“The best offense is a good defense” might be the most profound sentiment in the history of college football.
This is preeminently clever armchair football reasoning - saying it aloud while holding a warm 9am beer on a September Saturday can recast the whole tailgate as a philosophy huddle.
Confidence is soaring, everyone is still in contention, no one’s fresh tendencies are on film yet and new starters are still clunky. Time to speak offense sells tickets, defense wins championships into existence once again. Clichés have genealogy and these sayings are first cousins.
Historians believe Plato's wrestling coach first suggested defense held the greatest importance at a meet in Delphi; balance just seemed too obvious. Centuries later a nameless hero wearing a braided belt repeated it on the corner of Lane and High.
It got parroted all over campus. You can speak literally anything into existence if you have enough time and stamina. But here’s the truth about defense winning championships - you can find lopsided champions with dicey defenses in every decade.
LSU allowed over 37 points four different times in 2019 en route to going 15-0 in dominant fashion. Sold tickets and won trophies with a decidedly okay defense. The Tigers’ best offense was its offense.
Just last season Ohio State couldn’t stay healthy and looked like a different, downgraded team coming out of its bye week - yet had several chances to win a national championship with a defense which especially foundered down the stretch.
Offenses have to be able to accelerate and downshift at will. That requires a Competent downfield Passing game.
A title might have materialized if its defense had simply managed to operate at an okay level. It just wasn't okay enough. Okay was all the Buckeyes needed against Georgia.
And while we're on Ohio State - our favorite topic - its two most recent national championships featured teams which ascended in their own unique ways. The 2002 Buckeyes were imbalanced and went 14-0 with a generational defense. Plato’s coach was right.
But the team that won it all a dozen years later wasn’t nearly as one-dimensional - it did everything well, including the unplanned stuff. Beating Wisconsin 59-0 doesn’t scream defense wins championships as loudly as grinding out a 10-7 win might have.
That offense ran the ball practically at will while torturing secondaries with a 3rd string QB. Ohio State took the title game 42-20. A 21-20 nail biter would have hit differently.
Across every era of college football, the best defense is a good defense and the best offense is situationally capable. The unintended consequences of Ohio State's high-flying offense the past few seasons is it often fails to give what has been a largely mediocre unit since 2017 enough time to catch its breath.
An offense which can choose to score quickly or leisurely - dealer's choice - is the best offense. Ohio State did not have that last year, but every running back getting hurt didn’t help. Offenses have to be able to accelerate and downshift at will. That requires a competent downfield passing game.
Ryan Day’s first Ohio State offense in 2017 began the program’s shift toward a passing threat taking precedence in strategy.
Woody Hayes radicalized Baby Boomers against passing through his own preeminently clever reasoning, most notably that three things can happen when you throw the ball and two of them are bad. What Woody glossed over is that one good thing is really good.
And it’s not like running the ball is without risk. Ohio State’s first three handoffs of the 2nd half against Michigan in 2021 effectively pulled the game out from under them. But hey, good job - no incompletions or interceptions.
Building a strategy around turtling while patiently waiting for an opponent to make mistakes is workable when there’s a significant talent void and gambling isn’t quite as necessary. Ohio State’s roster is constructed to do provocative things when it has the ball.
Last season when the Notre Dame game was in the balance while the Buckeyes were forced to shuffle their playmakers around, the offense showed it could march all the way down the field in 2nd gear with success.
Alas, it turned out to be an aberration, and it would have been Ohio State’s best defense after that disastrous bye week if sustainable. As for the higher gears, exploiting mismatches through the air is the best preservative for keeping offenses from growing stale and predictable.
That’s how Ryan Day has treated the game philosophically - with one glaring exception last November, but that’s a different column. His passing strategy is what extends the Buckeye offense’s shelf life and amplifies its recruiting efforts.
Throwing downfield with competence is not optional in an 85-scholarship world where you can't just stockpile dudes to bulldoze student-athletes back into the library like Woody did for decades. The best offense in this era is situational. Defense is a lagging indicator or championship mettle.
Today, the notion that defense wins championships is propaganda from fans or coaches of a program in desperate need of evolving, or just reflexive philosophy from a bygone era where it could be true. If I’m not a credible enough voice on this, listen to this guy instead:
Nick Saban on the evolution of modern offense..
— James Light (@JamesALight) May 6, 2023
"It used to be that good defense beats good offense. Good defense doesn't beat good offense anymore. It used to be if you had a good defense, other people weren't going to score. I'm telling you, it ain't that way anymore." pic.twitter.com/uiI8snj0jb
When Coach Nick says used to be he’s talking about a decade ago, which is ancient history in college football - they didn’t even have playoff back then! Saban has evolved, and he has kept Alabama current in advancing his program from its defense-first strategy.
Meanwhile, Iowa's most recent outright Big Ten title is about to turn 40. Wisconsin is still plodding around trying to figure out what to do next. Failing to invest in an explosive, situationally-sound offense in our current decade is the same as planning to fail.
Which means full-time Tresselball hasn’t been a winning strategy for awhile, and both of Ohio State’s coaches since then know this. It should still be deployed when the moment demands it, but saying this aloud with a warm beer doesn’t quite recast the tailgate as a philosophy huddle.
Right now, the best offense is a good offense. Sadly, there’s nothing profound about it. But by the time the defenses catch up with these offenses, Plato’s coach just might be right again.
