|
It wasn’t a pretty sight in University of Phoenix Stadium, and it won’t enable Bevo’s boys to claim a share of the AP national championship, but Monday’s 24-21 Fiesta Bowl victory will at least enable “The Eyes of Texas” to view this season in a favorable light. That’s just one of many complicated realities to emerge from a game packed with paradoxes, ironies, and sloppy slip-ups too numerous to count. If it’s football analysis you want, this is the kind of cluttered contest that requires a lot of patience… and a willingness to listen to numerous arguments before reaching finite conclusions.
Let’s sit down at the big-boy table to discuss a game that alternately confounded and soared, pleasing and perplexing a raucous crowd in suburban Phoenix while leaving a national TV audience in a state of breathless amazement.
The first tension point provided by the aftermath of this Fiesta fistfight, won by the Longhorns with just 16 seconds left on a connection between McCoy and dominant UT receiver Quan Cosby (14 catches, 171 yards, 2 touchdowns), is that a win should be good enough for the Texas football family. Yes, it’s true that American culture looks down on any team that fails to win a championship, but in the case of Mack Brown’s ballclub, that unfair attitude should be shelved. The fact that Texas left loads of points on the field should not detract from an even more supreme statistic: The Longhorns had scored three more points than the Buckeyes did when the fourth-quarter time clock hit triple-zero. Sure, some folks inclined to slight the Big 12 Conference will exult in the less-than-emphatic nature of the Texas win, which clearly puts the Horns behind Utah in the race for a potential national title outside the BCS system. But in a sport whose lack of a playoff often clouds season-ending rankings, the only thing a team can control is its ability to post wins. Style points are fickle; notches in the “W” column endure forever. Plainly put, Texas is 12-1 and not 11-2, blessed with the third BCS bowl victory of the Mack Brown era. Those are accomplishments that should bring about rejoicing, not sulking, in and around Austin and all other places that fly burnt orange flags.
The second difficult argument one has to confront in the aftermath of this game concerns the Buckeyes’ own standing, not to mention the reputation of the Big Ten Conference. Much like Texas’s inability to catapult itself past Utah, a lot of college football vultures will relish yet another loss for the Big Ten in a BCS battle. Even more specifically, fickle fans will be inclined to tut-tut Jim Tressel’s latest loss in the January spotlight. There’s just one problem with these arguments, shrouded in stereotypes and long-existing claims laden with excessive prejudice: They don’t hold up.
Tonight’s loss can’t be hung on the Big Ten… not, at any rate, as an indicator of grave deficiencies in commissioner Jim Delany’s league. Ohio State wasn’t outclassed in terms of speed during this duel in the desert. The Buckeyes warred with Texas on even terms in the trenches. The aspect of this game that truly staggered Ohio State was the Longhorns’ hurry-up offense in the second half. A clever change-up from Mack Brown and offensive coordinator Greg Davis—who have grown so profoundly as coaches over the course of this decade—made a difference in this contest, and Tressel’s troops could only do so much to stem the tide in a third quarter that spiraled out of control. As soon as the Bucks regained momentum in the fourth stanza, however, their problems not-so-mysteriously began to lose their severity.
In fact, when Ohio State lost star running back Chris “Beanie” Wells midway through the second half of this baffling ballgame, the Buckeyes actually made significant improvements in their offense. Tressel responded well to the events taking place on his own sideline; Colt McCoy isn’t quite so controllable. Mister Sweater Vest might have to endure a long plane flight to Columbus after this stomach-punch setback, but the lack of a victory shouldn’t lead observers to paint OSU’s exceptional leader with a brush of negativity.
The next really big debate caused by this collision relates to the quality of the game itself. The rousing and memorable ending certainly ranks among the most fantastic finishes of the entire BCS bowl era, but it needs to be said that the first 50 minutes of action in the Valley of the Sun left a lot to be desired. Several counter-intuitive truths have to be accounted for when examining Ohio State-Texas in a football laboratory.
Consider this head-scratcher, for starters: Before McCoy maxed out on the game’s final drive to lead his Longhorns to the winner’s circle, the Texas quarterback—armed with the best brain in all of college football—made shockingly poor decisions that jeopardized his team’s chances of leaving Arizona with a Fiesta Bowl trophy. McCoy took a number of bad sacks—on plays where he easily could have thrown the ball out of bounds—to blunt at least four separate drives, three of them in OSU territory and one in the red zone. McCoy also tossed a horrible interception at the end of the first half to quite literally throw away three points. For a smart player who displayed typical brilliance for most of this contest, often in the face of pressure from the Buckeyes’ pass rush, McCoy’s handful of major mistakes proved to be that much more unfathomable.
Another piece of pigskin puzzlement rested on the shoulders—or more precisely, the legs--of McCoy’s opposite number, Ohio State signal caller Terrelle Pryor. Despite being rotated in and out of the lineup, in tandem with senior quarterback Todd Boeckman, Pryor somehow felt it unimportant to spill his guts on each and every play. On multiple occasions during this game, Pryor—the fastest man on the field not named Beanie Wells—ran out of bounds well before he needed to, the height of irony (and agony) for the Scarlet and Gray.
