 Good soldier
| The son of West Point graduates, Michael Bennett took awhile to warm up to Urban Meyer and the new coaching staff. He’s on board now, though, and has taken command of his defensive tackle spot |
Cover story | Michael Bennett
November 15, 2013 Source: Columbus Dispatch - Michael Bennett knew this football season had to be different than last year’s.
The junior defensive lineman from Centerville, Ohio, began 2012 resistant to the new coaching staff. He then fought a groin injury that severely limited him throughout the season.
The Buckeyes could get by without much help from Bennett last year. But with all four starting defensive linemen from 2012 gone, Bennett had to become not only a stalwart player, but a leader.
He has answered the challenge in both ways. Bennett has become a crucial player on an improving Buckeyes defense.
“Michael Bennett has always been a good student and an A1A person,” coach Urban Meyer said. “But he really wasn’t very good last year (in part because) he was hurt. This year, he is completely changed.”
In many ways, Bennett isn’t a stereotypical jock. He lives not with teammates, for example, but with four friends from his hometown, which is just outside of Dayton. He is thoughtful and reflective, and he displays a self-deprecating sense of humor.
“I was always a really laid-back kid,” Bennett said. “My mom always likes to tell the story of when I was born, all the doctors could talk about were how big my hands and feet were, and she was just worried that I was not a crier. I came out of the womb not crying.”
His parents, Mike and Connie, are West Point graduates who have taught their three children — Michael has an older and a younger sister — the importance of respect and a work ethic.
“They expected us to give everything we could when it came to school and sports or whatever we did,” Michael said.
Michael has been an OSU scholar-athlete. He had hopes of pursuing a premed major until a chemistry class his first winter quarter made him reevaluate that idea.
It was a different kind of evaluation that got him off on the wrong foot when Meyer and a new coaching staff came to Columbus.
“They came in guns a-blazing, and I didn’t appreciate that,” Bennett said. “I was being a little baby about it. I was really rebellious about that. I didn’t want to make them happy. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of me buying into the program.”
Connie Bennett said she knew her son was having a difficult time.
“He is, to use Urban’s word, an ‘evaluator,’ ” she said. “He certainly gets that from my husband and me. We aren’t the kind to just rush in and be on the bandwagon. We like to survey the surroundings. Not that we’ll opt out, so to speak, but we want to get a sense of the landscape, and obviously Michael had done some of that, as well.”
That evaluation period came during the winter offseason conditioning program. As the weather turned, Bennett’s attitude thawed, as well. He saw that the boot-camp mentality wasn’t to punish but to get the players to jump onboard. It might not have been easy, he realized, but it was needed.
“As I changed my attitude, they changed their attitude toward me,” Bennett said. “I realized they were being that way because we were being disrespectful toward them. The more accepting I got of the way they do things, things got easier. It was a maturity thing.”
But during preseason camp in August 2012, Bennett pulled a groin muscle. Then, during pregame pass-rush warmups before the season opener against Miami University, Bennett felt the groin muscle pop. He didn’t realize it at the time, but it had been torn from the bone.
“I thought it was going to settle down,” Bennett said, “but it didn’t get any better.”
Connie Bennett bristled when she read descriptions of the injury as being “nagging.”
“Oh, it was horrible — horrible,” she said of the injury. “It makes my eyes water and shiver every time I say it. In the papers, some of the reporters have said he had a sophomore slump and a series of minor injuries. There was nothing minor about that.”
Bennett returned after four games but he never felt like himself all season. He was credited with only 11 tackles.
“I don’t like to be pessimistic about last year,” Bennett said. “It’s in the past. I just like to think of it as I got to watch some really good players ahead of me and learn from them.”
As the most experienced returnee on the line, Bennett knew that he had to be that kind of leader this year.
“Last winter, I really just buckled down and completely bought into program and tried to be who they needed me to be,” he said.
“I had to be the guy. We had a lot of young D-linemen. We couldn’t afford to have older guys like me and Joel (Hale) and J.T. (Moore, now a tight end) and Steve (Miller) and Chris (Carter) have negative attitudes because then the younger guys would have negative attitudes.
“So every single day, even if it was 5 a.m. and I was tired, I tried to come in with energy — laughing and joking and yelling — just to make people see we had energy.”
The younger players have developed. One of them, Tommy Schutt, credits Bennett for some of that.
“Mike’s an unbelievable guy,” said Schutt, a sophomore defensive tackle. “He’s great on and off the field. He’s become an unbelievable leader. I’ve learned a lot from him.”
Bennett played the first part of the season at an all-Big Ten level, Meyer said, before a hyperextended elbow slowed him for a few games. Bennett has 21 tackles, 51/2 for loss, and three sacks.
“He’s back to playing at a pretty high level,” Meyer said. “I just want him to finish this thing the right way and hopefully get some all-Big Ten nominations because, for sure in the early part of the season, he was playing like it.”
That kind of recognition would be nice to Bennett, but it wouldn’t satisfy him.
