In this blogger's opinion, the thing holding back the Ohio State football team from competing against the better teams it has faced the last couple years has been the play of the offensive line. Lord knows I've written enough about it the last couple months, and that all my prognostications about the upcoming season - the optimistic ones at least - come with a single, glaring caveat: that the play of the offensive line must improve. A lot. There are many different reasons people have tossed out for line's struggles: conditioning, scheme, "heart" (or whatever you want to call it), but also, the line's "attitude".

Chris Spielman has long been one of my favorite Buckeyes to watch, but also to listen to. Last year, in the Ohio game, he acted as sideline reporter for the ESPN braodcast. As Ohio State got consistently manhandled in the trenches, he said watching the line was like watching a pillow fight. And it's true; against even the patsiest of patsies on the schedule, Ohio State's line alternated between good and not-so-good for four frustrating quarters. The next day on his radio show, Spielman said the line was "playing pattycake", and he contrasted it with the USC line, which, in his words, doesn't "play nice".

Were this criticism to come from anyone but Spielman, I'd take it with a grain of salt; I tend to ignore explanations that don't boil down to technique, philosophy and scheme, because I feel like I don't learn anything from them. They just feel like newspaper column fodder for Scout/Rivals types to get all fired up about. But since it was Spielman, this criticism was different. The old cliché states that football is a mental game, and, never having actually played it, but having watched it for years, I'd have to agree. But what exactly is the menality went want in our offensive line? Alex Boone spent three years trying to get this line fired up, and not doing a very good job, it seems. Kirk Barton, for three years, did an adequate job, but in two of his teams' biggest games - the twin national title beatdowns - he, and the rest of unit, looked lost. For Barton, it's especially odd, considering he held talented Texas pass rusher Bryan Robison and Michigan's Lamarr Woodley, in check for the two other "big games" of 2006. Now, I already told you where leadership on this line will likely come from; Boren and Brewster seem to have it in spades. The question is, what sort of mentality should the coaches seek to foster? It seems that ALEX BOONE RAGE, the aggressive, take-no-prisoners 'tude the left tackle tried to bring to the '06 and '07 lines largely fizzled out in '08, and it makes you wonder if the transition from Barton to Boone as the group spokesman had anything to do with it. With talk of Boren fighting his own teammates in practice, it seems that the attitude at the top won't be changing all that much. If that's the case, how much of a change can we expect?  We now know that position shuffling is still taking place; Cordle has moved back inside apparently, with Shugarts and Adams holding down the two tackle spots for now; so it's clear that coaches didn't feel they had a cohesive unit, at least in its spring practice iteration. I, for one, expect the line to be better than it was in 2008 - there's nowhere to go but up - but I just can't be too sure where the ceiling is.

Am I reading too much into all of this? Thoughts?