Our Lucky Number is Five

Our Lucky Number is Five</u>

Five Field Goals, Five Turnovers.

By Alea Aino

Sunday, September 19, 2004

     I’d like to start off with congratulating the Ohio State defense for remembering what a turnover is.  Second, congrats to starting quarterback Justin Zwick for learning how to not throw the ball to the players on the other team.

     I wasn’t ‘impressed’ at all with last Saturday’s game against the North Carolina State Wolfpack.  I was, however, amazed by Mike Nugent.  His astonishing five field goals from 50, 30, 33, 46, and 47 yards totaled 206 yards.  Our offense was completely unreliable for anything at all other than for just somehow getting the ball somewhere within their own 40-yard line.  In fact, the offense only had a total of 137 yards, which is terrible.  How can you expect to win a game with just 64 passing yards and 73 rushing yards?  You can’t.

     I’m disappointed with our sophomore quarterback Zwick.  But, he got the job done, again.  Barely, anyways.  The Buckeyes are realizing just how much of a God Noog is.  I think we all are.

     Five field goals is the most that any Buckeye kicker has had in history.  In the 1981 game against Illinois, Bob Atha also kicked five field goals, but his were shorter and didn’t even go half as long as Noog’s.  Mike Nugent tied those five, and out yarded him.  He’s one of the best kickers that I’ve ever seen, even better than most in the NFL.  He has now been player of the week for two weeks straight.

     That tells you something about our offense.  Sure, we look good doing it (well, sometimes we do, anyways), but the stats show that our offense needs a lot of help (and that’s me putting it as nice as I can).  Normally, a team with so few yards on total offense won’t win games.  Thank goodness that they at least get close enough to the end zone for Nugent to kick it in.  I bet he’s feeling special about this.  And I bet Zwick isn’t.

     We had our bye-week before the game and thank god for that.  I had hoped that we rested well and had a plan.  That plan turned out to suck, majorly.  Zwick, who was 10 of 21 passing, looked like he was a bit more than rusty.  Next week we are at Northwestern.  Our record with them is 55-13-1, but that could very easily change if we only get 137 yards on offense again.

    The defense was a bit shaky, but we held NC State to 256 yards total on offense.  That’s not too bad, especially when you add that they managed to force five turnovers.  That’s great.  Our first two games our defense didn’t touch the ball.  Now all of the sudden BAM! (No, not Bam Childress) there they are, and there are five of them.  I do have to mention that it should have been six, because AJ Hawk did get a second interception, but the referees called the ball down before he had control over it.  Umm, no.  Do they watch the same game we do?  Did they see that replay?  Maybe the refs should have kept their eyes open.

     Anyways, over the last two weeks, I’ve been paying attention to Purdue.  They’re looking more than polished right now.  Not only are they undefeated, but their quarterback, Kyle Orton, is one of the best in the league and probably the best in the Big Ten conference.  

     The reason I tell you that is to mention that we play them on November 13th, which is the game before we play Michigan.  Not only are the Buckeyes playing less than fabulous, but also we are in Purdue for the game.  We can’t rely on our kicker to win every game, or even a majority of them.  In fact, we shouldn’t be relying on him at all.  The bottom line is:  Our offense needs to get the ball down the field and in the end zone without giving it to the other team.  Our defense needs to hold back the other team’s offense and force a few more than zero turnovers.  The whole team needs to stop relying on Nugent and the special teams to kick those field goals because one time when we really need them they wont be able to do it, and it wont be their fault, either.  What if Noog is injured? God forbid it to ever happen, but sometimes I wonder how we would fair without him.  Sometimes I think would offense wouldn’t know what to do.  They’d stand around thinking, “What? You want us to get the ball in the end zone?  Whoa now, slow down.  What does the end zone look like again?  Where can we find it?  We only know what the 30-yard line looks like.”

     So hopefully we’re going to get this game of ours together by the time the real big games like against Wisconsin, Michigan and Purdue roll around.  Heck, we better be ready for Northwestern next week!

     Who am I to complain? After all, no matter how we did it, we still won.

     Oh yeah.  Bring it on, Northwestern.