and is an unintended consequence that has to be remedied. It's not in the spirit of fair competition to get rewarded for committing a penalty, especially in a situation where the other team has no real recourse or strategy to combat it. This isn't getting outcoached because there is nothing the team or coaching staff in OSU's position can do in this case, no chess move or strategy they can implement or counter with in that situation to avoid the impact - losing time for minimal yardage gain reward. Yes there are other issues like this I'm sure, but this is what we're discussing now, and yes OSU got outcoached, and yes if they didn't make other mistakes maybe they could have avoided that situation, but all that aside, when a team is in this situation there should not be mechanisms in the rules to just continue to bleed time off the clock and essentially take the ball out of the offense's hands. (And yes it was impactful otherwise Lanning wouldn't have done it. Deliberately putting 12 of his players on the field against 11 of OSU's.) (And of course there are a litany of things that could have been done differently or better up to that point, but in the midst of the game you don't dwell on those things and you try to win the game regardless. Obviously we all would have preferred to avoid that situation altogether but at that point that is where we were & it doesn't negate the fact that the rule needs to be changed. Let the kids/athletes decide it on the field and not turn a football field into a courtroom where coaches become lawyers trying to find technicalities in the rules to gain an unfair advantage instead of letting the game fully play out between the players.) Though with that said, Howard needs to get down a second sooner on the scramble and we take our chances with the field goal attempt wherever we are at that point. I don't fault Howard in that specific situation too much, he knew the time, kid was just trying to get his team and kicker an extra yard or 2 to make it a shorter kick and he saw the extra avaliable yards in front of him and just got a little too greedy based on the time remaining. And the footage shows he's down with a second left but trying to get the TO from the refs at that point was just too close, but just barely. He made some very good tgrows on that drive and did not look rattled to me at all as others have claimed. The moment wasn't too big he just tried to stretch for too much yardage on that last run. I was more frustrated with Howard fumbling the snap on 3rd & 3 leading to punt and good field position for Oregon. (His deep ball arm strength is my main concern for Will but that's perhaps a comment for another post.) Everyone knows Howard's stats for the game so I won't list them, but if you're going to start somewhere start with the D giving up 496 & 32 in 6 less minutes of ToP. At this point use the bye to try to get some things figured out, get healthy and be ready to try to make the stretch run through the rest of the conference unscathed and take it from there. Go Bucks.

This thread (and certainly some others) is just wild. Why do certain people here seem to think they get to advise or coach or pass judgment on other people making a comment here? As long as they are within the rules of the comments, people can come on here and post what they want. If they want to blow off steam, fine. If they want to praise the team fine. If certain people only want the Happy Buckeye 247- 365 fan club then create that site and live in a bubble there. Disagreements and debate /discussion are good I think, but seems it gets so futile and vitriolic here. If you don't like or agree with a comment you don't have to be a complete ass calling them out, as if your take or viewpoint is somehow vastly superior. Some people want Day fired some don't. Some people seem to think this D can turn things around and some don't. But to tell somebody they need to calm down or touch grass or whatever seems silly - who made them the attitude comment police? Maybe become a therapist if you think that is your role but it isn't here. People telling other people to not let things upset them that are out of their control (and it's just a game) are the same people that seem to be expending a lot of energy trying to control how other people feel or how other people comment on here. Follow your own advice - don't let things you can't control (like what other people post) get to you so much. People can post whatever the fuck they want (within guidelines of course). Maybe it's a fairly baseless or stupid take or maybe seems like an overreaction, so what. Maybe it's not an overreaction to them. They want to go on a rant about Day or Knowles or the D or Burke so be it. Don't like it, or can't handle, then maybe this isn't the place for you. Some posts have good facts but then someone else comes in and says ok yeah but what about this or that and there can be some good discussions which are fun. But some folks on here need to stop thinking they get to set the temperament or tone for the commentary on here. If you want to be unicorns and pixie dust on here fine. If someone else wants to be fire and brimstone that's fine too. But at least most of us on here are Buckeyes fans but doesn't mean we're going to see eye to eye, and you don't have to be a football coach to comment here, so those comments are kind of useless too. Or that well these miserable idiots just expect complete perfection all the time and to go 15-0 and win 70-0 every week - those are pretty childish takes in their own right. I think someone actually quoted Michael Jordan above and something about just stop it and get help. Yeah you're right, Michael Jordan never had any competitive fire or drive to seek perfection even though he knew it wasn't attainable, that didn't stop his pursuit of it. Aren't many of these athletes supposed to be cut from a little different cloth and trying to reach the pinnacle of their sport? And we as fans urge them on in that pursuit, but yes you have to keep it in perspective. But all that being said, if you think this defense doesn't have serious issues and limitations then I don't know what to do for you. I hope they keep working and improving but these aren't new issues and some people are rightly frustrated by them. If you're not, well then good for you. Go Bucks.

