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Football
Five Worst of 2009- Can the Buckeyes Get Better?
By Brandon Castel

Usually when a team goes 11-2 with a conference championship in and a BCS Bowl win there aren’t a lot of things to talk about that went wrong. Certainly a lot went right for the Buckeyes in 2009, but there were some things that were a-typical of a Jim Tressel-coached team and a few that were pretty consistent in the complaint department.

In part two of our Best and Worst of 2009 series, we take a look a few areas that weren’t championship caliber for Ohio State last season with an eye on how those areas are shaping up for 2010. 

Five Worst for the ’09 Buckeyes

Red Zone Offense – The Buckeyes scored 29 points a game last season, but that number would have been significantly higher if they could have punched the ball across the goal line more frequently when they got inside the red zone. The Ohio State offense scored points on just over 79 percent of their trips to the red zone, the seventh best percentage in the Big Ten. By comparison, Wisconsin scored on a league-best 91.38 percent of its trips to the red zone. Unfortunately for Tressel, that’s not even the worst of it. While they scored 79 percent of the time, only 25 of their 48 trips to the red zone resulted in touchdowns. That’s a 52 percent touchdown conversion rate in the red zone with a solid rushing attack and a 6-foot-6 dual-threat quarterback Purdue led the conference with a 73.5 percent rate, but unfortunately they only reached the red zone34 times. Only Minnesota, Michigan and Indiana failed to reach the end zone on fewer of their red zone trips last season, making this the No. 1 area for improvement for the offense in 2010.
 
Field Goals – Another reason the Buckeyes struggled to score points in the red zone was their shaky place kicking a year ago. Senior Aaron Pettrey connected on only 70 percent of his field goal attempts, and backup Devin Barclay was no better when Pettrey went down with a knee injury late in the season, though Barclay did hit a key game-winning field goal to beat Iowa in overtime. As a result, the Buckeyes finished seventh in the Big Ten in kicking, ahead of only Penn State, Purdue, Illinois and Indiana. Pettrey is gone now and Barclay takes over as the kicker in 2010, at least inside the 40, where the Buckeyes were 14-for-19 a year ago. It’s outside of the 40 where they really struggled, going 7-for-11, and they don’t know who will be taking those kicks heading into the fall. Freshman Drew Basil has the strongest leg, but his accuracy is a bit shaky at the moment. Redshirt sophomore Ben Buchanan has the leg, but he’s also going to serve as the team’s punter.

Punting – If it wasn’t bad enough that the Buckeyes struggled in the kicking game last season, they also had a hard time punting the ball with any consistency. A really hard time. Former walk-on Jon Thoma took over for four-year starter A.J. Trapasso and did not have a great year punting the ball. He did bomb five punts over 50 yards, including a really big punt in the Rose Bowl. He also had 23 of his 58 punts downed inside the 20 yard line. That definitely put a dent in his punt average, which finished at 37.93, second worst in the conference among starting punters. Thoma missed the Toledo game with the flu, and backup Ben Buchanan did a great job filling in for him. The Buckeyes only punted the ball four times against the Rockets in a game they won 38-0, but Buchanan 42.8 yards, including a 51-yard bomb. He takes over full time for Thoma this season and the Buckeyes will need more consistency out of the position in 2010.

Penalties – The good news is the Buckeyes weren’t the most penalized team in the Big Ten last season. The bad news is that they weren’t the least penalized either. In fact, they weren’t even one of the five least-penalized teams in the conference. Their 71 penalties were the fourth most in the Big Ten, ahead of only Northwestern (73), Illinois (78), Minnesota (80) and Michigan State (83). But this isn’t a one-year spike for Tressel and his team. In fact, it marks the fourth straight season, and the fifth time in six years, they have ranked in the bottom half of the conference in penalties.

Passing Offense – Terrelle Pryor’s Rose Bowl performance erased a lot of the concerns from the regular season, but the Buckeyes were not a very good passing team in 2009. Pryor completed 56.6 percent of his passes, down from 60.2 percent as a freshman in 2008. With Pryor under center, the Buckeyes only attempted 315 passes last season—including his career high 37 in the Rose Bowl—which was 14 fewer than any other team in the Big Ten (by comparison, Northwestern threw the ball 531 times and Purdue 449 times). Ohio State finished second-to-last in completion percentage and dead last in passing yards, 103rd in the country. The good news is, they did finish sixth in the Big Ten in quarterback rating and Pryor is entering his junior season in Columbus. He’s coming off one of the best passing performances of his career and the coaches clearly trust him to throw the ball more than they did a year ago.

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