Brendan Gulick and Anthony Moeglin give their thoughts on the state of the Buckeyes football program after a loss to Missouri in the Cotton Bowl.
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00:10 Now for the second consecutive season, the Ohio State Buckeyes are going into
00:14 the offseason on a pretty disappointing loss.
00:17 This year though, maybe a little bit more of a sour taste than a year ago,
00:21 because this was not a college football playoff appearance.
00:25 And it was a game in which the Buckeyes never scored a touchdown offensively.
00:30 Yes, they were missing Marvin Harrison Jr. because he opted not to play.
00:33 No, they didn't have Tommy Eichenberg anchoring the defense,
00:36 which by the way played fine against one of the better offenses in the country.
00:40 But offensively, not even close to being good enough here this evening.
00:44 And so Anthony, the question that I think a lot of Ohio State fans are wrestling
00:47 with right now is, where do we go from here?
00:51 And let's address the level of concern right now,
00:56 as you go into the offseason, where you are with the program.
01:00 And the decisions that need to be made, and
01:05 the areas of frustration that I think under a magnifying glass,
01:12 once again tonight, proved to be problematic.
01:14 >> Yeah, I think at a macro level, looking at the big picture,
01:18 going from year to year, right?
01:20 You said this is our second year in a row coming into the offseason off
01:23 a disappointing loss.
01:24 Last year, you were in the college football playoff.
01:26 And frankly, we were actually looking up some highlights earlier today.
01:29 You're 10 minutes away, you're up 14 with 10 minutes to go on the game.
01:33 You're right there on the cusp of what, in all honesty,
01:36 was the national title game.
01:37 You probably won the national championship and whatnot.
01:39 So fast forward 365 days or whatever, fast forward a full year.
01:44 Now you're not even in the college football playoff and
01:45 you're going into the offseason with a loss.
01:47 So the trend line's going down, and that's not a place you wanna be.
01:51 It's tough to truthfully answer this question right now cuz the game just
01:56 ended what, an hour ago, hour and a half ago?
01:58 So the body's still warm, if you will, but the panic button's out, man.
02:05 And it is a tough, tough situation right now for Ohio State.
02:09 Because when you're looking at it, right, you're losing Marvin Harrison.
02:12 You got a big question mark at the quarterback position.
02:16 Not because you don't think the guys can do it, but
02:17 you just don't know which guy's gonna do it.
02:20 Where the concern for me lies is the offensive line.
02:23 Where are the answers gonna come from the offensive line?
02:25 Because it hasn't been good enough all year.
02:28 You're able to get some wins in some games that you're able to come back on.
02:32 Think back to Notre Dame, think back to Penn State.
02:34 And in Michigan, it kinda comes back to bite you.
02:36 But for me, I think the defensive side's gonna be fine.
02:39 I think you got a lot of great players on that side of the ball.
02:41 But the biggest question mark for me is what's gonna happen on that offensive
02:44 line and who's gonna be the signal caller in the backfield?
02:46 And that's where, hey,
02:47 your hands hovering over that panic button right now.
02:51 >> Yeah, I don't think I'm pounded in that panic button, but you're right.
02:54 I'm kinda like, this isn't good.
02:57 And Ryan Day made it very clear, hey, not allowed to lose around here.
03:03 This isn't good enough.
03:03 This isn't even close to our standard.
03:06 And even statistically speaking by what he considers to be
03:10 good performance offensively this year, even in their first 11 wins.
03:15 It wasn't good enough.
03:19 It wasn't Ryan Day's standard of offense.
03:23 The excellence that they routinely achieve.
03:26 He wants 500 yards of total offensive game, 300, 200.
03:31 He expects 40 point performances routinely.
03:34 And that didn't happen routinely.
03:36 It happened a couple of times along the way, but
03:38 not even close to regularly enough.
03:40 And he also said, look, I'm not gonna complain about winning games because
03:43 the defense looks like the best defense in the country.
03:46 A win's a win, we'll take it.
03:48 But when you peel back the layers of the onion, and
03:51 if the offense can't get it going like they couldn't tonight.
03:56 And at times where they sputtered against Michigan,
03:58 here we are in the same results, right?
04:03 11 and 2 as you were a year ago, albeit it feels a little bit different.
04:07 You're trying to build a program that's gonna win a national championship.
04:10 And I mean, look, they're not that far away.
04:13 Let's not be crazy here.
04:15 The margins in this sport are finer than they've ever been.
