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Ohio State football: Does Lane Kiffin have a wrinkle to bother Buckeyes?
By Jim Tomlin
Published:
Ohio State’s opener against Florida Atlantic features Owls coach and frequent lightning rod Lane Kiffin.
In his first season on the Boca Raton campus, Kiffin led FAU to an 11-3 season, the best in the program’s brief history, in 2017. The Owls won the Conference USA championship, defeated Akron in the Boca Raton Bowl and received 32 votes in the final Associated Press poll, fifth among teams in the “also receiving votes” category.
Last season FAU crashed back down with a 5-7 record.
Kiffin has not faced Ohio State as a head coach but he is not a complete stranger to Buckeyes fans. He was the offensive coordinator at Alabama in 2014 when the Buckeyes defeated the Crimson Tide 42-35 in the Sugar Bowl on their way to the national championship.
Both that game and Kiffin’s other college football coaching stops might give a few hints for Ohio State Buckeyes football fans to look for when the Owls visit Ohio Stadium on Saturday for a noon ET kickoff.
Throwing to tight end
Of course, one thing that should be obvious is that FAU will not bring Alabama-level talent to The Horseshoe — nor the talent level at his previous college head coaching stops at Tennessee and USC.
But one angle that could trouble the Buckeyes is Kiffin’s propensity to use tight ends in the passing game.
Kiffin and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis Jr. will have a capable tight end in senior Harrison Bryant. A first-team preseason all-Conference USA selection, according to Athlon’s, Bryant caught 45 passes for 662 yards and four touchdowns in 2018.
At the very least, OSU will want to cover Bryant better than North Texas did last season:
https://youtu.be/JycDOgmV3us?t=158
Bryant went on to collect six receptions for a career-high 138 yards in that game.
Considering how good O.J. Howard turned out to be, it’s a little surprising that Howard, then a sophomore, only had two catches for 14 yards, both on the final drive as Alabama tried to tie the score, in the 2015 Sugar Bowl. Backup tight end Brian Vogler caught two passes for 9 yards.
It’s very likely that Bryant will be more involved in the passing game on Saturday than the tight ends were for Alabama on New Year’s Day 2015 in New Orleans. This is just the type of thing that new Buckeyes defensive co-coordinator Greg Mattison will look to prevent with the new, linebacker/safety hybrid “bullet” position, which makes its debut against FAU.
Hurry up
Lane Kiffin enjoys playing a hurry-up style on offense. FAU averaged 77.5 plays per game in 2018, 17th in the nation. That was even faster than the 2017 Owls team which won 11 games including their final 10.
The other offensive numbers dropped from 2017 to 2018. FAU averaged 40.6 points and 498.4 yards per game in 2017, both in the top 10 nationally. Last year the Owls were still 14th in total yards (478.8 per game) but fell to a 31.1-point average, a 9.5-point drop.
His three full seasons as USC head coach showed a pattern of declining tempo, as the Trojans averaged 72.6 plays in 2010 (ranked 36th), 70.6 in 2011 (71st) and 67.5 in 2012 (106th).
However, one could argue that USC’s severe scholarship reductions in the wake of the Pete Carroll era were at least partly to blame for this decline.
Presnap motion
This favorite part of Kiffin’s schemes is along the same lines as Maryland used last season in its near-upset of OSU.
As Buckeyes fans might recall, the Terrapins picked up 340 of their 546 total yards on the ground in a game where OSU escaped with a 52-51 overtime victory.
Buckeyes fans are unlikely to endure that kind of scare against Florida Atlantic on Saturday. But they should not be surprised to see echoes of ideas which have worked against OSU in the past, particularly against the Buckeyes defense.
Longtime newspaper veteran Jim Tomlin is a writer and editor for saturdaytradition.com and saturdaydownsouth.com.