Grading the Bucks -- Week 11: Maryland

Don't let the rosy talk fool you Buckeye fans.  This week was really, REALLY bad for Ohio State.  Let's look at this drubbing and focus on what we can control at this point.

Offense: A
MVP: Curtis Samuel/J.T. Barrett
This went about as expected.  J.T. was on fire and Curtis scored on 1/3 of his touches.  We simply didn't need to exert ourselves to dominate this team.  Pretty much every unit was clicking.  J.T. was hitting the underneath routes well as well as a few downfield strikes.  Weber and Samuel ran with ease and the O-line had no issues.  Hard to critique another 62-3 win when it could have been so much worse.  The younguns even looked pretty good when they got it which is nice for the future although there's a lot of youth in the starting lineup that won't be relinquishing that position soon.  McCall is showing that while Weber and Samuel have been fantastic all year, he deserves some looks as well with the starting unit.  The RB position is immensely deep.

Defense: A
MVP: All
Who to single out? It was hard to pay attention to the game after 10 minutes because the disparity in talent and execution was so great that there was nothing more to gain from breaking the tape down.  The line was all over the Maryland QB du jour and the secondary was ball-hawking like crazy.  I've gushed about this unit enough in the past few weeks so no need to go deeper.  There was little to nothing to be concerned about here.

Special Teams: A
No missed kicks; good coverage; good returns and most importantly NO FUMBLES!!  Johnston actually need to punt this week (which was odd) but the unit was fine.

Coaches: A
Remember when I said Victor would catch a TD and J.T. would get back to being a weapon in the running game? Looks like the coaches are avid readers.  I loved the playcalling this week because they tried (and succeeded) with pretty much everything.  The playbook was open and everything was clicking.  The gameplan to stop Maryland was obviously sound and this team looked like they were on a mission.

Overall: A
We beat Maryland...yay.  Keep the train rolling and root for a Rutgers miracle!