“I don’t think I’m anywhere where I need to be,” he said. “I have the end of this year and next year to get better and keep being a force in the middle. I have technique (to improve). I can get stronger, can get faster, can have better knowledge of the game.
“I still don’t feel it’s quite good enough. I’d like to be playing at an all-American level.”
 Shotgun, five-wide, bunch leftOhio State Illinois Play of the Week
Illinois is riding a 19-game losing streak in Big Ten play headed into today’s game with Ohio State, but it’s not because the Illini are benign on offense.
For proof, consider this play — let’s call it “Shotgun, five-wide, bunch left — which the Illini turned into a 60-yard touchdown in their last game, against Indiana. It shows the Illinois offense will resort to a little chicanery every so often.
Whether the Ohio State defense will have to figure this one out quickly a time or two today in Champaign remains to be seen, but it might just because of the potential for the Illini.
Before the snap, quarterback Nathan Scheelhaase drops into an empty shotgun with five receivers split wide. He sends three to the left where they group into the bunch, or wishbone-looking formation, while two go to the right.
At the snap, the receivers run routes that would keep an Etch A Sketch expert busy, but it’s the three on the left that are most intriguing. They criss-cross in what amounts to a floral bouquet pattern, with the middle man shooting straight ahead, the right-side man curving off left and the left side man coming right and underneath it all.
Against Indiana, Scheelhaase looked right to begin with, then came back left with his read and found Steve Hull coming across the middle out of the bunch bouquet. He hit Hull in stride with a short flip that the receiver turned into a touchdown, one of his nine catches for 224 yards and two TDs that day.
Throwing receivers off stride with a jam or two while also gaining immediate pressure on Scheelhaase would be the best ways for Ohio State to combat this play.
Indiana did neither.
November 15, 2013 Source: Columbus Dispatch |
 Dylan Thompson
Defensive lineman looks like rising star
November 15, 2013 Source: Columbus Dispatch - Chris Andriano is in his 35th season as coach at Montini Catholic High School in Lombard, Ill., and he has his team chasing a fifth straight state title. So it’s fair to say that he knows a little bit about star football players.
As for the star ratings that some recruiting websites place on high-school prospects in terms of their worth at the next level, however, it’s obvious that Andriano is no fan. For example, he has senior defensive end Dylan Thompson, the backbone of the Montini front, who is committed to Ohio State and sports just three stars.
“I don’t worry about those rankings and all that; that’s stuff for other people to do. I can just tell you that he is a Division I football player,” Andriano said. “He’s got the size, he’s got the agility and the movement skills, and he’s got the heart and the toughness to do it.”
And the focus — Thompson didn’t make himself available to media calls this week as he and his teammates zeroed in on their quarterfinal playoff game this afternoon. Besides, Thompson committed to the Buckeyes this past summer so the chase for his services would not be a distraction as the suburban Chicago team chased another title.
Since then, Thompson (6 feet 5, 270 pounds) has proved that he probably deserves another look from those who assign the stars. His senior season has been one of continued development, Andriano said.
“He definitely is a much better player now than last year. … He’s more agile, more mobile, a better athlete now,” Andriano said. “He’s really concentrating now on movement skills. He is a strong, strong kid, but he has gotten a lot better with his feet, his speed, his hips, his agility.
“You can’t really block him one-on-one.”
Such improvement likely is what Ohio State expected when it made the scholarship offer despite Thompson’s star rating, said Bill Kurelic, a recruiting analyst for Bucknuts. It also proves that coach Urban Meyer and his staff, despite the reputation for going after high-profile prospects, also keep tabs on those who could be.
“They do their homework to the nth-degree,” Kurelic said. “They will go so far as to watch every play on video of a kid from a couple of seasons or more. They are not the least bit concerned with a prospect’s star ratings. They do their homework and make their own assessment.”
Thompson, who was recruited primarily by OSU defensive line coach Mike Vrabel, has maintained the right attitude even after making his commitment, Andriano said.
“He knows that each step of the way it gets harder, and that he’s got to keep working hard,”Andriano said. “He’s got the right mentality.”
Thompson proved that as much in the offseason as he has during the season, the coach said.
“He’s one of the best guys in the weight room, he’s one of those guys in the offseason who spends that extra time,” Andriano said. “He’s got a plan for the approach to his offseason. He is very structured, very organized, and he does extra work on his own. He goes to speed camp, agility camp.
“He has been very dedicated. He wants to be the best he can be.”
 November 15, 2013 Source: Columbus Dispatch |
Cover Story: Michael Bennett, son of West Point graduates, has emerged as a leader on the DL
Ohio State Spotlight: Noah Spence
Meet a Buckeye: Nik Sarac
Who has the edge: Ohio State vs. Purdue
Game predictions: Ohio State vs. Illinois
Play of the week: Shotgun, five-wide, bunch left
Recruiting Watch: Dylan Thompson
& more...
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