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Football
Notebook: Pryor Riding High into Miami Game
By Brandon Castel

COLUMBUS — Terrelle Pryor wasn’t perfect against Marshall in Ohio State’s season-opener last Thursday, but it was good enough for his best performance in three seasons under center—at least in the eyes of his coaches.

Terrelle Pryor
Photo by Jim Davidson

“I think it was the best grade he's had since he's been here,” OSU Head Coach Jim Tressel said Tuesday during his weekly press conference.

“Which means he did a lot of the little things, because that's where you lose points, some of those things that no one even sees but we need to do. He graded solid.”

Coming off an impressive performance in the Rose Bowl, Pryor completed 17 of his 25 passes for 247 yards in a 45-7 win over the Thundering Herd. He threw three touchdowns and no interceptions, but it still wasn’t good enough for him to grade out with a “winning performance.”

“Coach (Nic) Siciliano is a harder grader than I was,” Tressel said of Ohio State’s second-year quarterbacks coach.

“I think (Craig) Krenzel got one in 14 games back in the day.”

Of course “the day” was 2002 and Krenzel led the Buckeyes to victory in all 14 of those games, including a 31-24 win over the No. 1 Hurricanes in the BCS National Championship game. Tressel wasn’t in a very reflective mood Tuesday when questioned about that game from eight years ago, but he could vividly recall the overabundance of speed on the field in Tempe.  

“What I remember is that was as fast a game—I don't mean in time duration, I mean the way the people were flying around the field—as I think I'd ever been in,” said Tressel, now in his 10th season at Ohio State and 25th year as a head coach.

“And those are two teams that were just loving the competition. There's no way either team in my mind, either team could have played the next week, it was that fast and that tough and it was kind of neat.”

Williams Ready to Go?

Speaking of speed and toughness, the Buckeyes are hoping to have starting defensive end Nathan Williams back for their week-two matchup with No. 12 Miami. The 6-foot-3 junior out of Miami Trace missed the season-opener with a knee injury, but could be available in some capacity this week.

“Nate practiced some Sunday. He'll practice today. So what we have to figure out in the course of this week is just how many snaps is he ready to go,” Tressel said.

“He seems to be ready to go. He's excited and he says he's ready to go. And now we'll see how it goes this afternoon and Wednesday and Thursday.”

Williams was expected to replace Thad Gibson as the starting Leo (linebacker-defensive end hybrid) on Ohio State defensive line this fall, but he was injured during practice back on Aug. 14. Having missed a good chunk of practice and a valuable tune-up in the opener, Tressel cautioned that Williams will likely be on a limited snap count if he is available Saturday.

“I think the thing that you have to be careful with is guys that miss some training camp and all of a sudden if you think they can go out there and play 50 some snaps,” Tressel said.

“I think you're risking a little bit.”

With Williams out, junior Solomon Thomas made the first start of his career against Marshall and performed well for a guy with relatively little playing experience.

“I thought Solly was solid,” Tressel said of Thomas, who made 1.5 tackles Thursday night.

“He might have been a little bit nervous his first time out there and they were letting the ball go quickly, so sometimes you feel as if you're not accomplishing what you're supposed to as a D-lineman if you don't get to the quarterback, but I thought he did well and he's got to keep doing well.”

Regardless of whether or not Williams plays against Miami, Thomas will see plenty of action against the Hurricanes, and the Buckeyes know they need a better performance out of Thomas in his second call to action.

“He's got to get better. I don't think he graded a winning performance, but it wasn't awful and the things that he didn't do the way we need done, that's what he's got to make sure he improves upon,” Tressel said.

“But Solly has worked hard. He's a committed kid. He worked hard to gain his weight, keep his quickness, glad he's here.”

Sabino to Redshirt, We Think

One player who won’t be asked to contribute Saturday is Etienne Sabino. The junior linebacker out of Miami didn’t play in the opener and likely won’t get a chance to face his hometown Hurricanes unless the Buckeyes incur an injury at the linebacker position this week in practice.

“Right now, we're kind of redshirting him,” Tressel said.

“But redshirting is a day-by-day thing, so he's got no injury issues, nothing outside of football, that's a reason for him not playing. So for this moment, he's redshirting and if everyone's healthy going into the ball game, we'll probably hold him from the ball game.”

Sabino had been working with the first-team defense at the Sam linebacker position during spring practice and on into the start of fall camp, but he lost his starting spot to Andrew Sweat just before the season and now it appears the Buckeyes would like to squeeze an extra year of eligibility out of him.

“He was 19 when he came here and we needed him because we were just so thin at some things,” Tressel said of Sabino’s freshman year in 2008.

“He knows what's most important to us is 2010, but that doesn't mean that we ignore what might be healthy for an individual.”

Sabino was still dressed and ready to go for the opener just in case, and likely will be again Saturday despite the fact the Buckeyes bolstered their depth with the return of sophomore Storm Klein.

“We'll get Storm Klein back this week. He had a hamstring, nothing huge,” Tressel said.

“And some of those things that Etienne did from a special teams standpoint and a depth standpoint with Storm back and we weren't sure going into the game because if one or two guys would have gone down, Etienne was going to have to play.”

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