The Media Is Stupid

The consensus seems to be that Ohio State crushed Notre Dame because of superior speed, and not much else (well, maybe a little good decision-making by Troy Smith, but really, he's just fast). Everyone is raving about Ginn and Holmes and Pittman and Smith, and how rapid-quick-fast-speedy-I've-run-out-of-synonyms they are.

Turns out, yeah, they're fast. But that's not why OSU won.

Let's chart it out:

TD #1, Smith to Ginn for a 56-yard touchdown. Yeah, Ginn outran everybody. But the corner on that play was pulling the "high-school maneuver of looking at the quarterback instead of covering his man," as TMQB regularly laments. Watch the replay: Ginn didn't get separation because he blew by his coverage, he got separation because his coverage was watching the other side of the field.

TD #2, Ginn end-around for a 68-yard touchdown. This one had a lot to do with speed, I admit. But it also had a lot to do with every single other player on the OSU offense -- all 10 of them -- looking for someone to block, and then blocking that person. You think it's just because Ginn is fast that he could run sideline-to-sideline and also up the field for yards and still not have anyone within 25 yards? He's fast; he's not that fast. ABC cut away to Jerry Rice on the sidelines, and Rice mentioned the blocking: he said the best thing about the OSU offense, and about the wide recievers, wasn't that they're fast, it's that they make and hold their blocks.

TD #3, Smith to Holmes for a 85-yard touchdown. This one, like the first one, was more about a breakdown in coverage and less about perfect execution: someone let Holmes get behind him, several someone's, perhaps. You can blame it on the defensive coordinator's call, you can blame it on the safeties, but someone was just out of position, and strangely enough, the same thing happened as with Smith-to-Ginn: OSU exploited the mistake and executed things very well. But defensive mistakes make offence perfection a lot easier. Once Holmes made the catch, he didn't need to have blinding speed to outrun the defence.

TD #4, Pittman around left tackle for a 60-yard touchdown. This is a mirror of the second touchdown: different play, same attention to blocking. The announcers even showed a replay of the run, highlighting Ginn and Holmes making and holding perfect blocks, and letting Pittman slip right in between them and scamper off to the endzone.

So yeah, there are some fast guys on the Ohio State offence. But OSU won through a combination of superior execution — particularly their blocking — and mental mistakes on the part of Notre Dame. [And this is just the OSU offense-Notre Dame defense. The Notre Dame offence made similar mental mistakes, and the OSU defense had similarly excellent execution.]