Meyer wants Dobbins to be more involved
Freshman running back limited to 19 carries in the past two games.
Ohio State coach COLUMBUS —
Urban Meyer said Wednesday he had a conversation with offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson this week that went like this: “I want to see J.K. touch the ball.”
Freshman running back J.K. Dobbins carried 13 times for 88 yards against Penn State yet sat out the entire second quarter in a hard-to-explain rotation. Watching Dobbins carry six times for 51 yards in the loss to Iowa the next week was even more baffling to many.
In the past two weeks, Dobbins has carried 19 times for 139 yards, an average of 7.3 yards per carry.
Ohio State’s other 123 plays in the past two games have averaged 6.2 yards per play. OSU’s other 50 running plays in the past two games have averaged 4.5 yards per play.
More stats?
Ohio State has 20 rushing plays
this season of 20 yards or more. Dobbins has 12 of them in 119 attempts. He breaks a 20-yarder almost 10 per- cent of the time.
J.T. Barrett has four of them in 101 attempts, or 4 percent of the time. Backup tailback Mike Weber has one in 60 attempts, or less than 2 percent of the time. More stats? Dobbins carried 29 times in the opener against Indiana, accounting for 57 percent of the run plays, in part because the injured Weber didn’t play.
Since then, Dobbins’ 90 carries have accounted for 29 percent of the run plays in eight games, Barrett’s 88 carries have accounted for 28 percent and Weber’s 60 carries for 19 percent.
It all adds up to not enough Dobbins, many think.
“I wouldn’t say J.K. as much as just tailback runs in general,” Wilson said Wednesday.
Wilson noted that Barrett had the most carries last game, with 14, but only four were designed quarterback runs.
“When you’re doing the run-pass option or the run-read option,” Wilson said, “right now sometimes they’re forcing him to keep the ball, cause they don’t want J.K. to get the ball.”
Exactly. But how can that be an excuse? How can it be that easy for a defense? Crash on the running back in the read-option game, and you take him away without having to even defend him.
“Schematically,” Wilson continued, “we’ve got to find some ways to get hats on those guys so our run- ning back can be the run- ner. And at the end of the day, we haven’t done it the last couple weeks.”
But what about some more straight tailback handoffs, without a quarterback read involved?
Wilson said yes to that idea, but also immediately went back to the whole idea of the zone-read run game — when you involve the quarterback as a run threat, you make it an 11-on11 game. When you take the quarterback out of the play, and make him just a handoff device, now the defense has an 11-on-10 advantage in the play.
Wilson went into an expla- nation of what he has done in his career when his offense didn’t have a running quarterback. And obviously, plenty of offenses run the ball with straight tailback handoffs. He said the Buckeyes had that in the plan a week ago, “and we just didn’t get to it, we didn’t execute it well.”
Wilson noted the Buck- eyes had 122 rushing yards at halftime at Iowa (including 47 by Dobbins on five carries), but then the Buckeyes went three-and-out on the first three drives of the third quarter and were down 28 early in the fourth and out of the run game.
In those three third-quarter three-and-outs, Dobbins carried once. The other eight plays were four Barrett runs and four Barrett passes.
“He’s gotta get (the ball more),” Wilson said of Dobbins. “But your quarterback’s been hot, your receivers have been good. We just did not execute our stuff. So we’ll sit there and slam that back in there and they’ll have those 12 guys with butcher knives up in there this week and we’ll get third-and-eight real quick and they’ll tee off with their nickel package and pin their ears back.
“So yeah, we gotta get him the ball, yeah, but I guess it’s just play calling.”