|
The Ohio State Autopsy | Part 1 of 3
Bitter Taste of Buckeyes’ Loss Lingers
By Paul Smith
Share Your Feedback: collegeblitz@gmail.com
Michigan City, Ind. — X-Day was several weeks ago.
Still the rancid, bitter taste lingers.
If ever reality bit, it was on the infamous night of Monday, January 8, 2007, a day where all around it, Ohio State's dream of a sixth national football championship came crashing down in a crescendo of a broken gameplan, resulting in broken plays and ultimately, a collective broken will.
First, before we begin to collect the remnants of a 41-14 debacle at the hands of a spectacularly-prepared, hard-driven Florida team, let us make no mistake. On this night, unmistakably, the better team won.
One thinks back to the 2002 national championship game as a ready reference point. Ohio State played the role of Miami, which despite the apparent closeness of the final score, was a desperate counter-puncher and hittee all night as the Buckeyes won their first national title in 34 years.
This time, other than a few headstrong precincts south of the border, down Florida way, there were few doubters the Gators were in deep swamp doodoo without their claws and teeth.
But that, we all discovered -- some with near melancholy, a lesser, but well-recognized number giddily -- is why they play the games.
And play the game Florida did. With a joyful, at yet at times angry desperation.
The Gators seemed to have every one of Ohio State's stunningly-low 37 offensive plays surrounded with at least three or four blue-jerseyed volunteers ready to lower the boom.
After a stunning Ted Ginn, Jr. game-opening 93-yard touchdown kick return that had the corporately-named stadium in Glendale, Ariz. sounding like Big Horseshoe West with the roars of over 50,000 crazed Buckeyes, it came apart almost as quickly as Mr. Ginn's left ankle supports during the post-T.D. celebration, finishing him for the night.
"That wasn't what lost it for us, believe me," said right offensive tackle Kirk Barton, a brilliant performer all season whose inability to handle Florida's fired up defensive end Derrick Harvey proved to be one of the game's flashpoints.
Talking with Cleveland Plain Dealer beat man Doug Lesmerises, Barton despondently dug deep and took his share of the blame.
"Obviously, losing Ted didn't help our cause," he added. "He's really our game-breaker. He's not worth 27 points, but Ted makes defenses play differently. But I'm not making excuses. They had our number."
On both sides of the ball, virtually all night.
Where Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Troy Smith, the fifth of the last seven big bauble winners to lose their bowl game after receiving the award, had only been sacked 13 times in a perfect 12-game regular season, Florida's alligator-nasty front turfed him five times and hit him numerous others.
The early warning signs came from highly-unusual sources.
Swatted hard by the Ginn kickoff return, the Gators -- one of the 2006 season's best special-team units, gaining exceptional field position twice in a row after some sketchy Buckeyes tackling on returner Brandon James and an unusual face mask penalty on kicker Aaron Pettrey placed the ball on the Buckeyes 46 to start a l--o--n--g night of Florida offensive thrusts.
The 46-yard drive was capped by a 14-yard touchdown pass from Chris Leak to Dallas Baker. After a 3-and-out Buckeye series, another personal foul, this one by Larry Grant on a short James punt return, got Florida a start at the Bucks' 30 and Percy Harvin got U.F. up 14-7 with a four-yard run.
You didn't need a pair of high-powered binoculars or H.D.T.V. to see the field tilting.
"I can quite honestly say that the better team won," assessed N.F.L.-bound Anthony Gonzalez to The Plain Dealer. Along with promising Brian Robiskie and Rory Nicol and other game-but-outmanned Ohio State receivers, Gonzalez was blanketed tightly by Florida's umbrella secondary.
Five different Gators scored touchdowns, Versatility was everywhere, chased by futile Buckeye defenders.
Even busted plays that the in-season Bucks would have gobbled up behind the line of scrimmage wound up going for mid-level gains.
"I think," Meyer told The Columbus Dispatch's Ken Gordon, "we were the faster team." It was the one unyielding edge Florida had over Ohio State, but it was at the heart of any generational argument about relative merits of the Big Ten and Southeastern Conference.
Rarely were the Gators (13-1) in bad field position. And rarer, still, were they without the football, as they not only outgained Ohio State 370 yards to 82, holding Smith to 4 completions in 14 attempts for 35 measly yards.
"I am the one guy out there that can pretty much control everything," Smith bravely told Lesmerises. "And I didn't do a well-enough job in controlling what was going on."
For the days after Florida leapfrogged Michigan to land in the #2 spot, thanks to some serious politickin' by coach Urban Meyer and a bloc of Dixie pollster sympaticos, the Gators became a butt of jokes from Chelmsford to Chatsworth, from D.C. to B.C.
In there somewhere Meyer, no fool, and an Ashtabula, Ohio native, planted the seeds of desperation. From the start, Florida played with a fury and desperation the Bucks never saw coming, using its speed advantage whenever it could.
"I knew as a coach I was in a panic after they scored the opening kickoff," Meyer told Valade. "Once we score, and I saw the way our defense played, I thought, 'OK, let's go.' I know if I am feeling that way, the team is feeling that way."
