But, Timmy, how confident are you in Luke Fahey and his abilities and what you think he can do within this offense?

Well, yeah, in my fear, you know, do research on guys before they come to Ohio State.

I mean, the guy was a tremendous high school quarterback at Mission Viejo in California.

The guy can play, man.

Just as Kurt Cignetti would put it, Google him.

You'll see what I'm talking about.

7,000 yards passing in Mission VAO, big-time school football out in California, rivals anything else in the country.

So, Tim, in your Ohio State Buckeye history lore encyclopedias, what situation is this most like? Is this like JT Barrett taking over for Braxton? Is this like Cardell taking over? Or is this like McCord replacing CJ Stroud? What situation from the past can we kind of lean into with the player that Fahey is replacing the player that Julian was?

Yeah, I'm talking

to you.

I thought you said Rhino up there.

I was just marveling at the fact I should have trademarked hypotheticals long ago when I had this shot.

But the bottom line is, I think you just expect him to keep on keeping on.

I mean, that's simplistic.

Look, Luke Fahey, for example, can play quarterback.

In all of your time, with all of the quarterback coaching that's going on, with all the seven-on-seven, with all the evaluation, how are we getting this stuff so wrong?

What did you, what do you make of the impact of no Austin Cereveldt, how that impacts the game?

Well, uh, what helps Ohio State is he wasn't there last week either.

So, well, you know, uh, a sudden illness.

It's not, uh, the way I understand it's, you know, it's not threatening whatever w- whatever.

But he had a sudden illness that, uh, suddenly ki- took, took him out of the game.

I guess I used sudden there twice.

Uh, but it was a blessing for Ohio State that it was able to run that revamped, uh, that revamped offensive line lineup, uh, out there.

But when you look at this front for Ohio State and how they need to disrupt the timing of what is, I think, a solid passing attack right now led by two good wide receivers, how are you feeling about that unit coming into this one?

Right

...

it wa- yeah, you had a ample chances to take care of Indiana, uh, and then you let them, you l- you let them stay in the game, and then you let them off the hook, uh, pardon Denny Green, uh, impression there.

And you miss a chip shot field goal.

It would've sent it to overtime.

I mean, right on down the line, you know, there are all kinds of reasons why they lost those games.

You're right.

Mm-hmm.

Let's stay on offense, Tim May, and get your thoughts on kinda the pecking order, the distribution of touches when it comes to the running backs right now with Jackson and Jackson and some of the other guys filling in the gaps every now and then.

Yeah.

Well, Jacoby Jackson got the, you know, got the, got the first nod last week.

Was not a surprise.

He's been, uh, he's, he's been quietly quite productive.

Uh, and he's one of those running backs, Matty Ice, I used to...

Carlos Snow is a guy that comes to mind who was like this, uh, Keith Byers, uh, e- even Eddie George.

Do you, you, you do?

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I've, I've been telling, uh, friends, even talked about it on my podcast about I think Brock Boyd is due for a touchdown, 'cause he's doing pretty much everything else for you at wide receiver.

And lo and behold, it looks like the opportunities are going to be, uh, could be, uh, much more plentiful for him tomorrow at the wide receiver corps with McEwen and, uh, and Brandon Innis, uh, possibly sidelined.

So it'll, it's, uh, gonna be an interesting game to watch all the way around.

But you're right.

But I mean, you don't, uh, you know, you know me, you've known me for a long time, I don't like to talk about games as, as glorified scrimmages-

Yeah.

Nebraska had to be kind of awakened from its doldrums, but when it awoke, awoke, it saw, "Wait a minute, we're better than these guys," and went out and crushed them.

... are you looking at this game any differently?

I'm not looking at it any differently anyway.

Um, when you look at that, that serendipitous drive they put together at the end of the game, the 91-yard drive, they had 91 yards of offense or something like that going into the fourth quarter, if you follow my drift.

Uh, but, you know, the... really, the unsportsmanlike conduct late hit Call really kept that thing going, and then that circus catch by the tight end who tips it to himself.

