USC defense nothing new for Ohio State

DALLAS- When asked about the USC defense, the players and coaches used the same word. Athletic.

“They are very athletic,” running back J.K. Dobbins said. “They are an athletic team and it’ll be pretty hard to do great things against them.”

With a 4-2-5 set on the defensive front, the Trojans run a man coverage defense, using one extra man in the secondary for pass protection. For a wide receiver, like Parris Campbell, this kind of matchup is the kind he is looking for.

“Any team that plays man, being a wide out is just being a competitive wide out, that is what you look for,” Campbell said. “Obviously, you want to go compete, so any team that plays man you just know it’s a one-on-one matchup, beat your man. That’s exciting.”

However, this highly-touted 4-2-5 defense is nothing new for the Ohio State offensive unit.

“Everybody is hyping up this 4-2-5 defense,” center Billy Price said. “Not to be disrespectful. There are a lot of people who play a 4-2-5. In the Big Ten, you see four-down, two-linebacker sets who might have a hybrid player who can play safety and he can play linebacker and he can play corner.”

Opposing offenses have shown it has been able to exploit the USC defense in the passing game all season. The Trojans have the ninth best pass defense in the Pac-12, allowing opponents to have 246.5 passing yards per game with 22 touchdowns.

However, Ohio State offensive coordinator and former Oklahoma offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson talked about how the conference a team can be will affect the performance of a defense numerically.

“It’s almost a little bit like the conference in the Big 12 where there is so much offensive skill that sometimes stats can get skewed,” Wilson said. “I say it because sometimes I have been at places where our stats were pretty good, but it’s kind of relative to the style of play.”

For example, Wilson said that in the Big Ten, there are not as many turnovers because many teams in the conference play very conservatively. In other conferences, such as the Big 12, it is more of a west coast style of football where the ball will be in the air more frequently, giving opposing defenses more of an opportunity to take it away.

As Price said, the personnel are what make this team difficult to match up with. The USC defense has contributors, such as linebacker Cameron Smith, who leads the team with 102 tackles with 10 tackles for loss, and linebacker Uchenna Nwosu, who not only had 9.5 tackles for loss, including 7.5 sacks, but leads the team with 13 broken up passes.

Wilson said that it does not matter how many yards the Trojans give up on defense. USC finds a way to stop opposing offenses one way or the other.

“At the end of the day, they get enough stops and they score so much on offense they win games,” Wilson said.