The freshman with jaw-dropping athleticism would make several Longhorn pass rushers look absolutely silly, only to then break into the Texas secondary and bail out on a play, sacrificing 15 yards out of a misguided sense of cautiousness. Perhaps he wanted to pace himself, and perhaps he wanted to save his body from hellacious hits. All the same, Pryor prematurely ended plays that could have prolonged a number of Buckeye drives, particularly in a first half dominated by OSU. Had Pryor been able to finish strong on all of his runs, and not just the plays he dominated on the Buckeyes’ first fourth-quarter touchdown drive, it’s fair to say that Ohio State would have scored more than 21 points. Yes, Texas also wasted numerous scoring opportunities, but Pryor could have done so much more to bump up the Buckeye side of the scoreboard. It’s worth noting that McCoy, not Pryor, proved to be more consistent at finishing his runs, especially on the two touchdown drives Texas used to take a 17-6 lead in the third quarter.
Besides the stupidity of a smart player (McCoy), and the underused legs of a fast player (Pryor), there were other brain-benders to be found in the home of the Arizona Cardinals. Consider the fact that one of Ohio State’s more crucial penalties—a false start on a third-and-2 inside the Texas 10 in the second quarter—immediately followed a Buckeye timeout. Also take note of the breakdowns that occurred in the Longhorns’ secondary when Wells left the game and made Ohio State more limited and pass-based on offense. A pass interference call on Texas defensive back Deon Beasley reflected this trend.
With OSU trailing 17-9 midway through the fourth quarter, and facing a third-and-12 at the UT 25, Pryor—under heavy pressure from Texas’ sensational defensive front—threw a ball low and short. The throw represented a concession, a tip-of-the-cap statement a quarterback makes when he expresses a willingness to settle for a field goal. Beasley, however, held Buckeye receiver Brian Robiskie by the shoulder pads. The collapse in the cranial region of the Longhorn cornerback paved the way for the first OSU touchdown, which created a two-point game (17-15) and made the nervous Longhorns sweat.
The first 50 minutes of play, in addition to everything that’s already been said, also featured a bad roughing-the-passer penalty on Ohio State at the end of the first half; an intentional grounding penalty on McCoy that lost nearly 20 yards and stopped a Texas drive cold; deficient Longhorn rugby punts that, in pooch-punt situations, bounced into the end zone; and, last but not least, a larger game flow in which both teams—Ohio State in the first half, Texas early in the fourth quarter—established substantial control of the proceedings, only to let go of the jugular in fairly short order. Tonight’s tussle was, to quote NFL Films’ John Facenda-voiced summation of Super Bowl XII, “fiercely fought but frightfully flawed.” The two teams’ late scoring drives produced a sensational closing act to this desert drama, climaxing with Colt McCoy’s Texas-sized heart and Quan Cosby’s conquering quickness, but the first 50 minutes of the 2009 Fiesta Bowl will prevent this game from attaining anything close to classic status.
Ohio State fans might emphasize the extent to which the Buckeyes failed to maximize their first-half superiority, and produce a better result. Texas partisans could find it easy to tout the Longhorns’ second-half dominance, which brought about an 11-point lead and put an exhausted OSU defense on the ropes. Ohio State critics will harp on another Big Ten loss, plus another Jim Tressel trail of tears, while those who dislike the Longhorns will take Texas to task for not winning this game more emphatically.
One can only look back on these Fiesta fireworks and say that two big-name programs, for all their wayward moments on the gridiron, put forth a pair of honest efforts that should add to, and not detract from, their respective reputations. This was not an artful game graced with precision or polish, but in the world of collegiate athletics, an exciting 60 minutes contested with pronounced passion should count as a pure plus for Ohio State and Texas. The Buckeyes competed on relatively even terms against a decorated opponent. The Longhorns, who had every chance to pout in Glendale because of their BCS title game snub, instead treated this game with the seriousness it deserved. Monday’s many mistakes deserved criticism—criticism that was needed in order to prevent this game from being deemed as the classic it most certainly wasn’t. Paradoxically, however, the stacks of shortcomings only made the grit and gallantry of these two proud teams—and the clamorous climax they fashioned—that much more pleasing to behold.
Ohio State proved to be a winner of the soul, a team that got past its big-game demons and chased away the haunting memories of bowl blowouts from the past. Texas, while not able to usurp the Utes of Utah, nevertheless claimed a Fiesta Bowl triumph that should assuage hard feelings in Austin for one very simple reason: Victory—though so attainable for the Longhorns, and perhaps even likely, late in the third quarter—was anything but certain when Colt McCoy stood under center on a fourth-and-3 from the OSU 43 with just under one minute left in regulation time.
The ability of McCoy to convert a first down, and then fire a touchdown pass two plays later, with just 16 ticks left on the clock, should enable a Big 12 South brouhaha and a king-sized BCS controversy to finally fade into the background. Winning—especially against Ohio State, Jim Tressel, and a Buckeye defense that never stopped bringing the heat—should give Longhorns of all ages reason to savor a significant season, a special quarterback, and a result that sure beats the heck out of the alternative: the alternative: the frustrated feeling being experienced by the gallant but gutted kids from Ohio State.
|
