Keane observations about life, politics and sports.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Football Blame Game

No, this is not another post about the NFL and Rush Limbaugh. Instead this is about The Ohio State University losing a football game they should have won easily today. It is said that a quarterback receives too much credit for wins and takes too much blame for losses. However, in this case OSU QB Terrelle Pryor actually deserves the lion's share of the blame for the loss. Football is a team game, but of the teams five turnovers four were committed by Pryor (two fumbles and two interceptions). Inexcusable - nothing is more important than protecting the ball. Pryor was the hottest recruit coming out of high school and is a phenomenal athlete. However, he is not developing as a passing quarterback. He does not look comfortable taking a 5 step drop and finding an open receiver. His fumbles and interceptions lost this game.

I don't want to leave the impression that Pryor deserves all the blame. The offensive line did little or nothing to keep Purdue away from Pryor.

Also, Coach Tressel should have stuck with the running game. Early in the game Brandon Saine was running very well and then they seemed to abandon the running game. Bad call.

Conversely, credit the win to the entire Purdue team. They showed up ready to play and were fired up from the first snap to the last one. Bottom line: The Boilermakers clearly wanted to win this game more than the Buckeyes.

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4 Comments:

Blogger bob said...

Tressel seems to favor to long a passing game for Pryor's skills. He needs to emphasize 5-15 yard passing game and then mix in the longer passing game. That way Pryor could get comfortable and maybe not look so overwhelmed.

October 17, 2009 at 1:55 PM

 
Blogger Crazy Politico said...

This is two weeks in a row where the offense stunk it up for OSU. If not for Wisconsin's own turnovers last week this would have been 2 in a row for the Buckeyes.

Pryor is a hell of an athlete, but not a great quarterback. When he's forced into the pocket the offense becomes very average.

October 17, 2009 at 6:58 PM

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Pryor has gotten progressively worse this year.

Since he's such a good athlete but not a good quarterback, perhaps he should become a receiver.

October 18, 2009 at 5:35 AM

 
Blogger Ben said...

Ohio State isnt good enough to just show up and win this year. Purdue showed them that.

Anyone think they are going to win each of their last three games: at Penn State, Iowa, and at Michigan??

October 21, 2009 at 12:27 PM

 

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