“My daughter went to Tennessee, so I sent a lot of money to Tennessee,” he said of the team that made the biggest headlines last week by knocking off Alabama 52-49. “So she made me keenly aware.”
The Volunteers not only ended a 15-game losing streak to the Crimson Tide but scored the most points of any Alabama opponent since Sewanee hung 54 on them in 1907.
Coach Josh Heupel’s team piled up 567 total yards with a big-play offense that looked familiar to Knowles, who spent the previous four seasons as defensive coordinator in the Big 12 at Oklahoma State.
That comes as little surprise with Heupel having played quarterback at Oklahoma in the early days of the spread offense revolution.
“Yeah, that is a lot of what I went against in the Big 12 — that kind of attitude of offense,” Knowles said. “The kind of attitude that our offense has, right? It’s like, ‘We’re trying to score every play.’ I think that’s what you saw out of Tennessee.
“So systematically I’ve really built things for that kind of offense and right now the adjustments come for the offenses with more tight ends and fullbacks and those kinds of things.”
The latter is what he is preparing for this week.
The Hawkeyes’ style of play has not changed much, if at all, since Kirk Ferentz became head coach in 1999.
They usually line up under center, and they are a run-first outfit that leans heavily on the outside zone scheme more popular in the NFL.
In some ways, the style is coming back around.
Many Big Ten teams, including Ohio State and Michigan, went the spread route in the past 15 years, but they are reintroducing more under-center and multiple-tight end looks to their attacks in recent seasons.
That’s a challenge for the 57-year-old Knowles, who grew up in the heyday of the I-formation but built his 4-2-5 defense to stop the spread offenses that came to be ubiquitous during his time as defensive coordinator at Duke from 2010-17.
“We’ve seen a little bit of it already this year, but it’s different than the way that we’re trained,” Knowles said. “And you know I always talk about going back to your training.
“We’re going to continue to see more of it, so I think it is a matter of understanding how these type of offenses operate and being able to react and fit. And even though it’s not zone read, and all those things that you kind of start out training these days. It is something that, obviously, you see more of in the Big Ten, and our guys need to understand that.”
6 goals for Ohio State football in the second half of the regular season https://t.co/m48IeSUrW9
— Marcus Hartman (@marcushartman) October 19, 2022
>>Offensive lineman Ian Moore became Ohio State’s second verbal commitment for 2024 when he announced his decision Thursday morning.
A four-star recruit from New Palestine, Ind., Moore (6-foot-5, 295 pounds) is the No. 1 prospect in his home state and ranked 91st in 247Sports Composite national rankings.
His other offers reportedly include Iowa, Wisconsin, Boston College and Nebraska, but his decision marks a continuation of an interesting trend.
Ohio State has signed 16 players from Indiana since 2001 after bringing in zero scholarship players from the Hoosier State in the previous decade.
Eleven of those players signed on since Urban Meyer became head coach in 2012, including five (Craig Young, Dawand Jones, Josh Fryar, Zen Michalski and Caden Curry) since 2019 when Ryan Day replaced Meyer.
Dylan Raiola, a five-star quarterback and No. 1 prospect in the country, is Ohio State’s other verbal for 2024.
Securing Moore’s pledge early figures to be important for first-year offensive line coach Justin Frye, an Indiana native who is looking to build future depth.
The 2023 class, which can signing binding letters of intent in December, includes three four-star offensive line prospects from Ohio: Joshua Padilla of Wayne, Austin Siereveld of Lakota East and Luke Montgomery of Findlay. Frye also snagged a commitment from three-star prospect Miles Walker of Greenwich, Conn., in July.
SATURDAY’S GAME
Iowa at Ohio State, Noon, Fox, 1410
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