Our golden boy is less turnover-prone than your golden boy!

Uh. That's all I got. Well, that and SIX STRAIGHT, BITCHES.

Nah, It wasn't pretty. I guess I didn't expect it to be. Nevertheless, can't shake this feeling that, if Tate Forcier hadn't thrown something like three red zone picks, Michigan wins this game. They were a five-win football team for a reason; their defense was a sieve, and the offense was productive but rather inconsistent. Michigan moving the ball on us like they did today does not bode well for a more potent spread attack like, say, Oregon. I expected Michigan to play Ohio State close, but I didn't expect a complete lack of wrinkles from the Buckeyes either.

But enough negativity; there were positives, mostly relating to our newly-dominant rushing attack.

The Good

- This running game death-star is fully operational. Brandon Saine and Daniel Herron have become the backs we were expecting from the get-go, and they're sometimes good enough to make up for the offensive line's deficiences; see: Saine's run in which the blockers got pwned, Brandon broke tackles and earned the first down by his own damn self. That's the toughness this attack has missed without Beanie Wells.

- Against Michigan's spread, I thought the front four did an okay job. Not excellent, but good enough to force Forcier into timely mistakes, and Gibson had a very good day after a quiet one against Iowa last week.

- Ross Homan has been nothing short of excellent for weeks now, and I hope he starts getting some more recognition. Tracking down Forcier in the open field was spectacular, and he rarely got caught out of position against that shifty little bastard Vincent Smith.

- The playcalling on the two scoring drives was terrific, and the execution finally synced up as well. Read-option and misdirection should be a central component from here on out; it works.

The Bad

- This secondary is just... very average. Yes, four picks and all that, but when this defensive line isn't dominating every other down, this secondary will give up plays. Devon Torrence and  Chimdi Chekwa are not particularly reliable, and I think Hines is a bit more of a liability than I've realized. Michigan is far from the best passing attack Ohio State has played (9th in the conference, in fact), and neither is Iowa. It's not quite a trend yet, considering Ohio State completely shut down Penn State's aerial attack (5th in the conference), but it is a rather worrisome late-season development.

- As great as the rushing attack looked, our interior has trouble blocking for our bread-and-butter off-tackle plays, and that has to be freaking Jim Tressel out. Especially if he doesn't plan on expanding the read-option/misdirection section of the playbook.

- Outside of those two scoring drives, the playcalling was awful. Run-run-pass doesn't begin to describe it. Some of it was, as alluded to above, on execution. But it seems to me that if something isn't working, for whatever reason, you try something else. For an agonizing quarter-and-a-half, Ohio State stuck with its gameplan, despite the fact that it clearly wasn't working. Remember that McDonough story about Jim Tressel calling a play until his opponent stops it? Wasn't the case today. Those "Michigan-only wrinkles" were non-existent.

The Downright Confusing

- Nothing truly unexpected today, unless I want to go back to the playcalling and I will: early on, the only thing working was the passing attack. Ohio State repeated got big chunks of yardage through the air, and Michigan did not make any major changes in its coverage schemes (that I could see, anyway) during the first few drives, so why did we go away from it?

- The early dropped picks were agonizing. Glad we started catching them.

I'm not sure how good I should feel about this game. It's great absolutely fucking spectacular that the streak continues, but Michigan reminded us quite well that this team still has some noticeable issues. Personally, I think this was our last chance to drop a nasty beatdown on Michigan before RichRod finally gets in a groove, and we didn't. Michigan's offense is vastly improved over the latter (non-2006) Carr days, let alone RichRod's first year. He has one half of the team fully functional, and that half of the team is really quite young (Forcier, Smith, Roy Roundtree are all underclassmen). On defense, it's a completely different story, and I understand Michigan fans' wariness about this aspect of their team. I doubt Greg Robinson will ever make them a dominant outfit, but if the offense is scoring 30 points a game and not turning the ball over, they won't have to be. If they fire RichRod for this loss.... they're far more incompetent up north than we give them credit for.

Still, I find Michigan's offensive success disturbing. While they're very good, they are a shadow of the attacks Ohio State could potentially face in Pasadena. The Buckeyes did an excellent job of limiting the Michigan ground game, but this secondary is definitely vulnerable. For all the progress Pryor subtly made these past few weeks, he missed wide open guys today, a couple times for sure-fire touchdowns that came in rare instances where Jim Tressel was truly trying to score. We won't beat Oregon, Stanford or Arizona with 80 yards passing; this much I know.

But hey. Six straight, bitches, and The Game is in Columbus next year. Even if Michigan is better, Ohio State will return most of the defense, including a veteran secondary, and most major contributors on offense. As iffy as today's win was, I'm not sure JT's dominance of the Wolverines will let up any time soon.

Now, it's Rose Bowl time. Let's find a passing game in the interim.