Predicting the future is hard.
It's only July, but here's what we think we know about the 2023 Buckeyes: They will feature running backs and receivers that when healthy are the most talented, proven and deepest group of combined specialists in all of college football.
Note that when healthy is not a casual qualifier for the 2022 Soft Tissue Injury National Champions. We do not know if that run of bad luck is a multi-season albatross. All we can accept is what is on paper in July looks as good as ever.
We know Kyle McCord or Devin Brown not ending the regular season as a Heisman finalist would end an impossible run of Ohio State brand new full-season starters doing exactly that - CJ Stroud, Justin Fields, Dwayne Haskins, JT Barrett and Braxton Miller all pulled it off. Five times in a row is a safe trend - but predicting the future is still hard.
We know this offensive line is 60% green. We don't know if that matters. We do know this defense should be the best it’s been dating back to before anyone ever said the word covid aloud.
Against Michigan, OHio STate took Stroud, Harrison and Egbuka off the field on 4th down so a punter could throw a pass to a fullback.
Special Teams has been a big screaming yikes since the pandemic and we have no compelling evidence it's destined to improve in 2023. Surprises are harder to predict than safe trends.
And speaking of recurring, predictable comfort - we're pretty sure the Buckeyes will win multiple games by wide margins, because any Ohio State team failing to do that over the course of a football season would be unpredictable. Irregular. It wouldn't make any sense.
That brings us to what should make sense. We don't know what Ohio State will do in 2023 with the luxury of having games in command with two halves left. We do know last season's substitution patterns were...confusing. Nonsensical, if we're abandoning decorum.
The Buckeyes won half their games by over 30 points last season. Add the Sparty whipping (a modest 29-point margin) and this roster had, conservatively, six full quarters of depth chart seasoning at its disposal. Ten if we're abandoning caution. Precious, valuable garbage-scented quarters.
Lines have already been issued for this fall's trips to Indiana (-27.5) Notre Dame (-8.5) and Michigan (+1) along with home games with Penn State (-10.5) and Michigan State (-24.5). Youngstown State, Western Kentucky, Maryland et al haven't been touched by Vegas just yet. The Buckeyes should be favored in all of those.
Kyle McCord throws a pass during the 2nd half against Toledo Rockets in 2022. The Buckeyes won 77-21.©Adam Cairns-The Columbus Dispatch
It's hard to scrutinize a team that came within a missed field goal of playing for the national title, but it's easy to be constructive with a team that, with the crystalized cheat-sheet benefit of hindsight, overthought its personnel decisions for most of the season.
Today we're just asking questions, like why McCord and the backup offensive lineman got just eight snaps against the Arkansas State Paychecks, one of those seven blowouts. They got nine snaps against Wisconsin despite the Buckeyes being up 45-7 in the 3rd quarter.
Stroud's two backups split only 12 snaps against Rutgers, and McCord attempted just two passes at Michigan State with the game way out of hand. Against Iowa, with a gimpy Jaxon Smith-Njigba on a pitch count that ended along with his college career, McCord got five snaps that afternoon in a 44-point win.
What was the risk in seasoning the depth chart while facing America's nepotism-iest offense, at home? The Hawkeyes' offense didn't find the endzone that day. Smith-Njigba got 17 more snaps on a cursed hamstring than McCord got with Stroud destined for the NFL draft.
We're just focusing on the offense here - a unit that is the envy of the sport - but this isn't about managing one game as much as it is navigating through an entire season. The defensive subs were mystifying.
My hottest take about the current Ohio State roster is that Mike Hall is the Buckeyes' best defender at any position since Chase Young. Because of the cryptic nature of how injury information has been handled since the covid season, we have no idea if health is impacting snaps or substitutions for a lot of these guys.
Unfortunately, we do know Smith-Njigba was hurt and played extensively, compared to healthy backups. Tommy Eichenberg had two broken hands and finished the season with 100 more snaps than the next defender. Cade Stover played hurt but barely came off the field.
We don't know what Ohio State will do in 2023 with the luxury of having games in command with two halves left to play.
And when Michigan finally arrived, the Buckeyes promptly wasted snaps on plays and players better left for garbage time. Stroud, Julian Fleming, Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka - the latter of whom Michigan's secondary struggled to cover all afternoon - all coming off the field so a punter could throw a pass to a fullback?
That failed 4th down isolation play to Stover, who was inexplicably targeted all afternoon to the tune of 13 receiving yards? This felt like the kind of casual experimentation that should have taken place against the Paychecks, Scarlet Knights and other pulverized opponents with the luxury of a win already secured.
As that game ended, it felt as though Ohio State had outsmarted itself against Michigan. That was only part of the story - the Buckeyes overthought many of their personnel throughout the entire season, especially after the intermission in the half Ryan Day's teams have lost their edge and lost their games.
The Buckeyes have plenty of room to improve despite being so close to the top of the sport last. That should be inspiring for Ohio State fans and terrifying for Ohio State opponents. And one of those incremental improvements is so easy - allowing backups to run wild in the 2nd halves of laughers is conventional roster preservation. It's free depth chart seasoning.
Predicting the future is hard. Leaning on your stars with everything at stake is easy.
