Ohio State and Oregon bring two of the country’s most explosive offenses to the national title game Monday night, and there’s a familiarity between the two systems.
Ohio State’s a lot like Oregon. And that’s not an accident.
The Buckeyes head coach adapts his program to use the best ideas from around the country.
After Buckeyes head coach Urban Meyer's years of success with Bowling Green, Utah and Florida, he partly modeled this team after the Ducks' offensive system, incorporating the tactics of his friend Chip Kelly, former Oregon and current Eagles coach, to build a Big Ten power.
“[Meyer] was out for a couple practices,” Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich, who was an assistant on Kelly’s staff, said Saturday. “Leading up to the Fiesta Bowl or the National Championship.”
“A lot of respect for Coach Helfrich and [offensive coordinator Scott] Frost and his offense,” Meyer said, “but more than offense, I went out there just because of the culture that Chip was unique, I kept hearing about it, and I talk to Chip all the time.”
Meyer is so familiar with Oregon, in fact, he said he would "probably be able to call Oregon's plays, because we study them and they study us."
“I just like their approach,” Meyer said. “When I went out there, I brought back with me that there’s an unbelievable culture. This is the way they do their business. Everyone is aligned. I brought that back to our place.”
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Both offenses spread out the field with multiple wide receivers, but keep defenses honest up the middle with strong running games from both the quarterback and halfback positions. Meyer, Kelly, Helfrich, and their staffs could all be described as option spread-to-run innovators.
Their production is just about indistinguishable this year, too. Here are the two teams’ S&P+ rankings from among all 128 FBS teams:
| Rk | PlayRating | Rk | RushingS&P+ | Rk | PassingS&P+ | Rk | Std.DownsS&P+ | Rk | Pass.DownsS&P+ | Rk | DriveRating | Rk |
| No. 1 Ohio State | 152.9 | 1 | 153 | 1 | 156 | 2 | 140.4 | 1 | 180.1 | 1 | 163.3 | 2 |
| No. 3 Oregon | 140.9 | 3 | 142.1 | 2 | 142.6 | 5 | 131.8 | 5 | 163.1 | 3 | 150.9 | 3 |
Notice some similarities? These are two of the most efficient and explosive offenses in the nation, able to hurt you either through the air or on the ground (on just about any down), and they match up well in the advanced metrics.
There are more specific likenesses between the two systems, as noted in Bill Connelly’s game guide on defending Ohio State’s offense:
Attempting to account for Ohio State’s strength means doing whatever you can to limit the Buckeyes’ absurdly good run game. But the Buckeyes are so devastating because they only lean so much on the run. Like Oregon, the Buckeyes are more than happy to take free yards through the air.
Ohio State has another Oregon similarity: the Buckeyes spread the ball around. Sophomore Michael Thomas is the most frequent target on standard downs; he has caught 32 of 45 passes for 468 yards and five scores on such downs this year. But eight other players have been targeted at least 15 times, from seniors Devin Smith and Evan Spencer, to youngsters Jalin Marshall and Dontre Wilson, to tight ends Nick Vannett and Jeff Heuerman, to running back Elliott.
Meyer’s and Herman’s offense treats second-and-long as a nice running down. (That’s another similarity to Oregon.) They know they are devastating on third-and-manageable, and they execute as such. But when they do throw on passing downs, they still have the second-best success rate in the country, just 0.3 percent behind Auburn.
Meyer credits Kelly’s influence off the field, too:
[Kelly’s Eagles] took a next step as far as player welfare, as far as the hydration, nutrition. They do GPS tracking. So it’s just player welfare. They do a phenomenal job on nutrition to the teaching them and educating them. It used to be: don’t do this because, don’t put bad stuff in your body because. We still do that, because you’re modifying behavior, but as long as a player knows if you have any dream of becoming an elite athlete and you do that, there’s a great chance that’s not going to happen for you. So we really took all that and brought it back to our program this spring and summer.
Meyer’s familiarity may appear to give Ohio State a tactical advantage, but it goes both ways. The Buckeyes’ borrowed tendencies from the Oregon offense could also give the Ducks’ coaching staff an additional insight into what Ohio State’s offense will throw at them Monday. The Ducks are second in the nation in scoring offense this season, while the Buckeyes rank No. 5.
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