And then of all things, a Michigan player causes the clock to be stopped with two seconds left because of an injury.

Dude, you're not gonna see that for the rest of the year.

[laughs] Whatever game you're watching, you may see, be, see something just as bizarre.

When you look at that unit right now, hit us with your assessment of the Ohio State defensive line a few games in.

Yeah.

But, uh, but number one, it's kinda tough to get into.

You get there and, uh, it's, you are definitely in a college town, uh, which, uh, you don't really see if you come in from the west, but you can walk across the bridges and, uh, and kill a couple hours, uh, in a quaint little looking college town Iowa City is.

Uh, but then number three, the stadium has always been interesting to me, uh, because it's pretty much straight lines, you know what I mean? As opposed to...

One of the great things was Howard, was it Howard Dwight or Dwight Howard Smith, whoever designed Ohio Stadium, put a curve in the grandstands, if you follow me.

Yep.

And taking care of your business, then gash plays can happen.

And we saw that several times, uh, against Illinois.

we've watched the last few years and his program has a history of really good linebacker play to me when you look at the guys that are playing right now on that side of the ball specifically that linebacking core how you feeling about how they've played so far through a few games

Well, if you remember correctly, I asked Ryan Day, we're going to see – riley pettijohn a little bit more after coming out of that texas game and you definitely did last week i think you feel i think you feel pretty good about the linebacker play from what i'm what i understand yeah there's always you can always uh look at some plays and nitpick why wouldn't that go further up blah blah blah but uh they've got uh four linebackers that i think can play a lot of places and i think you know especially with riley pettijohn i think we're watching an emerging star uh because this as matt patricia pointed out the other day uh that the more you use him the more you figure out other ways you can use him and his ability he called it a gumby move i think it was austin ward he was finding an austin ward record he called it well question he called it a he has like a way to to uh lean or twist himself and not get hit as he's going to make a play and stuff i mean I'd never heard the term Gumby move before, but now I know it, and we'll use it often.

Do you think that Illinois will come in here and air it out a little bit, try to take some chances, put Colin Dixon in some one-on-one situations, hopefully, and take their big swings?

Yes.

But here's the thing.

You guys have heard me say this a million times.

When you go against a team like Ohio State, Your best, you know, I'm talking about a really good defense, maybe not as good as last year, but we're going to find out, right? But your best chance is to throw it early and often, in my opinion, because that's where you get the fewer defenders if you're throwing it to the right guy, the fewer defenders to make a play.

But, yeah, I would think, and it looks like Devin Sanchez, for example, the other day seemed to be champing at the bit of having another challenge like that.

Is it a yellow flag for you? Is it a red flag for you? Where are you on the short yardage offense, third downs, red zone stuff for this Buckeye team?

With rare sort of exceptions, I talk about this with my good buddy Jeff Snook on my podcast even today.

It's kind of been the bugaboo for Ryan Day offenses for a while.

Eventually, you're going to have to line up and knock somebody off the ball.

Ryan Day will tell you that.

We're running right here and you can't stop it.

But Right now it seems like some people can, and most people can.

Is there anything offensively that gives you a little bit of pause in terms of what they are doing or not doing?

So dig a little deeper on the Legend Bay part of it and what you envision for this offense with him if he can get more touches.

Well, first of all, I want to make it clear, based on what I understand about Ohio State football this year and what you can see with your eyes, the number one running back is Bo Jackson.

So, you know, if you feel like you're in a pinch, I mean, they only ran, what, 25 plays in the second half.

So there weren't a lot of opportunities to mix and match and experiment.

But you're going to stick with Bo Jackson forever.

from the get-go, and then work in Jacoby Jackson and probably Legend Bay.

Isaiah West seems to be a little slow out of the gate.

Tim, in the moment, live, when Texas had the four cracks of the one-yard line with a minute 20, did you want Ohio State, did you think it was strategically better to open, part the Red Sea there and let them score?

were your, if any concerns, what were they coming out of it?

Yeah.

I, uh, coming out of it is, you know, you've got to get the confidence.

You've got to get the confidence going in your run game.