Don't know if I can really add anything new at this point to this thread or others. As others have correctly noted, the ongoing flaws and weaknesses of this defense have been pointed out by several, for multiple years, only to be ridiculed/DV as bad (miserable) OSU fans, by their apparently, superior & better fans. Well, now here we are. There seem to be multiple issues plaguing our defense & I'm not sure there is a silver bullet (no pun intended) that cures everything we're dealing with. Coaching- schemes, philosophy, disagreements, development, recruiting etc. Players- talent, ability, skills, only Styles really lacks experience. At this point, I don't see how these issues truly get fixed this year in any meaningful way. I don't know if Day and D coaches really know how to fix it this year. If they did, I would have hoped it would have been fixed by now. Well, it doesn't seem to be getting fixed and issues that were seen but masked against early season teams are now quickly becoming more widely know across all of college football. Stats can tell part of the story but there is still the eyeball test and if you were watching this defense in recent years and the games so far this season you would have seen areas for concern. So many were saying, oh there's time to get those issues fixed, as if they were just easy fixes that were somehow just going to happen with more of the same practices and approach. Well, they're not getting fixed and now everybody is seeing it and the second half of this season is going to be much more difficult than the first and we don't have a lot of room for error. The D is going to have to try get stops when they can & the Offense is going to have to play at a very high level every game & outscore teams because this D is going to continue to give up yards and points to good teams left on our schedule. Unless some kind of drastic change happens or new things get implemented this D pretty much is who they are. Sawyer, JT - they are who they are and they are not elite, certainly not on any kind of consistent basis. I thought I'd see more fire and intensity from this team and D instead it was just excuses- well it's an early game, well it was hot, well it was just Akron, blah blah blah. Then why did you all come back? You don't get an automatic bid just for coming back. Enough of the grandiose mission talk. Putting on that uni every Saturday should have been all the motivation you need- I don't care about what time the game is, or where or what the weather is or who we're playing. Thought this year was about making a statement. I was concerned about some of them coming back bc they weren't that great to begin with but I thought they were going to commit to getting better and working harder etc. But maybe this is about as good as it gets for this D. We're going to have to find ways to grind out games and win but hard to see them as truly NC caliber but I'm rooting for them to get better and succeed and achieve the goals they set for this year. We'll see how it shakes out. Go Bucks.

Ducks die in darkness.

Just seems kind of like a gimmicky circus at this point. Not that they don't have legit talent on that team, they do. But the uni stuff is just getting absurd. And unless they've got Superman unis those blackout fly unis are not going to help them cover our WRs or tackle our RBs. Go Bucks! Beat the Ducks!

Yeah I tend to agree about their uniform nonsense. Yes, fine, I'm old school, but it just seems like it's gotten so gimmicky & like a circus. Where's the tradition and identity?

I think it will be interesting to see if the Buckeyes come out and show an early wrinkle or 2 on offense and/or D to get the Ducks off balance and grab early points and an early lead which can be crucial in a big match up road game like this where you know their fans and players are going to be hyped and have high energy. (The anticipation for this game has been building for so long.) That might help take the crowd out of the game at least for a bit and quell that home element. Then the Bucks can settle in and just play and keep their hands around the Ducks' necks. Get the Ducks panicking and pressing a little bit which could cause miscues and possibly turnovers and our O and D could feast at that point. Or, if both teams slowly feel each other out a bit through the first qtr and neither team gains an early advantage. But in that case, if the Bucks could take even a one-score lead in at half, we've seen what they have done to teams in the second half of every game so far this season. Either of those would work in OSU's favor I think. Biggest thing is to not start too slowly and let them get off to too fast of a start and really keep the crowd in it. The Buckeyes are healthy and improving every game and still very hungry so I like our mindset and the condition of our team heading into this big road test. Go Bucks! Beat the Ducks!

First post. Finally got my credentials to get on here (after years of just reading articles and comments). Nothing earth-shattering here. I do think Styles and Simons will be tested. We'll see how they do. Ty and Dline need to play big- looking at you JTT & Jack S. Continue to limit explosive plays like we have all season so far. Will needs a clean game and not to force things when he doesn't have to like we've seen him do a few times. But use his legs to keep their D a bit more honest, maybe get another rushing TD. Oline continue to gel and run and pass block as a unit- contol LoS. Keep the Ducks' D off balance. Receivers and backs continue to hit your blocking assignments- we've seen what happens when they do that. Stay disciplined and focused. Just take it right at them every play win your 1-on-1 match ups. Also looking forward to what Knowles & Kelly unveil on D and O. Go Bucks beat the Ducks.