Ohio State Football Faces Locker Room and Line Questions

What did you make of that game, and what are you making of Ohio State so far this year? Oh, we got it muted. We got to turn it up. Look at that rookie mistake right there, right off the bat. No, I'm going to say. Stunned in the press box. You know, I had, as we were getting ready for Notre Dame Miami, they had the TVs up and I'm watching Ohio State, Oregon, Alabama, LSU. And I was probably equally stunned by those two games because one, I thought LSU was going to beat Alabama and it just kept getting worse for them. And then the way that Ohio State lost was stunning. I mean, I don't know that they recovered. I've heard this on the morning shows in Columbus, obviously, that I don't know that Ohio State recovered from that punt. The fake punt play, and it just snowballed from there. And, you know, there's going to be a lot written over the next couple days about Ohio State and the program at large. I think you guys probably have better insight to that as former players because you know what it's like to, I mean, Bobby, I mean, when's the last time when you were doing this in the NFL after back-to-back losses? It doesn't happen often in Columbus. So we're going to find out a lot about that locker room. These next three games, because to me being the glass half full person that I am, if they went out, there's still a path to the big 10 championship. It's complicated, but they're going to need some help. They're probably going to need some help from USC this weekend. And I would prefer to look at it that way, but they have to look the part and they have not looked the part the last two weeks. Yeah, I would say, yeah, there's a positive that there's a path and that they can get this back on track, but. I do kind of question the locker room right now based on how they came out against Oregon because I feel like that was the perfect bounce-back spot where you struggle against USC, you come back against Oregon, you're able to kind of get things back on track, the offense gets moving, the defense makes adjustments, and it just seemed like nothing happened in the entire practice week. So I'm really nervous about that, but yes, you have to look at it in a glass-half-full kind of way. And you have to go out and win these last three games. And if you don't make it to the playoffs, then at least you build a little bit of momentum going into next year. Yeah, and I heard a stat yesterday. I believe they said there's 51 new players at Ohio State. I do think there's something to the, in this NIL era, how much do you care about Ohio State? How much, you know, there are guys, Bobby grew up in Lancaster. We talk about this all the time. There are a handful of guys that. Live in Ohio that all they want to do their whole life is play for Ohio State. Still, there are guys like you that come into the program and I can tell how much you love the program, you know, just from playing there and being a part of it and being a part of that successful run. And it goes down to like the Lou Holtz theory, which is ironic because I was up there in South Bend when they honored him, where he used to say, you know, he wanted the guys like Chris Zorich. You know, you saw that in the documentary, the guys that just love Notre Dame. And, you know, he told the story about Chris Zorich crying. Uh, after they lost, I mean, the year before. So, I mean, you need some of that within the program and maybe that's a missing piece. Um, and then you need the four and five star guys to go out there and, and compete, but the roster is super talented. They did lose a lot of players on defense. I got to emphasize that as well. When you lose all 11 players that were on that national championship defense that were drafted, and you're watching what Armel Reese is doing on Sunday and some of those other players, it's impossible not to say, well, eventually you're going to take a little dip on that side of the ball, but I didn't think it would be that much. Yeah, and that's what the question is, and Bill, and some people are trying to figure out, is it scheme? Is it coaching? Is it player execution? There's bigger things, like you look at some of the things you're touching on, like are there cultural issues? Are there some individual game issues? Obviously, the game issue, open field tackling has been an issue the last couple weeks. The bigger thing to me, Bill, as I've looked at, when you look at dominant college football teams, They always kind of share the same traits. When you look at Ohio State, the Ohio State teams that have won national titles or have been really, really good over the last 15, 20 years, they've been really good up front on both sides of the ball. And I don't know that this Ohio State team Defensive line-wise has looked as good as they have in the past. And then offensive line-wise, I think there was this expectation they were going to be really good. And they have three guys who were integral in that national championship run where they were able to run the ball on everybody, and they just haven't looked as good. And people were like, well, Julian, even before he got hurt, was struggling. I'm like, well, yeah, he's been under pressure. Look at the last two games last year. Look at Fahey. They haven't been able to really run the ball maybe as well as they have outside of the USC who, you know, they don't really play a whole lot of run defense, Bill. Bill, and so to me, You go look at Georgia, you look at teams that have been really good. You know, the Bamas, even Utah this year, like Notre Dame, like they've been good in the trenches. And I don't know that this team has played to the potential or expectations that everybody had for them to start the year.