Ohio State senior offensive lineman Thayer Munford (75) returns to the Buckeyes bench during the Ohio State-Rutgers game on Nov. 7. Ohio State won 49-27. Credit: Mackenzie Shanklin | Photo Editor
Through three games, Ohio State’s offensive line hasn’t faced a test like Indiana’s stout defensive front.
No. 9 Indiana brings a blitz-heavy scheme to Columbus Saturday, creating a significant challenge for the Buckeyes’ front five. With the Buckeyes’ first top-10 matchup on the horizon, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day praised their opponent’s aggressive defense approach.
“On defense, they’re very, very aggressive. They come at you a bunch of different ways. It’s hard to figure out where they’re coming from,” Day said Tuesday in a press conference. “They blitz a lot and really don’t have a lot of tendencies. That way, they’re just kinda dialing up different blitzes.”
The Indiana defense has amassed a conference-best 12 sacks through four games, spearheaded by an unconventional and aggressive blitzing scheme.
In tune with the unsound attack that Indiana plays with, the Hoosiers’ sack leader doesn’t fit the bill of a typical pass rusher. Sophomore cornerback Tiawan Mullen — at just 5-foot-10 and 176 pounds — leads the pass rush with 2.5 sacks.
Although the Hoosiers have had success all season, redshirt junior center Josh Myers said the Buckeyes are used to aggressive fronts due the experience they’ve gained against them this season.
“Defenses do, at this point, they do whatever it is they can to try and stop us,” Myers said. “That’s happened most games, well pretty much every game this season. We’ve been blitzed 80 or 90 percent of the game. So that’s just something we have to live with and we have to be able to deal with and handle.”
Indiana’s blitzing doesn’t only create chaos in the passing game.
The Hoosiers hold opponents to just 111 rushing yards per game, good for third in the Big Ten, and just 3.5 yards per carry — the second best mark in the conference.
Despite Myers’ “mixed feelings” on the Ohio State rushing attack, the Buckeyes average the third-most rushing yards per game in the Big Ten with 208.67 yards per game.
“Two-hundred yards a game certainly is not a bad thing, but it could be prettier. It could be better than it is, and I feel like in so many of the games it’s been so close to popping and it just hasn’t for various reasons,” Myers said. “It’s frustrating, but also we’re moving the ball on the ground still.”
Although the Buckeye interior offensive line contains two of its more experienced players in Myers and redshirt junior guard Wyatt Davis, who have started a combined 31 games in their careers, it is also home to first-year starter and sophomore guard Harry Miller.
Miller struggled in Ohio State’s Nov. 7 victory over Rutgers, picking up three holding penalties in the game’s opening half. Despite Miller’s rough night, senior tackle Thayer Munford said he isn’t concerned with his play going forward.
“It was a learning curve, of course, but knowing how Harry is, from the two years that he’s been here, he’s going to overcome this,” Munford said. “He is working very hard just to make sure he doesn’t make the same mistakes again.”
Myers’ echoed a similar sentiment and said that he and Miller are continuing to work on their cohesion on the interior.
“There have been times where we have not been quite so gelled together, a couple of things have happened, and those are things that we’re working to eliminate,” Myers said. “We’ll be just fine, we know what we have to work on and we’ve been working on those things and just talking through it.”
Despite the interior’s early struggles, they’ve helped contribute to the Buckeyes conference-best 511 total yards per game.
With the offense’s successes, Munford said there’s still areas where the Buckeyes need to improve on the offensive line ahead of their biggest test of the season.
“There’s always things to work on,” Munford said. “We know what more we can bring to the table and I don’t think we have hit our peak yet, at all.”
