Keith Arnold from Road to Game Day is at the Fiesta Bowl. He has seen Terrelle Pryor. He is impressed.
It was nice for Jim Tressel to give Todd Boeckman the start. Because after that, it was all Terrelle Prior. Relegated to WR for the opening snap from scrimmage, the freshman is clearly the best athlete wearing white tonight, as he’s moved effectively in the shotgun and continued to befuddle a Texas defense that has more than its fair share of athletes on its side of the ball.
While Ohio State has used three and four wide-receiver sets to spread out the Longhorn defense, they’ve also effectively managed the time of possession battle, with Beanie Wells running for almost 100 yards already as the Buckeyes are out-rushing the Longhorns 140 yards to minus 9.
Yet while Wells’ efforts have been anything but minimal, Terrelle Pryor is clearly the engine that makes things go. Even when he makes a rookie mistake, he’s the most dangerous man on the field for Ohio State. With the ball in Prior’s hand, and the pocket empty, the field instantly looks bigger, as his combination of size and speed forces the Longhorns to dedicate a linebacker to spying the freshman signal caller on every snap.
The Buckeyes have to be kicking themselves that they’re only up a field goal after dominating the first quarter and a half of play, and only because of an extremely rare mistake in the red zone by Colt McCoy. It will be interesting to see how the Buckeyes react when the high-powered Longhorns offense gets into gear. So far, it looks like Ohio State is dominating the battle up front, which is certainly a vital ingredient in the recipe to upset the Longhorns.
This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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