In CJ's defense, Stroud has been playing with an injured shoulder. I could see it against Tulsa and, to me, I know he's struggled a little bit but he's a true Freshman, he's been playing injured and I think our fans need to get off his back a bit, especially since he's gutted through being injured.
So, watching the Akron game, was the first time since the Clemson game last year, that I've seen our D play with some attitude. I think the problem has been some bad schemes, players out of position, missed tackles, over pursuits but the key (to me) has been that ALL of this has been magnified by some great order of magnitude because of a lack of confidence. I think one bad play leads to another and another, etc. and you could see that entire culmination of things come together in Akron's scoring drive in the first quarter.
My first thought was "well crap, here we go again" but that all changed (in my mind) on Akron's 3rd and 4th possessions. Akron had 4 plays, 21 yards on the first drive but scored in 9 plays and 55 yards on their 2nd drive. On their 3rd possession, they got sacked, our guys gave up 10 yards, had a stupid penalty (to give Akron a 1st), had a sack, gave +5 yards but then forced a punt. The 4th possession was a 3 and out and somewhere between the 3rd and 4th possessions, they started playing aggressively and seemed to really gel to me, I hope they got over the hump in this game, almost like a mental block.
Conversely, our Buckeyes offense scored on their 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th possessions plus our Buckeyes D seemed to build off those scores (again, in my humble opinion) and that momentum seemed to build up throughout the game.
It was only one game, Rutgers is damn good (sure gave M-word ALL they could handle last week) and I'm cautiously optimistic our guys can build off that impressive win for next week, fingers crossed!
GO BUCKS!!!