OHIO STATE

Buckeyes working from atop the polls for repeat title

Jon Spencer
Reporter

If you’re the Ohio State Buckeyes, girding for defense of your College Football Playoff national championship, the last thing you want as you head to the practice field is the thumb from coach Urban Meyer.

“I like to stand there and watch,” Meyer said. “I’ll send a guy back who doesn’t have the right (focus). You’re going to be working out in full pads, 100 degree heat, and if you have a sour puss on your face, you’re getting back in (the locker room). I tell them ‘Fake it or you’re not going to practice.’ Just fake it. It’s pep in your step. We call it demeanor.”

There were plenty of reasons to be a “sour puss” last season, starting with the loss of quarterback and two-time Big Ten Player of the Year Braxton Miller to a shoulder injury before the first game and the shell shock of losing the second game at home to huge underdog Virginia Tech.

Then to reel off 10 wins in a row, put yourself in position to win a Big Ten Championship and possibly sneak into the inaugural four-team CFP — only to lose replacement quarterback and Heisman Trophy candidate J.T. Barrett to a broken ankle in the regular season finale?

How much adversity can a team withstand?

Apparently, plenty. All the hours invested by Meyer in leadership training, all the time spent drilling the formula E + R = O (event plus response equals outcome) into their noggins, paid huge dividends as Ohio State won the Big Ten title and a national championship behind third-string quarterback Cardale Jones.

“Last year there weren’t many times I sent players back (to the locker room),” Meyer said. “They enjoyed the grind. That led to this year’s motto: Enjoy The Grind. That (message) isn’t directed at the Josh Perrys or Adolphus Washingtons. It’s directed at (newcomers) because they need to learn the system.”

Last year’s “Chase” has given way to this year’s “Grind.” The Buckeyes are no longer chasing a national championship. They are the chase-ee.

Instead of being the heavy underdog, which they were last year in a playoff field that included No. 1 Alabama, No. 2 Oregon and defending national champion Florida State, they are the heavy favorite to do something that has only happened three times since 1979: repeat as national champions.

The good news: Ohio State is the first school in the 65-year history of the Associated Press poll to be a unanimous No. 1 heading into the season.

The bad news: In the eight other times the Buckeyes have been preseason No. 1 they failed to live up to that billing.

Meyer won two national championships at Florida and couldn’t repeat either time, even though one of those title squads returned a solid core of veterans like this Ohio State team.

Ask him if it’s harder to get to the mountain top or to stay put, he’s still not sure.

“I can’t say what’s easier; I can tell you what’s more enjoyable is getting there,” Meyer said. “It’s a frickin’ fight up the hill. We’ve been there. At times it can be awful. I haven’t felt that way yet.”

The hill got a little steeper this summer with the announcement that four Buckeyes — All-America defensive end Joey Bosa and receiver /H-backs Jalin Marshall, Dontre Wilson and Corey Smith — are suspended for the Labor Day, prime-time, season-opening rematch with Virginia Tech in Blacksburg because of undisclosed team violations.

Some no doubt see that as an early sign that the Buckeyes have lost focus, drive, desire — that they’ve lost their edge.

“I don’t think it has anything to do with that,” Perry, a senior linebacker and last year’s leading tackler, said. “I think it’s just guys making mistakes. There’s no lost edge. Guys are hungry and getting after it. We worked so hard this summer. (The strength and conditioning staff) got after us harder than they’ve gotten after us in a while. We’re going to prepare for whatever’s ahead.”

Perry is treating the suspensions as what he called “another E, another obstacle.” When a reporter, unaware of the team’s leadership mantra, asked if “E” stands for “error,” like in baseball, Perry laughed and motioned to his E + R = O wristband.

“When I have a bad attitude, I take the wristband and rub it on my forehead,” he said. “It gets my mind right.”

One of last year’s question marks — a revamped offensive line — is now an exclamation point, with four returning starters led by blind-side tackle Taylor Decker.

They’ll be blocking for a bevy of skill players, including Barrett and Jones at quarterback, a quarterback-turned-receiver in Braxton Miller, a Heisman Trophy frontrunner in tailback Ezekiel Elliott and last year’s leading receiver in Michael Thomas.

In all, Ohio State will be returning seven starters from an offense that set 17 team records, including 7,674 total yards which translated into 90 touchdowns and 672 points scored.

“You don’t want to forget what got you to where you’re at,” Decker said. “You don’t want to forget how it feels not to be on top, not to be No. 1, because you probably worked harder than you ever will.

“If we read into expectations too much, guys will play tight. We played so well down the stretch because people were like ‘Oh, they’re not going to win.’ So we were able to play loose. We always have the expectation that we should win every game. Now that everyone else is saying it, it’s just another element, uncharted territory for me.”

This is also Ed Warinner’s maiden voyage as OSU offensive coordinator. He added playing-calling duties to his role as offensive line coach when bright young mind Tom Herman left to become head coach at Houston. Herman’s replacement as quarterbacks coach is co-offensive coordinator Tim Beck. He was the OC and QB coach the last three years at Nebraska.

Beck and Warinner were offensive assistants together at Kansas.

“Ed’s organizational skills are a perfect 10,” Meyer said. “He’s one of the most organized guys I’ve ever been around. He was a quarterback in college, he coached quarterbacks at Kansas and Army and he’s an excellent line coach. He’s very well-versed on (running) a balanced offense.”

The Buckeyes also return seven starters on a defense that shut out Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game, kept top-ranked Alabama in check at the Sugar Bowl and then held Oregon 27 points below its average in a 42-20 national championship game victory.

All eyes will be on what may be the best linebacker crew in the country — Perry on the outside with freshman All-American and Sugar Bowl defensive MVP Darron Lee, flanking 6-2, 240-pound sophomore Raekwon McMillan, a five-star recruit from Georgia who takes over in the middle.

“Tell us we’re underdogs and not very good, we’re going to run with that. If you tell us we’re a really good team, we’ll embrace that and like the pressure,” said Perry, contrasting the start of the 2014 post-season to the start of this season. “It’s not to the point where we’re cocky, but we understand we can do some really good things if we follow the plan that’s given and take everything step by step.”

Looking ahead might only give them night sweats anyway.

Everybody who thinks the Buckeyes have a cakewalk back into the playoffs needs to remember the regular-season ends with back-to-back games against their two biggest rivals — Michigan State and at Michigan — followed by, if they’re lucky, the conference championship game and two playoff games.

Even if every game is a layup until the last two weeks in November, repeating as national champs will mean running an extremely tough five-game gauntlet at the end.

“We have to focus on the journey instead of the destination,” Perry said. “Everybody’s talking ‘repeat this, defend that.’ We just want to play ballgames ... at a high level.”