04:22 And with the expanded playoff next year,
04:24 some people are talking about how things are gonna be watered down.
04:27 I totally disagree.
04:29 You're gonna see teams, I mean, think about this Cotton Bowl game last year.
04:33 Everybody said Tulane USC, it's gonna be a clunker.
04:38 That was one of the best bowl games all bowl season last year, right?
04:42 I mean, you are going to get teams that nobody thinks are gonna be
04:47 national championship caliber teams that are gonna get into the 12 team playoff
04:51 next year, and they're gonna make some noise.
04:54 And Ohio State has to be ready to rock when they get to that point.
04:58 Because if the Buckeyes are not a top 12 team next year in the country,
05:05 that's a whole different level of I'm pounding the panic button.
05:09 I'm not concerned about that.
05:10 But they've got some questions I need to answer in the offseason.
05:14 And again, not gonna call for certain people's jobs.
05:17 I think that's unprofessional.
05:19 But they need to make serious strides in a couple areas,
05:23 offensively and on special teams.
05:25 I thought the defense overall tonight and
05:27 throughout the course of the season looked really good.
05:29 >> Yeah, and I even think too,
05:31 before you even get to talking about the 12 team playoff,
05:34 the Big Ten is gonna look a lot different.
05:36 >> Yeah. >> What we've been accustomed to is
05:39 respectfully like a bunch of games that are kind of tune ups to Penn State and
05:43 then a handful of games that are tune ups to Michigan.
05:46 They're all conference games, but like going to Purdue and going to Indiana and
05:49 going to Northwestern and inviting those Michigan State to your house.
05:53 And those games haven't been challenging.
05:55 And whether that's right, wrong or indifferent is a song for another time.
05:59 But right now when you're looking at it, welcome USC to the group,
06:02 welcome Washington to the group, welcome Oregon to the group.
06:05 The level of play in the Big Ten is gonna increase significantly, and
06:08 you better be ready to go.
06:10 There's not gonna be much room for
06:12 error because there's gonna be a lot of really good teams.
06:15 We've seen it now, the skill is kind of spreading evenly
06:19 throughout a bunch of the top programs.
06:21 And Ohio State, there's some serious question marks, serious question marks,
06:24 in my opinion, on that offensive line and that quarterback position that
06:28 are gonna be concerning for this entire offseason.
06:32 >> Look, I mean, you've got two kids coming in,
06:34 four total offensive linemen as true freshmen that are coming in.
06:38 Two of whom are twin brothers, Deontay and Devontay Armstrong,
06:42 coming in from St. Ed's in Cleveland who are high school All-Americans.
06:46 They are the real deal.
06:47 Are they gonna be ready to start as true freshmen next year if it gets pushed to
06:51 that? I mean, starting true freshmen on the offensive line feels
06:56 like a pretty aggressive tactic.
06:57 I don't know that the answer is in a true freshman next year.
07:02 So are you going back to the portal for offensive linemen?
07:05 Or do you need to see considerable improvement from the guys?
07:09 I mean, go back and watch some of the plays in the early third quarter tonight.
07:12 Make your eyes bleed.
07:14 It was brutal.
07:15 >> Yeah, no, there's pressure everywhere and Lincoln even said it at the end.
07:21 Missouri was giving them a bunch of what was called zero looks where they're just
07:25 blitzing everybody and playing cover zero across the board, which means no safeties.
07:29 It's man to man everywhere.
07:30 That gives you numbers in the rest game because they were challenging him to make
07:34 big throws and challenging the offensive line to protect as best they could.
07:38 And we obviously saw the results.
07:40 So like you said, for me, the panic button is on my desk.
07:44 I'm not hitting it yet, but I'm looking at it.
07:46 I'm maybe cleaning it off, dusting it off cuz it hasn't been out there for a while.
07:49 But it's getting close because there's a lot of question marks on this Ohio State
07:53 team.
07:54 >> Pretty restless night's sleep, I think, for
07:56 the Ohio State coaching staff as they try to figure out where to go from here.
08:00 And certainly Ryan Day is the one that has to make a lot of those decisions.
08:03 He knows what he signed up for when he took this job, that's for sure.
08:06 I think Ryan's made a lot of really, really good decisions during his tenure as
08:09 the Ohio State head coach.
08:11 But he's got a tough offseason coming up, that's for sure.
08:14 For all the latest news and info on the Buckeyes,
08:16 we got you covered here over on BuckeyesNow.com.
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