What a night.
The O was looking pretty good this evening. Had a lot of spark. There were a few long TD’s and a handful of big gains in the mini-scrimmages they ran.
The WR core is looking interesting this year. Even without the two Rodgers brothers the WR core is still a threat to teams who can’t run an entire game in the Nickel.
The return of Sammie Strougher (who had a 65 yard TD catch) opens up the opposite WR to more options. Stroughter brings speed and reliability. Teams MUST cover him with safety help or else he can get deep – easy. So that opens up the opposite side of the field, the underneath routes and the TE do a host of possibilities.
At TE: Gabe Miller has looked average. He is blocking pretty well, and can run decent routes but his hands aren’t coming along so far in camp. He has the potential to be a fat threat in the middle but until his hands can catch up to the rest of his body he won’t be a factor.
The other WR: Darrell Catchings and Shane Morales have showed up this camp and – if the Rodgers boys weren’t around – would be fighting for the number two spot. While Aaron Nichols, Damola Adeniji, Chris Johnson, Taylor Cavanaugh, Gino Munoz and Kyle Brown are all solid number 3 guys. Johnson could probably be in the number 2 category.
But, the Rodgers boys exist.
And I include both of them in the WR talk because even though Jaquizz is a “RB” they could have him flanked out in a lot of formations (like a Marshall Faulk or Brian Westbrook).
A possible formation they could run could look like this….
FL: Sroughter
SL: Jaq. Rodgers
TE: Miller
SL: Catchings
Z: Jam. Rodgers
Not a bad line up. Imagine the possibilities. Could give opposing teams a headache until they learn how to stop a 4-wide attack with a TE up the middle. The easiest way might be a zone coverage – probably a 3 deep – to negate the outside deep routes while still covering the deep middle. But doing that opens up the underneath drag routes and quick outs because you have at least one corner covering a deep 1/3.
The OSU playbook might be deep but I have a feeling the new plays Riley implemented recently have a lot to do with this type of play-calling. Open up the field and make the D think before it can react. And that is really the key in football. Make the D think because when it’s thinking it can’t react. And if it can’t react it can’t make a play on the ball.
The Pictures for Friday nights (pay no attention to the link address – the pics are from Friday night) practice are here. The featured photos (up Saturday morning) are here.
Enjoy!
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