Willyville Guy

Beating Michigan is always powerful medicine. Not sure how the post season will play out, and it's disappointing to think about what might have been, but like we said above repeating is almost impossible and they were bound to lose sooner or later. Last year's natty along with continued dominance over Michigan shows that we are in another golden era for Buckeye football, and I'm just enjoying the ride. Among the many satisfying parts about today was sticking it the eye of all the experts out there whom were sure that the team "checked out" after last week. Hi haters!

What a showing. Go Bucks!

Yeah, that hurts. Things still might break in OSU's direction but I agree that a loss was coming sooner than later. Dantonio won in very Tressel-like fashion tonight. Happy for him but... man, I don't even know where to start fixing the offense heading into the big one. A miserable day at the Horseshoe.

Me too. You probably saw the piece on 11W about how MSU is the angriest and most intimidating team we play -- because of the enormous chip on their should put there by "big brother." Their style of ball, plus Dantonio -- whom I'll always love for drawing up the defense that beat Miami for us in 2002 -- make it very easy to like and respect Sparty. This truly is a game unlike any other on the schedule.

JT insists that he doesn't have a "weenie arm" so I see no reason not to go deep to Thomas, Marshall, and Miller all game long. I'm going on Saturday -- and I cannot wait to get loud for Braxton Miller at his last game at the shoe. What a run for that kid. I think (hope!) he'll have a special night.

I agree with this -- the Bills have looked pretty sweet on the road this year (I'm choosing to ignore London/EJ). Strange since the atmosphere at home is such a zoo, but these Bills appear to play with an edge on the road, and that will help at Arrowhead.

Preseason is over. Time to play the real games and see what this team is truly made of. Bring me that whole state up north!

Weird year for the Pac-12. At different times several teams have looked anywhere from amazing to awful. Utah, Stanford, UCLA, Oregon, and USC are all enigmas -- not sure many higher ranked teams would want to see any of them in a bowl -- and Arizona and ASU look pretty damn good on random weeks, too. I just have no clue if it's a deep conference this year with everyone beating each other, or if it's truly a down year. Bowl season will be interesting.

I hope this young man finds what he's looking for. His commitment during the national championship game last year added another fun wrinkle to that magical night. Rumors have been swirling for a while now, and he recently called himself "solid" for Ohio State. So it goes in recruiting teenagers. Looking forward to seeing Antonio Williams carry the rock in a couple of years!

I'm told he'll have an opportunity to earn back the scholarship. EDIT: An OSU spokesperson confirmed that Barrett will lose his "summer aid" money for 2016, not scholarship money for a term. I don't know what that means or how much is involved.

I see. The policy specifically refers to a DUI being treated as a second offense with a two-week suspension, and since this was an OVI citation rather than a DUI arrest, Gene Smith is saying that the policy doesn't apply and any suspension is at the discretion of the head coach. It will be interesting to see what the players do about the captaincy, assuming Urban leaves it up to the team -- if the reactions I saw on Twitter yesterday are any indication then I do not think they will take it away.

My understanding is that the policy calls for a two-week suspension, not a two-game suspension, and the two-week suspension will only cover one game because of the bye week. Now, *should* the university assess a tougher penalty than the policy calls for here? Different question. A 20-yr old student athlete with no priors went to a party during the bye week, caught a mild buzz, drove home on a route that included a campus sobriety checkpoint, and was issued a citation. Not good, but not that bad either. That said, JT is a captain and Urban says he holds his leaders to a higher standard -- so I'd expect to see something more. Maybe Barrett will lose his C. Or maybe he will ride the bench for a while even after the formal suspension is over, similar to the way Marcus Hall was benched during the B1G championship game even though his formal punishment had ended for flipping off the Big House. Or maybe Barrett will simply serve his two-week suspension and jump right back into the swing of things. The key is to watch program's actions -- official and unofficial -- to see the real consequences of this incident. EDIT: I just went and looked at the policy (it's here in case anyone is interested) because the explanation I described in the first paragraph above seems slippery. An underage alcohol-related offense is considered a second offense, which calls for "a two-week suspension from all competition at the earliest available time." (Emphasis added.) I read that to mean a two game suspension, which would include Minnesota and Illinois. Ugh.

Brutal.

Urban can finally say that JT straight up won the job back. Couldn't say that before the Penn. St. game. This should get good pretty quickly with JT, Miller, and EZE coming out of the backfield.

He has to be. JT running the zone read brought back all of the warm and fuzzies. That is how this offense is supposed to work -- sick athletes running in every different direction and whomever makes an LB or DB panic first gets the ball. Jones in a pro style set was an experiment that might have worked if they continued to fine tune it over the course of the rest of the season, but there is no need. The swagger is back with JT in there. The defense on the other hand.... Barkley is good, but 200 yards? Ugh. Something is wrong with Lee -- he must be hurt. Invisible for several games in a row now. But Joey Bosa is coming on strong so that helps. As for Michigan, well, that is what I call "Blue Balls."

Just give him the damn ball.

I'm fine with this under the circumstances.

Really surprising and upsetting that this kid may have thrown away his playing career. I saw the Gators as a potential playoff team. I could be missing something obvious, I don't recall many high-profile programs running into PED problems. Nothing comes to mind other than BYU years ago. That's not to say football players don't use them in the college game--I can't speak to that but looking at some of these kids I can draw my own conclusions--it's just that busts like this seem pretty rare to me. Anyway, bad news for Grier and the Gators.

"Yes, sir."

I like to personalize my anger and outrage, so this thread is very helpful. Thanks.

Man, I hope you're right and that the player quotes in the Carucci article are isolated and out of context. Definitely possible as I've seen nothing similar from these or other players anywhere else. I'm on board the Rex train and I hope the defense is too.

I generally agree that the process of adapting to a new system takes time, and this particular system has proven to be effective, so Bills fans should be comfortable that it’s only a matter of time before the line gets comfortable and starts playing the fast kind of ball they want to play. BUT, I do not like to read quotes from Kyle and Dareus saying that they are not playing in ways that favor their natural talents and instincts. That sounds dangerously close to what I’m reading about Suh in Miami. The quotes in Vic’s article are troubling.

While I'm sitting here stressing every game and wringing my hands over how and why the offense isn't farther along, Urban has been saying all week that he feels the team is making substantial progress and is on the brink of an offensive breakthrough. Normally I'd write that off as coachspeak, but Urban has never been one to sugarcoat his assessment of where one of his teams is at a particular point in time. He sees something he likes. Last year from the Michigan game forward every single player was super motivated to do his part to support the third-string QB -- practicing and playing hard to support Jones was a rallying point that helped bring the entire team even closer than it had been following the big conference games against Penn St. and MSU. That bond kept everyone loose as the lights became brighter and brighter. My guess is that the Miller-Barrett-Jones situation over the summer and earlier this season shifted the QB position from a rallying point to a distraction. They need to get back to the point where the team is rallying around Jones and not looking to see what he will do next or wondering if JT will be rotated back in. Easier said than done, but again Urban is seeing something that he likes.

McCoy because we have less depth at RB than WR, and as far as I know this is still a run-first offense. We have enough of talent at WR to cause confusion and mismatches for a game or two.

So today Meyer said that Jones is the starting QB. Jones has started every game this season, so I'm not 100% sure why this is big news. Maybe it means Jones will be allowed more time to work through early-game issues - instead of getting benched for Barrett if he has two poor series. I'm more concerned about Ed Warinner trying to juggle OC responsibilities (especially play calling) and also coach the oline. That might be too much for one guy to handle. I heard something about the QB coach calling plays from up in the booth this week. We'll see how it goes....