Feels good man.
Last year was like finding out that Santa Claus wasn't real and that the Easter Bunny ate children, relentlessly filed public records requests, and had the power to guide your favorite team to a rare losing season before convincing your athletic director to choose the wrong year for a bowl ban.
Saturday went a long way in helping to erase that.
After a listless first quarter on both sides of the ball, Devin Smith got the party started and Urban Meyer's new-look Buckeyes absolutely throttled Miami on the way to rolling up 56 points and 538 yards of total offense. We're just one game into the season, but the team that hovered around the bottom of nearly every offensive ranking in 2011 now finds itself with the NCAA's 9th-ranked scoring offense, 14th-ranked rushing offense and 20th-ranked total offense.
Quarterback Braxton Miller? The nation's 9th-ranked rusher after setting a school record for rushing yards by a quarterback with 161.
And don't get me started on the tempo. The 2002-03 team ran 909 plays from scrimmage—in 14 games—easily qualifying as the most for a Jim Tressel Ohio State team. Meyer and Tom Herman's high octane unit is on pace for 1,020 plays after racking up 85 in the opener.
Yes, this was Miami, a MAC school that has never beaten Ohio State in five tries. But this Miami team is Phil Steele's pick to win the MAC and they were handled. With a vengeance.
The changes were noticeable outside of the stat sheet, too. Leading 21-3 with time ticking off the clock at the end of the first half, Miller found Evan Spencer for a 44-yard strike to move the ball to the RedHawks one. Jim Tressel would have called a timeout and kicked a field goal. Meyer called a timeout and dialed up a Carlos Hyde handoff to punch it in for six more. Hyde was stuffed, but message delivered.
This mentality bleeds over to the team. John Cooper had all of the talent in the world, but when the 4th quarter of a nail-biter came, he led the charge, gnawing at his fingers as he paced the sideline nervously. Tressel was a grandmaster at chess, leading his teams to fundamentals-based wins by leveraging the odds and waiting on opponent mistakes. It worked well enough, but that approach has its own shortcomings, reducing the margin for error against elite teams to levels that sometimes led to trouble. Meyer, on the other hand, goes for the finish early and often. And then he keeps going.
FRESHMEN DOING WORK. In the spring, Meyer famously remarked that he doesn't redshirt players, implying that if they're not good enough to play, they won't. There's likely a bit of hyperbole in that statement, but given the reduced scholarship numbers he's working with and the talent in the 2012 class, we figured plenty of freshmen would play and play they did.
By my count, the following freshmen saw action Saturday: Devan Bogard, Jacoby Boren, Taylor Decker, Bri'onte Dunn, Jamal Marcus, Najeh Murray, David Perkins, Joshua Perry, Armani Reeves, Tommy Schutt, Noah Spence, and Adolphus Washington. That's 12 true freshmen seeing action if you're counting along at home.
While a few of these young men saw action on special teams or during garbage time, several more figure to play prominent roles for this Ohio State team. Boren and Decker saw quality snaps on the 2nd-team line, Dunn scored the game's final touchdown on a late four-yard run, Schutt impressed with a few interior tackles, and Spence and Washington each notched the first of what should be many sacks.
UCF brings a more difficult challenge in week two, but expect to see more of Dunn, Spence, and Washington.
And then Alabama was all like, "NOPE."TEARS SO SWEET. What's the next-best thing to rolling up 56 in your opener? Why, watching Alabama humiliate Michigan, of course.
The loss sent MGoBlog into full kitteh again, and that was before the news of Blake Countess' season being over hit.
The thumping isn't altogether surprising. Many Buckeye fans saw the 2011 Wolverines as a squad that benefited from a kind home schedule, several breaks and the weakest Ohio State team in a generation. And then you have Alabama. Nick Saban's team is stocked with talent and completely dominated both sides of the line of scrimmage on the way to the blowout.
You know who else wasn't surprised? Floyd Mayweather, who reportedly cashed in on Alabama -14 to the tune of $3 million after leading people to believe he had placed his bet on the Wolverines.
Those without that kind of money to wager managed to get in on the clowning as well:
This is why I'm not going to Michigan lol
— Joey Bosa (@jbbigbear) September 2, 2012#GoBucks
Ouch. And:
So guys who do y'all think will score first scUM,or Hawaii??
— Tyvis C. Powell (@TP23_) September 2, 2012
And with that, I would like to thank the handful of UM fans that stopped by our live blog on Saturday to taunt us at the end of the first quarter.
THIS IS WHY THEY RECRUIT OHIO. Michigan commit Shane Morris, the keystone of the Wolverines' 2013 class and one of only two five-star quarterbacks on Rivals.com's board led his De La Salle team into a hotly anticipated matchup with Cleveland St. Ignatius over the weekend and things did not go as he envisioned:
Who was the Under Armour All-America quarterback here? Who was the guy that Michigan wanted so desperately it convinced him to commit during his sophomore year? Who was the pro-style quarterback deemed by Rivals.com as one of two in the country to receive a five-star rating?
Was it Warren (Mich.) De La Salle’s left-hander Shane Morris or left-hander Michael LaManna of St. Ignatius?
Anyone can have a bad day, but the numbers that led to St. Ignatius’s surprising 49-13 victory on a steamy Saturday in an even steamier Byers Field told the story.
LaManna, who is still waiting for his first Division I college offer after biding his time last year while move-in Eric Williams was leading the Wildcats to the school’s 11th state championship, came within 22 yards of equalling the school record for yards passing in a single game, while Morris looked nothing like the second-ranked quarterback in the country.
Morris completed just nine of 22 passes for 104 yards, no touchdowns and an interception. Go Blue.
Also of note from this game: Ignatius running back Timothy, younger brother of former Buckeye Scott McVey, has a really unfortunate name. He goes by Tim, thankfully, but someone should alert the Plain Dealer.
[META]. We are beta testing a hot new project. Please ping me if you'd like to help out. We can't promise much beyond the fame of being one of the first to see something cool.
ETC. This is great... UCF running back may miss this weekend's game with a shoulder injury...UCLA hoops could be in some trouble related to the recruitment of Tony Parker... The Bollman Effect... A meme is born as the Air Raid stalls.
