Skull Session: Dwayne Haskins Praises Justin Fields, the Season of the Tight End, and Ohio State's Swarming Defense

By Kevin Harrish on September 3, 2019 at 4:59 am
Damon Arnette is holding court in today's Skull Session.
Ohio State Athletics
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Welcome to your first day without college football in five days. We'll get through it together, I promise.

ICYMI

Word of the Day: Ardent.

 LIKE FATHER LIKE SON. It's early, but I think it's safe to say Young Simba is pretty pleased with the way his heir is treating the throne thus far.

Haskins had four more touchdowns in his second start, so Fields is going to have to do some good things on Saturday to keep up the pace. Though, Haskins was playing Rutgers...

 FOR REAL THIS TIME? Holy shit, y'all – this is it. This is the year of the tight end.

We've been deliberating about the mythical tight end-heavy passing attack for basically my entire online life to the point that it's now become a running offseason joke. Hell, Ramzy once got so tired of talking about it that he instead just wrote an article about men failing to satisfy women in bed.

It's been a long, hard road blogging about tight ends over the years, so forgive me for losing my damn mind when Ohio State lined up in a straight-up I-formation and did this:

Whattttttt

(Aside: That's one hell of a block by MTIII)

Not only was the ball thrown to (and caught by!) a tight end, there were three (!!!) tight ends on the field at the same damn time! Three! More than half the eligible pass-catchers on the field were tight ends! On purpose!

I never thought I'd see an Ohio State tight end on the Big Ten Team of the Week.

No wonder Ohio State's been telling the nation's top tight end prospects to watch how the Buckeyes use tight ends this fall (please click that link and read the comments). Cause it sounds like this is going to be a regular thing.

From Griffin Strom of The Lantern:

The 6-foot-6, 250-pound tight end made two catches on the Buckeyes’ reviving 10-play, 52-yard drive, including a three-yard touchdown with Fields lined up under center. Ruckert found himself in the end zone for the second time, and nearly as uncovered as before.

Though Day said his offense would be mostly run out of the shotgun, he said the effectiveness of Ruckert may have uncovered the ability for the Buckeyes to switch it up more often with pro-style formations. Day said the versatility Ohio State has at tight end presents an edge for the team.

“I think when you look at college football today, I think it’s important to have a balance,” Day said. “I think it’s important to be able to line up under center and run the football, play-action pass, do some things and also run spread and run with tempo.”

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the I-formation or 13 personnel is going to become anything close to a base set for Ohio State because it's 2019 in college football and we're not in Ann Arbor.

However, it's going to be back and I think this is hilarious and awesome because now teams now have to worry about defending this bullshit on top of *checks notes* the quarterback that busted a 51-yard touchdown on his first carry, the sophomore that's looking for his third-straight 1,000-yard season, and an arsenal of elite receivers.

Poor Florida Atlantic. That's like studying all week for a history exam and finding out 15 percent of the questions are on actually Newtonian mechanics. It sucks for you, and now everyone else who takes the class has to study both.

I think Ohio State should toss in some flexbone next game just to make defensive coordinators heads explode.

 “YOU COULD FEEL THE VIOLENCE.” Ohio State's revamped zone-heavy defense is one game old, and I can already tell you my favorite side effect.

It's this:

Running across the middle now means a sledgehammer to the chest, and you can bet your ass I'm going to tune in weekly to see which human Malik Harrison folds across his shoulder this time, but I'm also just generally stoked to see four or five guys fly violently to the ball after a completion instead of one dude with a poor angle chasing a ball carrier down the sideline.

Maybe that's an oversimplified observation by amateur eye of a mediocre blogger, but it sure seems like the coaches are just as happy as I am on that front.

From Doug Lesmerises of Cleveland.com:

“What I was looking for was guys running to the ball and hitting. I felt that,” Ryan Day said. “I was watching Pete Werner and Malik Harrison and Jeff Okudah come into the ball, and you could feel the violence on the field. That’s what we want. We want that toughness. And I felt that. I felt those guys flying around. And to me it was intimidating. It was downhill, it was what we want.”

It wasn’t just Harrison. When the Buckeyes were on the move, unlike many plays a year ago, they weren’t chasing, they were tracking. They were running at Owls, not trailing behind them. The scheme made them confident and put them in position, and then the talent flowed.

“That was probably the thing I was most anxious about,” said new co-defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, who was hoping to watch his players run free and fast. "We had an idea of what we had, but I was anxious to see it in real moments, when you have to tackle every single play. I was excited.

“It looked like from upstairs that there were seven guys around the ball every play.”

I don't think we're talking enough about how the defense only allowed -14 yards in an entire half of football. They made a Division I football team go backwards more than it went forwards for an entire half. The Owls would have been legitimately better off just punting on first down than even trying to gain yards.

That's absurd, I don't care who you're playing.

 PLAY IT SAFE. Don't expect any insane or provocative quotes – or any quotes at all, for that matter – from Cincinnati players this week, Luke Fickell is putting his players on lockdown.

Ah yes, I'm sure this is about protecting them from the nagging questions about their head coach and definitely not an effort to keep them from saying something dumb and bulletin-board-worthy about a program a good number of them grew up wanting to play for, but weren't deemed good enough.

I love Fick to death, but this screams "I don't trust my players to give smart answers ahead of the biggest game of the season," and I'm not a big fan of that. But also, as a blogger circling like a shark waiting for the next Karan Higdon or Austin Kendall, I get it.

 BRYCE HARPER – MASTER TROLL. I'm still rather confused as to how Bryce Harper – with no formal connection to Ohio State besides his former Buckeye soccer player wife – .has become such a prominent and notorious Ohio State fan that he was GameDay's guest picker last time they were in Columbus.

That said, I'm happy to have him aboard the bandwagon and am always down to watch him troll the hell out of a middle school kid during a baseball game because of their choice of favorite college football team after crushing a homer – while in Cincinnati, no less.

The first thing he does after crushing a home run and completing his trot is not-so-subtly inform the kid that his favorite football team is better.

Damn, maybe he is one of us, after all.

 NOT STICKING TO SPORTS. Student pilot lands a plane after his flight instructor passes out during the first lesson... Japan's singing, self-cleaning toilets are conquering the West... Man accidentally shoots himself twice in one night... Robot pole dancers to debut at a French nightclub... Popeyes employees were held at gunpoint over sold out chicken sandwiches... Ohio high school football opener marred by head-butting incident...

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