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    • Urban Meyer suggests playing OSU QB Will Howard 15-20 times per game
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    Urban Meyer suggests playing OSU QB Will Howard 15-20 times per game

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    Ohio State football’s offense struggled to find its groove last weekend against Nebraska.

    Now that the No. 4 Buckeyes (6-1, 3-1 Big Ten) will face No. 3 Penn State (7-0, 4-0) in possibly the biggest game of the regular season for both teams, coach Ryan Day and quarterback Will Howard will be tasked with getting the offense back on track.

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    Former Ohio State coach Urban Meyer – for whom Day was an assistant – shared advice on his “Triple Option” podcast on fixing the Buckeye offense for the big game against the Nittany Lions. His biggest piece of advice is to run Howard more.

    “First and foremost, simplify the run game,” Meyer said. “You go zone right, zone left, power right, power left. And that’s it. And then I would also gap scheme right, gap scheme left and that’s it. But I would run the quarterback 15-20 because the The ultimate equalizer is that guy. You get a hat that way when he runs the ball. So straight to him and then also on every play, a repetition.

    “So that’s the run game. Zone right, zone left, gap right, gap left and get the quarterback involved.”

    Howard ran eight times for 14 yards with a long of 10 yards. The Buckeyes struggled to run the ball as a team, gaining 74 rush yards with pocket-adjusted rushing. They averaged just 2.1 yards per carry for the game. Quinshon Judkins had 10 rushes for 29 yards, while TreVeyon Henderson added 10 carries for 25 yards.

    Howard completed 13 of 16 passes for 221 yards, three touchdowns and one interception. But as the final score shows, the Buckeyes couldn’t manage enough in both parts of the game to score more points and dispatch a Nebraska team in a 56-7 loss to Indiana.

    Part of the problem was the blocking of the offensive line. According to Pro Football Focus, the Cornhuskers sacked Howard twice for 10 yards, but also had six quarterback pressures. Meyer suggested a few adjustments.

    “(In) the passing game, the most dangerous place to be is in that pocket,” Meyer said. “You saw that last week Will Howard got tattooed a few times. A few times he could barely get his back foot on the ground at the five-step mark, and the people were all sitting on his lap. So you go to get him out… The first is the easiest; that’s a sprint – no tension on the O-line. You stress the tailback or the tight end to block the edge, and the quarterback gets in very well at the edge, by the way in. They drove on fourth-and-1 in a key moment of the game.

    “The second is a break that consists of the naked passing and the play. So take it out of that pocket. And that’s how you take stressors off the O-line.”

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