Maybe in all that computerized glop and fact-gathering that comprise a big time football team's gameplan there are subtle cues coach and player pick up on.
"I don't know if they had the better game plan, but what they did worked," O.S.U. defensive end Jay Richardson said to the Plain Dealer's Jodie Valade.
Asked and answered, unfortunately for the Buckeyes.
Yet despite the gruesome events unfolding, expanded to 21-7 when former Cincinnati public leaguer DeShawn Wynn scored from two yards out, the Bucks sucked up enough energy to put together their only drive, a 64-yarder climaxed with an Antonio Pittman 18-yard run.
"I was thinking, 'We're back in it. Let's roll.' Pittman told Tim May of The Columbus Dispatch.
Badly outplayed, beaten off the ball repeatedly...and one touchdown behind. The Gators got part of that back when Chris Hetland, who had made only four of 13 field goal attempts, kicked his fifth F.G. to put Florida up 24-14. "...We come back out, three-and-out," Pittman told May, "and everything else was history.
The killer sequence followed.
After the Bucks had created a third-and-short situation just short of the 30 yard line, Smith fumbled the snap and created what seemed an obvious punting situation in the final 3 minutes of the half, instead, the usually ultra-conservative coach, Jim Tressel, shockingly brought in Beanie Wells, one of the country's best short-yardage thunderballs.
Two sides of this maneuver probably say it all about the respective mindsets in play. "We thought we could make it," Tressel said, matter-of-factly. "It ended up being the wrong call, obviously." He wore the no-more-questions-on-that-topic, please look at that point.
But when Hetland came in to kick another field goal, putting the Gators up 27-14, "We felt they were trying to disrespect us, going for it on fourth down," Gators defensive tackle Ray McDonald told The Dispatch's Scott Priestle. "We showed everybody we can stop them."
Then, unfortunately, they show showed they could pretty much play taps on the Buckeyes' title dreams when defensive end Jarvis Moss sacked Smith, forcing a fumble that Harvey pounced on, creating a first-and-goal. Backup Q.B. Tim Tebow, a huge Gators fan favorite who would score the second half's only T.D. on a one-yard bolt, hit wide-open Andre Caldwell for the 34-14 lead from which the Buckeyes couldn't recover.
For a closing act, Florida continued to make life impossible for the Ginn-deprived O.S.U. offense.
"We used (the perceived national slight) quite a bit," Meyer told The Dispatch's Priestle the morning after his team's monumental accomplishment. "When you're dealing with 18-to-21-year-olds, you're going to give them every little stoke you can give them.
"It was going to be our M.O. for this game: Show them we have pretty good players as well."
If there were any doubts about a dropoff in Florida's intensity after its near-perfect first-half bravado, Meyer's doubts were dispelled in the locker room.
"It was like a feeding frenzy," he said. "When it got going, it was like sharks in the water."
Or maybe Gators. Ouch. The Gators weren't above employing a little Trash Talk Lite afterward. "We played a lot tougher teams than them this year," said Moss, who had two of Florida's sacks of Smith.
"When you break down their schedule, they haven't played anybody. When somebody smacked them in the mouth, they didn't know how to react."
Pretty brutal, but not entirely inaccurate. But then the S.E.C.-type chauvinism surfaced. "They haven't really faced anybody all season, in my opinion," said Wynn to The Dispatch's Aaron Portzline. The sleek running back was recruited out of Cincinnati Reading High School by former Gators/Current Illinois coach Ron Zook, who grew up an hour southeast of Columbus.
"(Michigan's) Michael Hart is a nice running back, but they haven't seen a team with so many weapons like we have."
From Fremont to Fly, from Conneaut to Cincinnati, it was a game that represented the proverbial burp at the end of a magnificent aria, or maybe somehow a blatant sour note while singing "Carmen Ohio."
For player, coach and fan alike, it was the toughest of all football days. But maybe Buckeyes fans can take a cue from Smith, who was as disconsolate as the rest of the traveling party when he summed the days events thusly:
"I don't have any regrets, though. I really don't," he told The Dispatch's May. "We came out. We fought. If we come up short, and you know this is the worst thing in life that happens to us, I'm pretty cool."
Yes, it will be hard -- particularly with the loss of Gonzalez, Smith and Ginn, Jr. to the pros -- all have declared since last week. But the unflappable Tressel and his trusted associates will do their level-headed best to learn from this. Maybe more Florida recruiting, maybe a search for sleeker, slightly less heavily-muscled linemen. Maybe a willingness, in today's parlance, "open up the playbook" a bit more this coming fall.
The Big Ten, which finished 2-5, with its flagship members -- Ohio State and Michigan -- taking the biggest hits, may have a major learning-curve opportunity here.
Florida, meanwhile, has every right to enjoy its well-deserved day on college football's biggest stage. They won in style, and with a good bit of class as well. The handshakes and consolations seemed pretty genuine. The smacktalk was a little childish, but today's culture almost invites it.
Congrats to the Gators on a job well done.
Coming in Part II: After desert debacle, so many questions remain
Paul Smith covers the Big Ten, Notre Dame and the rest of the national college football scene with his View From the Midwest.
» Share Your Feedback: collegeblitz@gmail.com |
|
|
|
|
|
