Written by Ryan McGee at ESPN.com
Headed into the 2017 college football season, the Ohio State Buckeyes promised us that they were going to expand their offensive menu. For the first few hours of the new season, they gave us the familiar taste of melba toast. Then, just as social media, the national media and even the fans who’d followed them into the grandstands of enemy territory all began to turn on the team, they turned up the heat. A much-needed douse of hot sauce that quickly brought the nation back around to the second-ranked Buckeyes as a national title contender.
“We haven’t thrown it deep around here in a minute,” head coach Urban Meyer said at night’s end, staring at a stat sheet from the 49-21 win over Indiana. “And we looked like we hadn’t in a while, didn’t we?”
Meyer, he of the once-cutting-edge spread option, spent spring and August practice grinning and smiling and talking about “reviving the deep ball” and swearing that his bland Big Ten meatloaf would this season come with a side — not a full serving, a side, let’s not go crazy here — of some Big 12-ish willingness to throw the football downfield.
After all, he’d hired a new offensive coordinator, discarded former Indiana head coach Kevin Wilson, a man who’d made his name in the world of Big 12 scoreboard-tilting madness, working as offensive coordinator at Oklahoma in the 50-points-per-game Sam Bradford era. During his time at the wheel in Bloomington, his offenses had posted the second most points per game of any Big Ten team versus Meyer’s Ohio State juggernaut. And it just so happened that Wilson would be making his Ohio State debut calling plays against the team that fired him, packed with defensive coaches he’d hired and defensive players he’d recruited.
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