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Has the coaching staff been holding anything back for Ohio State?

I don't know that the coaching staff specifically holds stuff back for a big opponent. However, there may be things that they see on film that they will game plan for so we may see things we haven't seen. For example, in 2016, I believe the coaching staff saw something about their FG block unit that made them think they could block one. You may recall that Allen said he almost blocked one earlier in the game and adjusted slightly to block the kick that turned into a TD.

I think if the defense and offense play as well as they can play, it will be a close game. That's obviously a big if. But I do think PSU is the best team OSU has played this year by a decent amount.

If it is a close game into the 4th quarter, it will be interesting to see how OSU responds. They have not had a close game this year and who knows how they will respond.
If a close game in the 4th quarter my sense is OSU will make all the clutch plays and we do not. Bad rinse and repeat of 17 and 18. Just seems to work that way for us against these guys. Although we could use 2016 as hope but that was at home which is a big difference.
 
Has the coaching staff been holding anything back for Ohio State?

The only thing holding this team back is the coaching staff. :eek:
 
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If a close game in the 4th quarter my sense is OSU will make all the clutch plays and we do not. Bad rinse and repeat of 17 and 18. Just seems to work that way for us against these guys. Although we could use 2016 as hope but that was at home which is a big difference.
You may be correct. But they have not had to make any plays in the 4Q yet this year. Fields has, in fact, never had to make any 4Q plays to win a game. Their head coach has never had to make any crunch time decisions that affected the outcome of a game in the 4Q.

We will see. If the game is within one score with 10 minutes left, I put it at a toss up at worst.
 
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No, teams don't do this. We are 10 games into the season. They go out and try to win every game with 100%, not 90% or 80% or 70% or anything other than 100%. I know it's comforting to think that maybe they have some other level they are hiding but that's just plain ridiculous. Do you think they weren't going 100% against Minnesota? Were they willing to lose a game so they could save something for tOSU?

Absolutely not.
 
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Will Pe
YES.........from what I understand PSU defensive players were told to drop all interceptions so that tOSU QB wouldn't know they were capable of catching the ball. :( Seriously though it would be nice to have some effective screens for tOSU game.
It would also be nice to defend against the screen this year
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Yes. The coaches and players have been holding back the regression and incompetence for Tosu. Just wait until Saturday. Tosu won’t be ready for what Penn State will not bring to columbus.
 
I've never believed in the "holding back" theory. For years this was a popular theory under the Paterno era... "Joe is holding back....". I do not believe you ever risk losing a game, all for the sake of winning future games.

Now, what I do believe is that all coaching staffs have plays in their play-books that they might not use unless they feel a need to vs. certain opponents. Obviously Ohio State poses a much greater challenge than any opponent to date.

So, I do not believe that staff sat in a war-room before Indiana and said "He let's hold back this game because we'll hide stuff we can use vs. Ohio State". ..... But, I believe what happens is that when a staff sits in a war-room and they see a superior opponent, they might come to a conclusion that in order to beat this superior opponent, they may have to get creative and they may have to dig way deep into the play-book to throw them off.

Basically, there are 2 ways to view beating an upcoming opponent. 1 is that you are comfortable with what you do, and you say "if we do what we do, and we execute what we do, then we'll move the ball and be successful vs. this team"... and 2. is that you say "this team we are playing presents challenges for us that we may not be able to handle running what we've been calling most of the year, we may need to use some alternate plays in order to throw them off"
 
I have a feeling we will see some new wrinkles on Saturday. The problem is and has been we don't seem to know how to introduce a new wrinkle without it being completely obvious what we are going to do. Last year they introduced the "Lion" position for Tommy Stevens. Every time Tommy came into the game he got the ball. I would argue the gimmick actually made it easier to defend.

Last week they brought in Levis and sent Clifford wide. Then what did they do? They ran Levis. Yes it worked but I would argue it had nothing to do with the "gimmick". Everybody in the place knew Levis was going to run the ball.

If they are going to throw in a new wrinkle it has to be creative and not obvious. How about a two back set with Journey Brown lead blocking on a play, then send him in motion fake the hand-off and pass to him in the flat, then doing something else... Lets introduce a scheme that we run for an entire series or two with multiple options out of it, instead of this idea of in this specific scenario we are going to do this....
 
Noah Cain. Maybe theyll let him play and give him the ball more than 5 times.
 
I've been optimistic that we could hang with them, but what I've seen the last two weeks on defense has me worried that we're going to be run out of the stadium on Saturday unless we can score a lot of points ourselves. It would sure be a nice time for a legit third receiver to emerge and Noah Cain to return. For that matter, I hope we're going to even have KJ. Does anyone think we'll have some new wrinkles for tOSU - maybe new plays or new players making an appearance - or is what we've seen what we'll get? What I saw yesterday looked like about a 3 TD or more loss in Columbus.
They are bringing back Stevens to run the lion!!!
 
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Holding back- no

Changing the game - absolutely

When other than the 4th Q against Indiana have we had a smash mouth drain the clock drive ?or hell even attempted such a maneuver? The answer NEVER ! You just don’t go from not being able to do that to executing 18 plays and taking 9 minutes off the clock.

I think that was the dress rehearsal for OSU. The best way to stop their offense is to keep that offense off the field. You limit their T.O.P and we have a good chance at winning that game.

I think that was a methodical drive to show OSU we can grind out a TD as well as make big plays. So as far as holding things back, maybe a few wrinkles or a trick play but more so just holding back a different type of play calling
 
Minnesota isn't Ohio State. I think the coaches/players thought they could show up and win that game with the game plan they had. It certainly wasn't a game you pointed to during the off-season. My guess is they didn't do anything special planning for that one.

Teams don't hold anything back. They just have different gameplans, and thus run different plays, for everybody. If you think they potentially have a whole alternate playbook for OSU, you are mistaken.
 
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