Uh, that was like opponents, uh, That's definitely got to happen.

Number two, I heard you guys talking about chemistry and other people were talking about leadership.

It's funny how when a team wins, all that's good, right? I don't believe in those little bromide things.

This is a different era in college football that we all kind of have to get used to.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, dude, when they played Kentucky a couple weeks after they...

Several weeks after they played Ohio State, they looked worse against them in some respects than they did against Ohio State.

I mean, it was just, I just didn't see what everybody was telling me I was supposed to be seeing when it came to him.

Now, uh, they finished fairly strong.

Obviously, they beat Texas A&M.

Uh, but, uh, you know, the last part of their schedule was not exactly a barn burner kind of schedule.

'Cause, you know, you gotta think, if Ohio State can win that battle, they gotta feel pretty good about this game.

All of that hinting of perhaps making some move with the offensive line, did anything come out of that this week?

I have no idea.

You know, like you, I've got to tune in tomorrow and see what happens.

Here's the thing.

They did put Phil Daniels back into the game, if you remember, last week after some things got fixed, and they ran the ball pretty well at that point.

He just didn't – I tweeted this in the middle of the – before they actually took him out of the game for a while.

He just didn't look right.

Tim, where's your curiosity on defense of what Matt Patricia was able to do last year with all the NFL guys he had and the pre-snap versus post-snap, what they threw at Arch Manning, and how creative and confusing they can do that again with this personnel?

My hunch is that this will be a much more aggressive approach offensively from both coaches, at least I hope so.

Oh, it has to be.

I mean, you have to do that because if you just line up and what they call play conventional warfare – That's not going to cut it in this game.

And you've been around these games as much as I have, Bo.

These games all turn on huge plays, big plays, that you can't script.

You can't forecast they're going to happen.

The only way you can sort of forecast it is you know that both teams have some big play capability dudes who will be either taking handoffs or catching passes.

This Texas attack is a lot more varied than they were a year ago and, quite frankly, much more talented.

What other receivers do you think can step up for this Buckeyes offense if they do try to take away Jeremiah?

Well, they're going to try to take away Jeremiah.

And like I've said on a couple of my podcasts, it's more like Ohio State took away Jeremiah.

Just kind of didn't dare to go there, if that's the right way of putting it.

I mean, Texas ran what I called, the last couple of years, ran what I call a lean-to defense.

Meaning you don't necessarily line up with two guys in front of him, but you have a safety or somebody leaning his direction.

And they did a pretty good job of kind of disguising what they were up to.

How big of a challenge is this for the youngsters, the young but talented Buckeyes defense?

[clapping] [laughs]

And, uh, and then, and then gushing about him, much like Carlos Lachlan gushed about...

I've never heard a coach ever gush about a freshman like Carlos Lachlan gushed about this guy in the spring, and we never got to really see him then, if you follow my drift.

But, man, I was taking a lot of, of people's words for it, like covering a, a golf match.

You wanna see that guy out there shooting birdies, you know? Meanwhile, you're sitting in the, uh, media room waiting for him to come in, right? Um, um, and then [laughs] the first two times he touches the ball I go...

I mean, I gushed about him so much in the pregame show, fellas, on Tail- the Tailgate Show on 97.1, the fans, uh, Saturday.

I felt like I was his PR agent.

Okay.

So kind of break down that unit, what you think they're going to be doing this Saturday and beyond.

Well, the key dudes that have got to step up are those guys in the middle.

In my opinion, I just talked to the Agones Club a while ago and was telling them, in my opinion, it always starts with the middle of that defensive front.

When you lose a guy like Caden McDonald, that guy was a rock, and a rock that can move quickly.

I thought they did a good job in the offseason going after John Russell and James Smith and whatever they can do from the standpoint of they already recruited the former and the others from Alabama.

Yeah, he got kind of slammed as he left Alabama, but that's what always happens everywhere you leave.

But I think he's been a pleasant surprise for them.

Is the other plan here to make sure that they get enough tomorrow but not too much with one guy?

I'll be curious tomorrow if we see some of this depth get to play because I think you're going to need it as the season goes along, if not next week down in Austin.

