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oh man...I went to hawkeyenation.com and I'm a bit more dead inside for it
some potential tOSU issues
How Iowa will win [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]
you can go there and check it out for yourself
the only thing I saw that concerned me is that they correctly identify Tressel as being quite conservative with a lead and on the road at times
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Thanks for the links. You are right about Tressel. We Buckeyes often joke around about how vanilla he loves to play on D, particularly with the lead, and how the punt is his favorite play in the book. Those aren't as funny when you're talking about the line. Despite the fact that they have covered every game this year, I would NEVER give more than 3 touchdowns with tOSU. He never runs up the score, always gets in the backups, etc. This team is a little different though..., the offense is good enough that against bad teams they can pretty much accicentally score points, even with the 3rd string QB in (Boeckman is pretty good!).
All of this is pretty much moot against Iowa. I might be concerned if the line was 10 or 11, but Tressel doesn't shut down with a one score margin. He'll play field position to death with a touchdown lead inside 10 minutes, but not with anything less than that. The team is good enough that even in that scenario, we can back door cover (see the Fiesta Bowl last year.).
As an aside, I am not convinced that we can be exposed up the middle on the run. We are, otoh, quite vulnerable to misdirection, particularly early in games. Tressel plays quite boring on D to start. Cover 2 shell, man under. He also encourages his linebackers to be aggressive. Thus, we give up alot of yards on screens and counters. Texas exposed this in the first half against us. All that said, these kids were starting aren't kids. Tressel constantly rotates his defense, so to say that we only have 2 returning starters this year, while factually accurate, doesn't tell the whole story. Most of this year's team has plenty of (quality) experience, and the results thus far have shown it--against some pretty quality teams, no less.