Each week at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day meets with the media ahead of the Buckeyes’ matchup that following weekend. Each week here at Land-Grant Holy Land, we will be bringing you three of the biggest storylines from said press conference.
These are three takeaways from Day’s Week 7 press conference recapping the game against Maryland and previewing the matchup against Indiana on Saturday at Noon.
1) Injury updates
One of the biggest questions heading into this weekend’s contest
is the health of the Ohio State roster.
Against Maryland, the Buckeyes were without several key players, including six starters.
On offense, tackles Phillip Daniels and Austin Siereveld were both absent, as well as wide receivers Devin McCuin and Brandon Inniss. Defensively, corner Jay Timmons missed a second straight game, while linebacker Christian Alliegro and defensive lineman Khary Wilder were also out with undisclosed injuries.
Based on the comments from Day both in his weekly presser and on his Monday appearance on the Buckeye Roundtable show, it does sound like several of those players are expected back for the Indiana game.
Of that group, the three guys most likely to suit up on Saturday are Daniels, Timmons and McCuin.
Daniels has missed each of the last four games after suffering an injury against Texas, and it feels like he could have returned against the Terrapins if that were a game that was expected to be more hotly contested. Instead, Ohio State was able to give him an extra week to get healthy, and the Buckeyes expect to have their starting right tackle back.
Timmons and McCuin were both game time decisions against Maryland, and both went through pregame warm ups with the team before ultimately sitting out. Timmons was in uniform while McCuin was not, leading to believe that he is closer along, but it feels as though both were held out for precautionary reasons against an overmatched team in bad weather and should be good to go for the Hoosiers.
The other guys are still a bit of a question mark.
Alliegro was a late add to the injury report this past week, and the nature of his injury is unknown. The same goes for Wilder, who also did not play against Iowa despite having no injury designation the week prior. The Buckeyes would love to have both ready to go against a dynamic Indiana offense.
Siereveld is by far the most curious case, as his absence against Maryland was described by Day as a ‘non-football illness’ and his timeline to return as “day-to-day.” Ohio State would love to have both he and Daniels back for this Saturday, especially after Indiana racked up five sacks the last time these two teams met in the Big Ten title game.
2) Offense has “made progress” in the red zone, but still looking for more
A key factor in almost all of Ohio State’s recent losses against top teams has been a failure to capitalize in the red zone.
Most recently against Texas, the Buckeyes’ red zone struggles cropped up right away. Ohio State began with the ball inside the Longhorns’ 20-yard line after a fumble on the first offensive play of the game, and yet they could only muster a field goal after a 6-play, 11-yard drive. They would go on to lose by a single point.
In Ohio State’s last three losses to Indiana, Miami and Texas, the Buckeyes have scored touchdowns on only five out of 11 trips inside the red zone. A 45.5% mark is just not going to get the job done against these top tier opponents.
Ohio State has made some strides this season to improve in that area, if nothing else at least aesthetically.
Arthur Smith has done a good job of transitioning away from the Buckeyes’ maddening 13-personnel looks, keeping the team’s best players — its wide receivers — on the field. When Smith has decided to go heavy, they have often instead gone to the ‘Bison’ package, installing an extra offensive lineman rather than a tight end.
It has been an effective strategy, but the team is still not nearly where they’d like to be.
Through six games this season, Ohio State ranks 60th nationally in red zone scoring percentage at 86.7%. The Buckeyes have scored touchdowns on 21-of-30 red zone trips with five field goals, including a perfect 3-for-3 on touchdowns against Maryland last time out.
All too often last season Ohio State was putting a billion (bad) tight ends on the field in the red zone seemingly just for the sake of it, banging their heads against the wall over and over again as it consistently failed to work. The Buckeyes short field issues are far from fixed, but they have not looked completely hopeless as they have in the past.
With points likely at a premium against Indiana — and over the next several weeks as Ohio State enters a gauntlet of a second-half schedule — you cannot afford to leave points off the board when you’ve already done most of the hard work to get the ball inside the 20.
3) Legend Bey has, “built momentum”
Ohio State fans have been clamoring for more Legend Bey ever since his electric touchdown in Week 1 against Ball State.
The speedy freshman put up 74 yards of total offense and the score in the season opener, but since then has played only nine total snaps. Some of Bey’s absence was the result of a tweaked ankle suffered against Kent State, but the rest has been earning the trust of the coaches.
This past weekend against Maryland we finally saw Bey back in action after playing zero offensive snaps against Illinois or Iowa. It wasn’t a heavy workload against the Terrapins by any stretch, totaling four carries for 13 yards and also returning a pair of kickoffs for 46 yards, but it was a step in the right direction.
In his Tuesday presser, Day alluded to Bey being back on the right track.
“He’s taken some steps in the right direction, for sure, and he’s built some momentum. So we’d like to have another good week with him.”
Whether for on-field or off-field issues, it’s clear that Bey was in the doghouse for a few weeks, and has since done enough to earn his way out of it. Now the question becomes what can he provide the Ohio State offense, and how much will the Buckeyes factor him in against big opponents like this upcoming weekend against Indiana?
Day and his staff have never really been the type to ‘save’ certain plays or concepts for later in the season. The Buckeyes are not in the business of dialing up trick plays or breaking tendencies to catch an opponent off guard, for better or worse.
That said, Bey might be the type of player who could force their hand.
We have seen a flash of what the freshman can do with the ball in his hands. There is very little film out there of the Texas native at Ohio State, which could play into the Buckeyes’ advantage. Could we see some kind of special package for Bey in Bloomington this weekend, or is that level of trust still not quite there?
The Ohio State offense has been starving for explosive plays outside of Jeremiah Smith, and maybe Bey can provide just that in a big moment on the biggest stage.
