Different philosophies going into a game like Saturday's at Ohio State

By Paul Haynes

Head Coach 

Do you do something totally different to catch them off guard, or do you try to get better at what you are doing?

Those are the two philosophies that you have to go with going into a game like Saturday at Ohio State.

I think you can be on the fence with that, though, and do a little bit of both. 

If you are not a fast-paced team, you can go fast paced. If you are an I-Pro team, you can line up empty the whole game. It’s becoming totally different than what you are. But, does that hurt you down the road because you are never going to do those things again? Now you have wasted a whole week of practice on things you are never going to do again.

I think there is a fine line with it.

If you are not a pressure team and now you are pressuring like crazy, or if you use a full back and all of a sudden you don’t have one, that changes the game a little bit for an opponent. 

When I was at Ohio State as an assistant, we didn’t see a lot of teams go totally different against us. There was nothing dramatically different from what you saw teams already doing.  A lot of people knew who we were, though, so they knew what would hurt us. They would put four receivers in the boundary and other things that gave us issues. But you never saw a team that never played wishbone all of a sudden come out in wishbone. 

Virginia Tech did some things last week that gave Ohio State trouble, but Ohio State has had a week to work on those issues. They know teams will continue to do some of those things Virginia Tech did until they have solved them.