Yeah, the head coach who ultimately determines that has been talking openly the last several weeks about I'm talking about Ryan Day.

I don't mean to leave people in a mystery there.

Of the last several weeks, of the depth of the wide receiver room, of the playable depth, which he feels better about than he did last year.

And we talked a lot about the guys who left.

Let's face it.

Literally, everybody who left got their shot last year in some form or fashion and really didn't play the way maybe guys like me were talking about in the beginning.

Speaking of saying, what do you think fans, as you've been to all these interviews and listened to everybody talk, and you've talked to Julian, you know his high school coach, all of those things, what do you think will be most noticeable for fans, if not tomorrow, certainly down in Austin in two weeks, in terms of Arthur Smith's impact on on Julian Sane and Julian Sane's impact on Arthur?

And then we had the Big Ten and the SEC, Big Ten first, do something that, to my knowledge, and Tim, you've been covering college athletics longer than me, to my knowledge hadn't been done before, and that is them making their own NCAA rules, kind of.

Well, I don't know if they're making their own NCAA rules because it's against the rules to do what they're doing.

But the point is they've made their – they have clarified that they are definitely on board with the rule that once you've signed an NFL contract, and let's face it, if you get into an NFL training camp, you've signed something.

They don't just let you show up and hang out for a while.

You've signed something that basically says you have moved on to the National Football League or making an attempt to do that.

And whether or not you signed up for the draft, obviously that was the deal.

Once you declared for the draft, you were done.

What does he need to do minimum this year to get in that conversation with Pace and the other guys, Arch and Eddie and those guys that are on that list?

Yeah.

So, uh, and, uh, Friday night lights, and Lufkin was a town when I was growing up about 28, 30,000.

Now it's about 35.

It hadn't grown a lot, but s- football's still huge.

Uh, I, I, I don't know.

I would still, I would probably still put Texas, uh, o- on maybe a level ahead of Ohio in that regard of the people who show up.

But, uh, but no, you're right, dude.

Mm-hmm

Tim, can you tell us about PitchUp and how the concept began?

Yeah, sure.

So a bit like Dave, I'm a Nuffield scholar and I did a scholarship in 2011.

And as part of that, I kind of reassessed how we were farming and using our land.

Realised really that to improve our productivity, our output on land, pursuing this sort of monocrop dogma wasn't really the way that we were going to be able to achieve that.

So I realised we need to improve, increase the amount of diversity on our farm and the amount of diversity of activities going on on the land.

and wasn't really sure how to go about that.

And Tim, you know, what are your thoughts on what Dave said? And what are your thoughts on the comparison between putting different enterprises on your farm versus the diversification that we are so often encouraged to do as founders?

Mm-hmm

...

I mean, and, uh, you expect improvement even from those two guys.

For example, Quay Russo and, uh, and Jayden Smith, which is vital.

I mean, replacing that defensive front, you know, with the, with the exception of Kenyatta Jackson, is huge in this, in, in this season for those guys.

But with that said, I mean, I, I mean, I've, I've still got questions, like, on Dante Moore.

Is he, is he, in fact, a big game quarterback, for example? And with, with Georgia, I, I was just thinking about this as I was driving in.

Yeah

What was your take on Kyle Whittingham's response to questions about the Buckeyes?

Number one, yeah.

I think even he has said, maybe he hasn't, but hatred is a really strong word.

The fact that you decide, let's say like Chris Spillman way back in 1984 decided between Ohio State and Michigan, and then he opts to go to Ohio State.

I mean, he was always leaning that way.

The point was...

That doesn't mean he automatically hated Bo Schembechler in Michigan.

They're playing 18 games.

They were.

The way they played.

Uh, Sonny Stiles, the way he helped get guys lined up along with Caleb Downs.

Uh, so I'm looking right there.

I think safety, they're gonna be damn good.

I mean, Earl Little Jr. is an interesting dude to me.

Terry Moore, the transfer from Duke, but, uh, but Jalen McLean, I mean, he's, he stepped right on up.

You know.