Defense Does Not Disappoint
In front of a crowd of 61,058 fans, Ohio State football kicked off its 2014 campaign with its Annual Scarlet and Gray Spring game. The final score favored the Gray squad 17-7, but in this situation the score was not the focus of this years glorified scrimmage. Instead, this bloggers attention, much like the rest of Buckeye Nation, had their eyes on the secondary and defense which looked bad in the last half of the season, and what would the additions of Chris Ash and Larry Johnson do to change it. I must say, it was great seeing Eli Apple, a 5-star recruit of last years recruits, get some quality playing time and had some good stops, and played well in man coverage against freshman wide-out Johnny Dixon., who also looked impressive. Freshman linebacker Reakwan McMillon showed off his speed as he ran down a receiver in the open field. I think we might have found our new Shazier. From the little we got to see in this, already the scheme looked aggressive for the defense in total, and the freshman and young players got to show off what they were made of. In a separate battle for Kenny Guiton’s replacement, Cardale Jones and J.T. Barrett had a quarterback showdown taking the majority of the snaps for the Scarlet and Gray respectively. Both had some good throws, and some bade throws, but one thing I took away from it is that both have the elusive speed, but Cardale has the better arm. One fan I was sitting near commented that Cardale reminded him of Ben Roethlisberger. I think at the start of the season, Cardale will get the nod for back-up, but will need some time to step into the shoes of the man we knew and loved as “Smooth Jazz.”
Fun Stats of the game:
12: Doran Grant won the student-buckeye 40 yard dash, edging out speedster Dontre Wilson for fastest man. Here is the video of that race: https://vine.co/v/MJmhaXttXMK
5: Ohio State decided to drop its ticket prices the day before the Spring Game from roughly $14 to $5 and as a result, the attendance went from 26,000 tickets sold to 61,058. Hopefully this is a lesson learned for OSU athletics for the regular season tickets. Then again, maybe not.
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Josh Watson – Graphic Designer
Love to see Shazier go so high. As for Roby, 9 DB’s in the first round and you are not one of them … enough said!
Well, Roby did get picked up still by Broncos