The Ohio State defense appears to have settled on a formula in shutting out (an admittedly poor) Rutgers offense.

For the second straight week, defensive coordinator Greg Schiano used a similar strategic framework. The Buckeyes primarily played cover 4 on early downs, before switching to a cover 1 man defense out of their nickel package.

The structural weakness of Ohio State’s 4-3 over, cover 4 defense is generally to the boundary, where the defense has limited edge defenders. The boundary quarters’ safety must generally provide force support (i.e., the person responsible for maintaining outside leverage on the ball carrier and forcing the football back inside), with the Will linebacker responsible both for the backside A-gap, and scraping to fill inside the safety.

But Schiano has seemed particularly cognizant of this weakness in recent weeks and and has taken steps to combat it. As diagrammed above, rather than set the Sam linebacker to the field, Schiano instead placed Sam linebacker Dante Booker and the Mike linebacker to the boundary if the Scarlet Knights aligned their formation strength to the short field. The linebackers would then shift (rather than flip sides) if Rutgers motioned to shift their strength back to the field.

Schiano also used several run blitz concepts post-snap to negate the boundary numbers’ disadvantage. He again repeatedly used a boundary corner (or safety) blitz, with the defensive line slanting to the field.