ANALYSIS: 24 preseason thoughts on Ohio State’s 2024 preseason

For reporters, it means notepads, recorders and cameras.

As another preseason begins, here are 24 thoughts on the 2024 Buckeyes:

(1) Ohio State enters the season with expectations as high as ever, but this will be the most difficult national championship to win in the history of college football.

(2) Winning it all used to depend about as much on being lucky as being good for three months. Now a team can lose a couple of games (maybe three) between the end of August and the beginning of December, but no matter if it is undefeated or 9-3 becoming the national champion will require beating three top 10 teams (maybe four) in a row. (BONUS THOUGHT: Is that a good trade? I guess we’ll soon find out.)

(3) Nonetheless, Ohio State has an incredible opportunity not only to win the whole thing but prove a lot of people wrong in the process. That might not make sense, but it is true.

(4) Yes, the Buckeyes are favored to win the Big Ten and among the handful of teams to be thought of as the likely best in the country. At the same time, there are plenty of doubters after the last three years.

(5) Quarterback play declined last season. Will it rebound? (6) The offensive line got better as 2023 went on. Will that trajectory continue? (7) The defensive line hasn’t had as much juice the last few seasons. Is this the year Larry Johnson’s men live up to the hype?

(8) I would say at least two of those three are likely. As a general rule, lines get better with age in college football. On defense, the talent is there, but what about the production?

(9) Offensive line coach Justin Frye might not have as much raw material to work with as Johnson, but he has an experienced nucleus now, and these guys have been his pupils for two seasons so it’s time for the rubber to meet the road.

(10) Defensive coordinator Jim Knowles spent his first two seasons trying to strike a balance between being too aggressive and not aggressive enough. Will he hit the sweet spot this year? Again, there are no guarantees, but it seems more likely he does than he doesn’t given the number of players he has in their third year in his system and his past track record with veteran units.

(11) Knowles could get really exotic in both obvious and subtle ways. Perhaps the Buckeyes have several packages based on opponent, or they could have enough hybrid players to do different things schematically without changing personnel.

(12) As far the quarterbacks, they might not need to be great. Of course, that was also a thought last year, and seeing how everything played out was somewhat jarring. Kyle McCord was certainly not great, but he was very nearly good enough to be Ohio State’s Tee Martin, who led Tennessee to a national championship one year after Peyton Manning finished his storied college career. Two too many interceptions at Michigan set off all sorts of ripples through the college football universe.

(13) Don’t bet on anyone Ohio State has this season being the next C.J. Stroud (or Manning), but even a slightly poorer man’s J.T. Barrett might be just what the doctor ordered this season. Will Howard and Devin Brown both seem like reasonable candidates to be that.

(14) I also wonder if giving both of them first-team snaps throughout the game (the dreaded two-quarterback system) has some merit as a matter of competition, motivation and simply to foster improvement in both.

(15) The schedule sets up for some early-season experimentation on both sides of the ball.

(16) On offense, that means the quarterbacks develop a knack for making decisions and a rapport with the receivers. Let the offensive line get used to pounding the ball for the sake of pounding it.

(17) On defense, that means letting the veteran front four attack while getting young guys more involved — or how seeing a three-man line might fit this personnel. The third linebacker or fifth defensive back could morph into a few different positions as well.

(18) How much is too much blitzing? How much is not enough? That is something Knowles will need to figure out, and it applies to the run game, too. The Buckeyes were subjected to death by 1,000 cuts there late in the season.

(19) I don’t write about special teams a lot because I’m not sure how much fans care about it, but that is another area of interest considering what a major weakness it was the last couple of seasons.

(20) Punting hurt Ohio State badly in a field position game at Michigan last season, and a botched fake cost the Buckeyes against the Wolverines in the ‘22 game. The Buckeyes also have gotten pretty much nothing out of the return game recently, so that could be another area they make it easier on themselves on both sides of the ball.

(21) The slide of the special teams occurred somewhat under the radar because Ohio State scored enough points it didn’t really matter (and the defense was often so bad how far the other team had to go didn’t matter, either), but Ryan Day has spoken more and more recently about the importance of “complementary football,” a favorite topic of the Jim Tressel days that refers to the the three units striving to be their best without compromising the success of the other.

(22) How will the Ryan Day As CEO Experiment go? There’s a lot riding on his decision to turn over play-calling to Chip Kelly.

(23) I often wonder if it makes sense for a guy to stop doing the thing he is best at doing, the thing that made him a successful assistant, but there are various stats floating around out there noting how rarely the national champion has a head coach who calls the plays.

(24) If the experiment does work, Ohio State could really be sitting pretty for the long term with a relatively young head coach and a pair of elite coordinators who could be in place for the foreseeable future.