Ohio State Football: Can offensive line step up?

The Ohio State football program doesn’t rebuild, they reload. That is true at every position on the field. Yet, there is one underrated aspect of the team that hasn’t gotten a lot of talk this offseason. That part of the team is the offensive line. They have to replace three starts up front.

Those starters are not going to be easy to replace. Losing your left and right tackle is never ideal. Adding a loss of the center makes things even harder for this team. It’s going to be an offensive line that doesn’t have a lot of experience blocking for a new quarterback.

All of that makes an offense that should be explosive because of the talent outside more complicated. I do have faith in Ryan Day to coach whatever quarterback wins the starting job to be really good but I’m not sure the same can be said for the offensive line.

The struggles to run the ball last year are what concerns me. Yes, pretty much every running back got hurt last year. That definitely plays a part in their struggles. But the offensive line didn’t exactly give the backs gaping holes to run through either. That won’t get better with three new starters up front.

I think that Justin Frye will show his meddle this season. Just like we’ll find out how well the secondary coaches can do their thing I think we’ll learn much more about Frye’s ability to coach the offensive line this season. This will be the toughest group of guys he’ll have coached since coming to the Ohio State football program.

How well the offensive line plays determines the ceiling of this offense. If they can protect the quarterback and run-block better this year they will be an unstoppable offense. I hope that’s the case.