Ohio State vs. Texas Thoughts

Zach Smith · 2026-09-12T21:35:19+00:00

Put Jeremiah Smith in the Slot Texas plays press quarters, which means their safeties have no help. Ohio State has the best receiver in football and just spent a week moving him everywhere. That's the game. Everything else I found on all four week one tapes is below. By Zach Smith I watched all four films. Ohio State offense and defense against Ball State, Texas offense and defense against Texas State. This is what actually matters tonight. Start with Will Muschamp's coverage, because everything follows from it. Press quarters has one hole and it's the safeties Texas plays press quarters as a base. The corners do not back up. They sit on you at the line with quarters behind it, and the safeties are cover players with a read. That's the old Michigan State defense, and it has one weakness that has never changed. You can isolate those cover safeties one-on-one with your slot, and there is nobody to help them. So put Jeremiah Smith in the slot. Give him a two-way go on a safety. Slot fade or post, his choice off leverage. Then set it up first with a ten or twelve yard dig or a wrap to get that safety to trigger downhill, and once he bites you run the big post behind it. I saw Texas State do a version of it. Double dig, the safety jumped the first one, and there was grass behind him. Watch for that tonight. And it gets better. When Texas got into heavy personnel, they checked to press man with no safety help at all. Pure isolation on the boundary. If they line up like that against Ohio State, Julian Sayin can check to a slant or a fade at the line based on leverage and nobody in the building can stop it. Arthur Smith should have three of those shots drawn up before the first snap. Why did they blitz that much? Now the part of the Texas defensive film that stuck with me. They blitzed the hell out of Texas State. Boundary blitzes, fire zones, five-man pressure, green dog on the back. Against a Sun Belt team. If your pass rush is that good, why? Why not sit in four-man pressure and let Colin Simmons and that front get home against a team you're better than at every position? My honest read: because the rush is not that good. I watched Simmons bull rush and get nothing. I watched him speed rush and run himself past the quarterback. When they stand him up and blitz him inside he's pretty useless. The interior got some push from Hero Kanu and Alex January, and that line plays really well with their hands, but I did not see ass-kickers. I saw a coordinator who needed extra bodies to create pressure. They do have one good wrinkle and Ohio State's line has to be ready for it. Texas gets into a bear front, five down with Simmons standing up. There are two ways to block that: full slide with the back on the edge, or a match call that leaves your running back one-on-one with Simmons. So what Muschamp does is take a step forward to make the line declare, blitz Simmons, and then drop him out. Now it's a four-man rush with a simulated pressure look and your quarterback is expecting something that never came. That's the play that gets Sayin hit tonight if nobody warns him. Get the protection right and it's a free four-man rush against five blockers. Attack the center Texas has two problems up front on offense and I'd point both of them out to Matt Patricia in the first meeting of the week. Connor Robertson, number 62 at center, is the weak link. He got swim-moved by a Texas State defensive tackle. He missed a linebacker on a bear front. He got beat on a counter where the puller had nobody to block because the three-technique jetted upfield and nobody accounted for it. Every lineman misses a block. This was a pattern. Melvin Siani, number 71 at right tackle, is problem two. He got bull rushed on a twist, got beat again later, and he's the guy who smacked his own helmet performatively after an offside. He's a transfer from Temple and Wake Forest and he flashed as maybe not that good. Now look at what Ohio State's interior did against Ball State. John Walker one-on-one with a guard and ragdolling him. James Smith winning twice inside and getting a horse collar called on a sack he'd already made. Khary Wilder, a true freshman, playing defensive tackle in a pass rush package and cooking a center clean. That's the matchup. Trevor Goosby at left tackle is good and I'm not building a plan around beating him. Get after 62 and 71. Philip Daniels is Ohio State's whole game And now the part Buckeye fans don't want to read. Philip Daniels went the wrong way on the first play of the season. A returning starter. First snap. Against Ball State. He got benched after two drives, they moved Austin Siereveld out to right tackle and put Gabe VanSickle at guard, and then they brought Daniels back and he got beat