More of this …. Jeremiah Smith touchdowns and plenty more to go around the offense are the goal of Arthur Smith’s schemes in his first season as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
“Brilliant in the basics?” “Simplifying stuff”? Alliteration abounds when it comes to reasons for optimism for Ohio State’s offense.
Columbus, OH — At the height of talking season, Isaiah West dropped an alternative explanation for what could work for Arthur Smith’s offense at Ohio State.
“Arthur Smith has a structured plan for the offense,” West, a sophomore tailback for the Buckeyes, said last week. “We don’t have a thousand different plays. We have a few that we’re really good at. Arthur Smith is real big on being brilliant in the basics. That’s what he’s really good about.”
“Talking season,” if you’re not aware, is the preseason practice portion of the football calendar.
This time arrives with much fanfare in late July as media days crank up across the country, culminating with the SEC and Big Ten at the end of the month. Those give way to preseason camps starting in early August.
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While they provide lots of discussion fodder — who worked out well in the offseason? Who is already in the doghouse? Where is the every highly rated recruit on the depth chart? Why isn’t every highly rated recruit starting yet? And so on — there are certainly diminishing returns.
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By the last week of August, most fans (let alone reporters) start to run out of patience and interest in what the coaches and players of their favorite (or least favorite) teams are saying.
The time for the games — and there will be a few sprinkled across the country this Saturday before everyone kicks off Labor Day weekend — can’t come soon enough by now, but questions remain whether they need to be asked or not.
With the way last season ended — with two thuds against Indiana and Miami (Fla.), the offense wasting superb efforts of a supremely talented defense — the questions do need to be asked about the Ohio State offense.
They were obviously glaring or head coach Ryan Day wouldn’t have reached back into the NFL ranks to replace Brian Hartline, the 2025 first-time play caller who left his alma mater to become the head coach at South Florida in December. One might think hiring a former NFL head coach and offensive coordinator might mean more complicated plans for a college offense, but apparently that is not the case.
Quite the contrary, according to the players.
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“Yeah, he’s real big on just simplifying stuff,” West said before offering an example.
“The way that we read wide zone, the way that we read tight zone — he’s real big on just making everything simple, making sure that we just get it down.”
“Wide zone” and “tight zone” are the staples of one of the two dominant styles of rushing attacks at the upper level of football: Zone and gap.
Sophomore running back Isaiah West says Arthur Smith is “real big on just simplifying stuff.”
While zone runs are marked by the offensive linemen blocking areas and running backs trying to find a crease, gap blocking is based around down blocks with one or more pulling linemen (like the counter trey play the Washington Redskins once made famous) coming to blast open a hole.
Last year Ohio State had plenty of zone runs, but the base was supposed to be gap — or at least that’s how it looked.
The Buckeyes did enough different things under Hartline that it was sometimes hard to tell what qualified as the bread and butter — if anything that did qualify — and they were not necessarily good at any of them.
Smith’s plan seems to be not to reinvent the wheel but to make sure it just spins more smoothly and efficiently.
Another way to look at it: A pitcher having five pitches seems cool on the scouting report, but if he can’t command more than one or two, it doesn’t do that much for him when someone actually steps into the batter’s box.
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That is especially true if he has a different arm slot or throwing motion for each pitch.
On the other hand, simply having an effective fastball/changeup or fastball/curveball combination can be devastating if the batter can’t tell which is coming until long after the ball is released.
Tight end Bennett Christian suggested that type of thing is working in Ohio State’s favor this preseason. He might be biased, but he was relaying the testimony of middle linebacker Payton Pierce.
New offensive coordinator Arthur Smith believes every formation can feed into any kind of play.
Stepping into the starting lineup for the first time, Pierce has lots to keep track of on his side of the ball, but it sounds like Smith has not made it easy for him to figure out what is going on with the offense from snap to snap, either.
“I was talking to Payton about it,” Christian said. “I was like, ‘Hey man, what do you see in the middle?’ And he said, ‘It’s just confusing. It’s like, man, I don’t know how defenses are gonna stop it,’ is what he said. So it’s really exciting to know that one of our middle linebackers sees it and says that.”
If the change-up looks the same coming out of the hand as the fastball, gearing up for the fastball doesn’t do much good.
“I think there’s just plays off plays off plays. We’ll set you up one way and then come back the other way,” Christian said. “It looks the same, but it’s a different play.”
Smith himself wasn’t about to provide much detail, but that wasn’t too surprising given his time in the NFL, where saying lots without saying anything is a time-honored tradition.
“We can get in and do anything — pistol, shotgun, under center,” Smith said. “We’ll let our opponents figure that stuff out.”
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He went on to suggest even if the Buckeyes were in the shotgun fewer times during practice, that could have an alternate explanation.
“Sometimes it’s just a practice, just to get their fundamentals right because so many people, they grew up just playing in the gun,” Smith said.
“So some of it’s practice. It may not be the schematics.”
Unless it is, of course, but then getting answers that aren’t really answers is another staple of talking season.
Day took his turn Monday.
“It’s been great,” Day said of Smith’s impact so far. “He brings a great background of offensive football to the table where he’s been able to morph a lot of the things that we’ve done with some things he’s done in the past.
“And so camp’s been great that way. It really has. Now, what does that mean? We’ve got to go put on the field.
“Everybody feels like they’re good right now. Everybody’s practicing against each other. There’s no wins and losses right now, so we have to recognize that, but I know what I know, and I know what I’ve seen, and I’m excited to see this thing shake out here in the next couple weeks and get on the field.”
Isn’t everyone?
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