After another game that was the latest edition in Ohio State's ongoing will-the-pass-defense-ever-get-better-what-the-hell-was-that saga, Chris Ash got defensive when reporters unloaded questions curious as to why the unit — which supposedly underwent a miraculous offseason overhaul and transformation — misfired on another big-time opportunity to prove it.
“I’m not gonna stay up tonight, I can tell you that. I gotta get up early enough and I’m here late enough as it is, but we’ll address it tomorrow,” the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach said.
“We just won a game. We’re gonna enjoy victory. I don’t what you guys want, but we’re going to enjoy victory over a team that has a good quarterback, good receivers.”
That’s true, but an otherwise hearty 50-28 win against in-state foe Cincinnati Saturday night was spoiled after the Buckeyes were gashed by quarterback Gunner Kiel for 352 yards and four touchdowns.
To be fair, Ohio State wasn't carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey the way Clemson, Michigan State and any team with a pulse in the passing game was able to do last season. Yet the way the team surrendered big plays means there’s much work to do after a vowing to be better this time around.
“Defensively, we're back to the drawing board. And pass coverage, the corner, a couple corners got beat and we gave up big plays … we've got to get that fixed. You can't play championship football until that gets fixed,” head coach Urban Meyer said.
In this matchup, which was billed as a battle between Cincinnati’s high-flying offense and the Buckeyes’ weakest link, the Bearcats gouged the unit with big, devastating passing plays that erased a 23-point deficit to five by the middle of the third quarter.
On this evening, Kiel’s favorite target was redshirt junior wide receiver Chris Moore, who finished the day with a ridiculous 221 yards and three touchdowns on three catches. He looked a step — or three — faster than Ohio State’s defenders — a regular theme for opposing offenses facing this team.
With Ash, who was summoned by Meyer to help cure a unit that caused the team’s unraveling a year ago, things were supposed to get fixed or at be heading in that direction. Two tests against Virginia Tech and Cincinnati have proven it's more of the same.
It's not to say the pass defense can't or won't improve, but Saturday was filled with miscues and missed opportunities.
Ash, though, wasn’t having any of that.
“Were these guys good? Absolutely. We knew that going in … they’ve got a good offense, they’ve got a good scheme, they’re gonna win a lot of games, they’re gonna put up a lot of yards,” Ash said. “Bottom line is we had some plays that we should’ve made — we didn’t — and we’ll get it fixed. That’s it.”
Things aren’t that simple, though. Despite holding the Bearcats to 4-of-11 third down conversions and tightening up on Kiel and Co. in the fourth quarter, those big plays — and Ohio State’s uncanny inability to stop them — made the contest competitive when it probably shouldn’t have been.
According to Ash, it’s a relatively easy and minor fix.
“They’re not breakdowns. They’re one-on-one situations where guys made mistakes. They didn’t even necessarily make mistakes, they got beat in one-on-one situations, that’s not a breakdown. That’s not a schematic breakdown," Ash said.
"A couple of them are discipline things and some of them might be techniques we can improve on, but no necessarily breakdowns.”
Whatever you want to call it, Saturday’s outing was enough for former head coach Earle Bruce, who sits in the press box a row above reporters, to howl and moan at what was unfolding before him.
In particular, when Moore, the Cincinnati receiver, hauled in his third touchdown pass — a 78-yard catch and run — Bruce, who’s a sprightly 83 years old, rose to his feet.
“OH NO, OH NO, OH NO,” he said while his voice grew more agitated as Moore galloped closer and closer toward the end zone. After all, the play itself wasn’t complicated. Short pass. Catch. Run. Touchdown. It was that simple.
“Oh, we're getting an education on pass defense,” he said. “Holy shit."
Which is certainly one way to look at Saturday. Another is to take the experience as a mixed bag good and bad.
“You take away three plays — which you can’t — we played the rest of them pretty decent,” Ash said.
“Now, we gotta get the three that we gave up fixed. We can’t allow that, we’re not gonna allow that, its not acceptable.”
So here's a million-dollar question: why does it keep happening then?