clean again. Multiple times. His technique is a mess. He gets top-heavy, his head goes forward, he turns and punches instead of pass setting. Watch him next to Ian Moore on the same tape and it looks like two different sports. So the conundrum is VanSickle or Daniels, and neither answer is comfortable. If it's Daniels, Colin Simmons is going to live on that edge, and a speed rush that runs past the quarterback against Texas State becomes a strip sack in Columbus. There is good news and it's real. The twist pickup on the right side was elite. Carson Hinzman handled it, and there's one rep where VanSickle feels he isn't getting rushed and his eyes snap outside to find the twist and he stones it. That's coaching. Credit Arthur Smith and Tyler Bowen. Same old Arch I wrote in the offseason that Arch Manning is an out-of-system quarterback with a passing grade his legs are propping up. Week one did nothing to change it. He blew a curl-flat read. That's a movement key. The inside linebacker banks to the spot, which means one guy is covering both the curl and the flat, and Arch forces it into the covered man instead of taking the open one. My sixth grade team ran that concept. That's a turnover-worthy throw on a simple read. He underthrew two deep balls that were touchdowns. Ryan Wingo on a double move with the corner beaten by five yards, and a Cam Coleman fade with four yards of separation. Both completed, both forced the receiver to stop and wait, both should have been six. That won't show up in his stat line and you should know about it anyway. Then he threw a pick in the end zone where he never looked at the safety once. Stared it down, double clutched, walked it right to him. And he took a sack in a two-minute drill by leaving the pocket and then stopping his feet. Keep moving. If you leave, you run or you throw it away. Don't stand still with eleven guys pursuing you. What he does do, and I'll give it to him, is extend plays. He scrambled for real yards, he made throws off platform, and he's a good athlete at six-four. Ohio State's rush cannot let him out of the pocket clean. Texas has two backs and four tight ends The rest of that offense is legitimate and I want to be clear about it. Hollywood Smothers and Relic Brown are both transfers and both are explosive. Smothers has more juice, Brown is a low-center-of-gravity bowling ball with real vision and acceleration. They hit holes. Sark runs heavy 12 personnel almost all the time because those tight ends can block, and they have four of them who play. Cam Coleman and Ryan Wingo outside is as good a pair as Ohio State will see all year. Emmett Mosley V in the slot is solid, and keep an eye on Jermaine Bishop Jr., the true freshman who was in the game early. They also miss-IDed the front on the second play of the game and left a defender unblocked on a zone run. That's either a coach or a center, and Patricia's front will make them pay for it more than Texas State did. The thing that actually decides this Go back to that Texas defensive tape and find the play where Texas State's quarterback scrambles for 30-plus. Texas is in man coverage. Every defensive back has his back to the football. The pocket doesn't even really break, the quarterback just sees that nobody is looking at him, takes off, and gets a huge chunk. I said on the broadcast that I hope Julian Sayin watched that film. He scrambled twice against Ball State, once for a fourth-and-goal touchdown against match coverage with everybody covered. That was the one thing I needed to see from him after eleven scrambles all of last season. Texas plays a ton of man. Man means backs turned. If Sayin does it two or three times tonight, Ohio State wins this football game, because it breaks the only coverage Muschamp has that can handle Jeremiah Smith. What worries me Field position. Ohio State started drives on their own one, their own six, and inside the ten three separate times against Ball State, and Legend Bey brought kicks out of the end zone he had no business bringing out. Against Ball State it cost nothing. Against this Texas defense, five drives inside your own ten is a scoring drought. And Ohio State's defense won reps all day and finished almost none of them. One sack against a MAC team. Arch extends plays better than Ball State's quarterback does. Get him down. Where I land Ohio State has the better secondary, the better receiver, and a quarterback playing with more control than the one on the other sideline. Texas has the better running backs, a scheme that will make you earn every yard, and one obvious way to win this game, which is to get Colin Simmons on Philip Daniels and end drives. Put Smith in the slot, take the shots on those safeties, and protect the right edge. Do that and Columbus is fine. Appreciate you, Menace Army.