Jim Heacock - Alpha Male, Baby!

Jim Heacock likes to yell at things. My general perception of him and people like him is that he likes to yell at things that do one or more of the following:

1) Anger him

2) Confuse him

3) Make him uncomfortable

4) Question his manhood

5) Make him question his own seckshiality

Apparently, Jim Heacock is yelling at the defensive line (well, really redshirt freshman Willie Mobley) because he's really optimistic. The article tells me this is shocking, because:

Normally, Heacock is the type of guy who looks at a cloudless sky and forecasts a hurricane.

Really? No way. I mean, this is the guy who places his defensive backs 10 yards off the LOS against any team with a pulse in its passing game. I thought he had the utmost confidence in his players and his coaching ability.

But even he is optimistic about the Buckeyes' defensive line. They return seven of their top eight players from last season -- all except Nader Abdallah.

For the first time in three years, the line is a strength, not a question mark.

It is? I understand that the line has been a little thin experience-wise for the past two years, but Ohio State just recently started a senior-laden, experienced defensive line in one of their two championship game runs: 2006. David Patterson, Quinn Pitcock, Jay Richardson, and even back-up DT Joel Penton were all experienced seniors, and while that defensive line was good, no one thought it was dominant. Florida certainly didn't.

Ever since then, the defensive line has seen almost-constant rotation. Starting line-ups are ephemeral, especially at the tackle spot, where last year Doug Worthington, Cameron Heyward, Nader Abdallah, Todd Denlinger, Dex "the Lawman" Larimore, and even Rob Rose in some situations saw action on the interior. At the ends, it's been a tad more set in stone the last two years; Lawrence Wilson would start the year before his inevitable injury, then Heyward would take over until an injury at the DT spot forced him to move there. Nonetheless, while the defensive line is experienced, there hasn't been a consistent set of starters in a long time. The tackles continue to be jacks-of-all-trades and masters of none; no one is quite a run stuff and no one is really much of a pass rusher, outside of Doug Worthington, who is playing wildly out of position anyway.

As of now, the starting unit would feature Gibson and Cameron Heyward at the ends, with Dexter Larimore and Doug Worthington inside.

So now that the injury situation has cleared up, Heyward has been moved back to end and Worthington is still (sigh) a defensive tackle. Look, I like Worthington, I do, and I think he'd make a very good DE. But he weighs 276 pounds, according to the spring depth chart. That's, er, a little lean. Most determined offensive linemen will push him around. USC is going to find this arrangement quite amusing. True, he wasn't that bad outside of USC last year - and everyone else was pretty bad along with him in that instance - but he is not a defensive tackle. Larimore checks in at exactly 300, which is encouraging. This "starting" line in particular features two pass rushers in Worthington and Gibson and two guys who are better against the run, that may seem balanced, but I think playing two of those guys out of position is going to come back to haunt Ohio State when it faces a determined running game in Wisconsin or USC.

The important thing about this line is that the graduation of Marcus Freeman and James Laurinaitis leaves the linebacking corps behind it rather green. If it isn't great right away, things could get ugly - relatively speaking - starting with the Navy game. Navy is one of the tougher non-BCS teams that Ohio State could have schedule, having led the country in rushing  for four straight years. The article claims the unit jelled during the 2008 season, and the run defense did improve later on in the season; the outlier, of course, being the Illinois game. But it seemed like a lot of the improvement came after Heyward moved inside. Let's hope, for the sake of the run defense against USC, that is not entirely the case.