Ohio State Football: How to assess Spring Game progress

It’s finally game week! Sure, it’s not a full-fledged actual Ohio State football game, but we will still be watching the Buckeyes take the field on Saturday afternoon. The weather looks absolutely perfect for some football, so it should be a great day all around.

Because it’s just the Spring Game, it’s going to be hard to assess how much progress the Buckeyes have made in the offseason. Ryan Day will likely not allow any tackling to avoid injury, so we won’t see much in terms of the running game or run blocking.

So how do we figure out who improved and who didn’t? The easiest way to look at that is to look up front on the offensive and defensive line. Whoever is able to dominate the line of scrimmage up front will be pretty easy to see. Who gets pushed back and who doesn’t will tell us the progress made.

As far as the quarterback play goes, that will be easy to see too. I expect both quarterbacks to play well on Saturday and I’d like to see both get some first-team reps to see what they can do with the wide receivers out there. That progress will be shown by the accuracy and power of the throws made.

Will we learn anything significant on Saturday afternoon? Probably not. There are still some position battles that need to be figured out in the Fall. This game will just give the coaches another data point to grade the players on. I am interested to see who the coaches think deserves first-team reps at this point in the season though.

The Ohio State football Spring Game will be broadcast at noon on Saturday on Big Ten Network. I will certainly be taking it in.