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Ohio State football spring practice: 3 things we want to see when the Buckeyes scrimmage

Ohio State football will hold an open practice with reporters in attendance on Saturday. The Ohio State football spring practice is open to reporters on Saturday, with the team expected to engage in some full scrimmage scenarios. Ryan Day, coach of the Buckeyes, said the schemes might stay fairly vanilla but it could be an opportunity to get new offensive coordinator Brian Hartline some play calling reps. Josh Fryar at left tackle is more of known quantity after last season’s utility role success, and the competition is happening at right tackle. Kenyatta Jackson and Omari Abor barely saw the field while taking redshirts last season, and Caden Curry could be ready to make some noise this season. The Sonny Styles buzz has been building and the safety group goes six or seven deep with players who offer some sort of intrigue.

Ohio State football spring practice: 3 things we want to see when the Buckeyes scrimmage

Опубликовано : 12 месяцев назад от nbaird, Nathan Baird | [email protected] в Sports

The Buckeyes are expected to engage in some full scrimmage scenarios in a practice open to reporters on Saturday. Ryan Day said the schemes might stay fairly vanilla in this still-early workout. Yet he also said this might be an opportunity to get new offensive coordinator Brian Hartline some play calling reps.

Mostly, it’s about letting the team’s most inexperienced players play some real football.

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“Some guys have played a bunch of football,” Day said. “They’ve had, you know, thousands of snaps in games. Other guys have never done it before. So what we want to do is get a lot of those younger guys a bunch of game reps — see who can tackle, see who’s going to make plays, kind of give them an opportunity to go put it on the field.

“So we’ll be very basic with what we’re doing schematically, but just allow them to go play and then grade the film and see where we’re at.”

Some things we hope to get a better feel for inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center on Saturday:

How do the quarterbacks look?

We’ll get the most obvious one out of the way up front.

We watched Kyle McCord and Devin Brown in some passing drills during viewing windows at each of the first two practices. We didn’t see them have to make decisions, or face pressure, or need to execute on third down or in the red zone.

After weeks of speculation about McCord and Brown’s relative physical tools, this competition will be decided by execution in competition periods. We saw both of them do so little during games last season that it will be informative to watch them under duress a bit.

Do the offensive tackles keep them clean?

Figuratively, of course. The quarterbacks don’t typically face live contact in practice.

Josh Fryar at left tackle is more of known quantity after last season’s utility role success. The competition is happening at right tackle, where Zen Michalski’s experience and technique is up against the sheer size and potential of Tegra Tshabola. (Barring a surprise entry from anyone else.)

The flip side of this is whether any of the young defensive ends flash in scrimmage periods. Kenyatta Jackson and Omari Abor barely saw the field while taking redshirts last season. Caden Curry, in limited action, looked like he could be ready to make some noise this season.

A lot of the battles on the edge this spring happen to be between players trying to establish themselves.

Where are the playmakers in the secondary?

Ole Miss transfer cornerback Davison Igbinosun looked the part in the first week of spring practice. So did Denzel Burke, by the way. After Jordan Hancock spent all of last season compromised by injury, we’ll be looking for indications he is back to the form displayed last spring.

The Sonny Styles buzz has been building, and we’re curious how much he’ll mix in the with 1s. Really, the safety group goes six or seven deep with players who offer some sort of intrigue, from a sixth-year player like Josh Proctor to a second-year player like Kye Stokes trying to make a move.

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Темы: Football, College Sports, Ohio

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