Instant Observations: Ohio State Shuts Out Western Michigan

Ohio State left no doubt on Saturday night, scoring touchdowns on its first three possessions and dominating Western Michigan under the lights to move to 2-0 on the season.

Instant Observations makes its return to BuckeyeHuddle.com after the Buckeyes put together a complete performance against and undermanned opponent.

1. We aren’t going to be *sure* about this team until at least the October tilts with Iowa and Oregon, but tonight’s performance was exactly what you want to see from a team billed as one of the most talented rosters in college football over the past several years.

The Buckeyes came out early to send a message that while the WMU athletic department was going to get paid for this little gathering, they weren’t going to enjoy it.

This didn’t look like a team getting fat and happy about its off-season press clippings, but a team that is out to prove a point and that’s a positive thing. This Western Michigan team had Wisconsin on the ropes in the fourth quarter last week.

2. I tweeted several days ago that all of the Ohio State receiving records were on notice after Jeremiah Smith’s two-touchdown debut. Barring injury or the NFL creating the “Jeremiah Smith Rule” and allowing him to enter the draft before his junior season, he’s going to own the record books in Columbus.

I have always been the guy who pumps the brakes on hyping five-star freshmen. Too often, people expect too much from these guys right out of the gate. But I’ve thrown that out the window with Smith over the past two years and yet I don’t feel like I’ve ever been able to hype him quite enough. He’s that special. No matter how high you set the bar, he jumps over it.

3. I want to start here by saying that I don’t even think what Denzel Burke did was targeting. But this was once again a glaring example of how ridiculous the rules on targeting are in college football.

In hockey, if you accidentally clip someone in the chin with your stick, you get a two-minute penalty. If you are careless with your stick and you cut someone’s chin, you get a four-minute penalty. If you swing your stick like a baseball bat across someone’s forehead, you get a five-minute major, an ejection, and a fine and suspension.

The idea that college football hasn’t adopted some type of hockey system or NBA flagrant foul system is absurd. For Burke’s hit to be put in the same category as the lunatic from Boston College last year, is a joke. There needs to be levels to these hits where not every single one is an ejection.

4. One thing that I’ve been a little critical of over the years with this particular Ohio State staff is that I often felt the rotations were either too short or too slow to happen during the course of games. Now it’s only Western Michigan, and maybe things will do a 180 in Big Ten play, but the Buckeyes were playing a lot of guys very early in the game along the defensive line and at linebacker.

Larry Johnson is rolling a ton of guys upfront after being a little stingy for my liking last year on the rotation. Seeing guys like Kayden McDonald, Kenyatta Jackson, Caden Curry, Tywone Malone, and Eddrick Houston getting real reps in the first quarter and first half is encouraging and I hope that continues even as the games become bigger. I think this will continue, the coaches really like the depth they have.

5. My game ball goes to Quinshon Judkins. I said it when he was at Ole Miss, he’s the best running back in college football and he certainly looked like it tonight. His explosiveness and ability to blow through arm tackles and drive forward through contact is a special combination. This team has two of the very best running backs in college football and it will be interesting to watch them one-up each other throughout the season.

6. We’ve talked about the Tim Walton turnaround in the secondary. How about the James Laurinaitis turnaround at linebacker? It wasn’t all that long ago that Cade Stover was playing linebacker in a Rose Bowl. Now the Buckeyes are at least five deep at the position, including a budding second-year star in Arvell Reese.

7. The O-Line has been in the crosshairs of Buckeye Nation for a while now, and perhaps deservedly so, but this was a much better performance from top-to-bottom tonight. Sure, we should reserve serious judgement until this unit moves people off the line of scrimmage against teams like Iowa, Oregon, and a certain school that got crushed by Texas today, but they dominated upfront like they should have tonight. The second starts for Austin Siereveld and Tegra Tshabola were much better and they’ll have Donovan Jackson back for the Marshall game which will only improve things.

8. Shutouts are difficult, no matter the opponent. It requires 60 minutes of focus, usually including your second and third teamers. The last time Ohio State had a shutout? Exactly five years ago against Luke Fickell’s Cincinnati Bearcats.

9. Chip Kelly is going to bring a lot to this offense, but I saw two things tonight that I think will be big for this team. First and foremost, I think Kelly’s diverse run schemes will see Ohio State’s touchdown percentage in the red zone be higher than what we’ve seen in recent years. But I also like how he’s using Howard on some of these RPO-type rollouts, which have long been a staple in his offenses. They were successful with them tonight in picking up yards, but eventually they are going to suck defenses in to stop Howard and they are going to get a few easy touchdowns slipping a receiver behind them.

10. Judkins and Tre Henderson are going to get all of the hype, and rightfully so, but I am fully confident that James Peoples can help this team, right now. Peoples has looked tremendous so far in the second halves of games and in other years recently he would be either a starter or the second guy in the game. It’s not a dynamic duo, it’s a legitimate three-headed monster.