Ohio State searches for answers for struggling offense

COLUMBUS - Ordinarily, Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel could expect a barrage of questions about coaching against his good friend and former OSU defensive coordinator Mark Dantonio the week the Buckeyes play Dantonio's Michigan State team.

But the Dantonio questions were few and far between at Tressel's weekly press conference on Tuesday.

That's what having an atrocious offensive performance the week before, and much of the season, can do.

No. 12 Ohio State (6-1, 3-0 Big Ten) did not score an offensive touchdown and gained just 222 yards in a 16-3 win last Saturday over a Purdue team that ranked last in the Big Ten in every major defensive category. OSU ran 56 plays and 22 of them were for no gain or a loss.

It was the third time this season OSU gained less than 300 yards overall in a game this season, a shocking statistic for a team that had nine returning offensive starters from an offense that averaged 31.4 points and 393.7 yards a game last season.

Tressel fell back to coach-speak when asked about this dropoff.

"I hate to say it but we're not executing. I wish there were something different than that," he said.

"Our second kickoff return (against Purdue) is a great example. We had 10 guys block it perfectly. One guy didn't and that was the difference between taking it out a long, long way and getting tackled on the 21. It's no different on offense, if you have 10 guys doing exactly what you need done and one guy who doesn't, you're not going to score touchdowns or get first downs."

After Tressel's session with the media, tight end Jake Ballard said he was shocked with the current state of Ohio State's offense.

"Honestly, I thought we were going to be one of the most explosive offenses in the country," Ballard said. "I found out we're 10^th in the Big Ten in total offense, which is a sad stat to hear. But in the middle of the Big Ten season, we can turn that around. The talent is there, we just need to do what we can do on the field.

"It's definitely correctable. We're all very talented guys. We can do the job. We can make the blocks. We can run the ball. We can make the catches, we can make those throws."

After the Purdue game, tailback Chris Wells said he thought Ohio State needed to pass the ball more to open up its offense. Freshman Terrelle Pryor has not thrown a touchdown pass in his last two games, has passed for less than 100 yards twice and has put the ball in the air an average of only 15 times a game in his four starts.

"If you check the records, we've called a lot more passes than we've thrown," Tressel said. "Some of them maybe we should have thrown, some of them the best decision was to not throw it, some of them we had some protection problems. I don't get caught up in how many passes we're throwing, I'm more interested in how many we complete."

Senior Todd Boeckman, who started the first three games and is more of a passing threat than Pryor, has not played the last two games and has made only two token appearances since Pryor became the starter.

Even though Ohio State ranks last in the Big Ten in passing and next-to-last in total offense, Tressel said there were no plans in the works to give Boeckman more playing time. He said the senior from St. Henry would play if he decided it was the "right moment and situation."

Tressel and Dantonio, in his second season as Michigan State's coach, have gone head to head three times before Saturday's game in East Lansing, Mich. Tressel has won all three times, twice over Dantonio's Cincinnati teams in 2004 and 2006, and a 24-17 decision over Michigan State at Ohio Stadium last fall.

No. 23 Michigan State (6-1, 3-0 Big Ten) has won six games in a row since losing its opener at California.