Ohio State vs. Texas: Sark Keeping Eye On Jeremiah Smith

0:00time This time, we're about to meet you. Hello everybody, welcome to the Fuck I Weekly podcast. I'm Tony Gerteman here as always with Tom or Tom. How's it going? Tony, it is Texas week at Ohio State, but more importantly for the point of this podcast, it is Ohio State week for Texas and you are getting the big game vibes already from both places, even as we're just sort of getting started. Yeah, very much so Steve Sarkieshan held his weekly press conference today and Monday to

1:05recap Texas State. The big win over Texas State and then talk about Ohio State and yeah, pretty much the question and answer portion went to Ohio State pretty quickly, although like it will be for a for a Ryan Day on Tuesday when we talk with him, some of the questions are also going to be about the struggles against your opening week opponent. Now is one of the things that Sark was asked about with the running game and he said what all coaches say, I thought we had a good plan going in, you know, like no one is ever in the head coach and they were like, guys, I want the worst plan and we're going to see if it works. So they had a good plan going in, but I think what we've talked about over on the Buck Ansoners message board is that in these games defensive lines will just do some different stuff and that's what Sarkieshan is as always in those games, there's a lot of slants and stunts and movements and Texas didn't have some, didn't have the best angles on some of those plays and they could have strained more with their run blocking and they

2:07says everybody basically the entire team needs to take a step up. So we're going to be talking about some of the same stuff with Brian Day on Tuesday. Yeah, and we're going to do rewatch shows for both the Ohio State game and the Texas games. We'll get into this a little bit there, but there were definitely some common elements to both of those first games and probably some similarities to where fan bases are not feeling super fantastic, but also the fact that both teams were relatively basic with what they did. I mean, Texas did not exactly get deep in their bag either on offense or defense and Ohio State I think was very much the same thing. So I don't, this is one of the things where you can look at it and go, well, they really struggle to run the ball against Texas State. So if they were at five yards of carry there, only thanks to a long run, well, boy, they're going to be at two yards of carry against Ohio State. It's like, no, they're probably, they probably saved one or two things for the game where they were not going to be up by 52 points.

3:08So I think I watching those two games and we'll again, we'll get to those. I'm more interested in this match up now than I was before I rewatched it. And honestly, I was not going to lie, I've been kind of looking forward to this game for a while. Yeah, no kidding. And Sarc himself said, what do you sell from both teams on Saturdays? Now what you're going to see against each other this coming week? He's like, I know Ohio State probably didn't show everything and I'm guessing, you know, I can, you know, kind of wink and nod and say that Texas didn't show everything as well. So you're trying to show as little while still winning as comfortably enough as you can so that you can get more guys out there and see more things. And that's what one of Sarc's complaints was that they didn't get to punt. So he doesn't, you know, didn't get to see that whole operation and which is unfortunate for Texas, you know, stop being so good on offense, I would say. If you really, if you really wanted to get the punter, you know, get that focus, you would have punted on the first drive like Ohio State did. See, Ryan Day is playing chess, not checkers, Tom.

4:10He's getting that punt three and out. Let's get this punting operation going. And so, you know, Texas, their first punt maybe. We'll come this week and we'll see how that goes. I, there was one question that I wanted to discuss before we start getting too much into the Ohio State and what are you saying about that. One of the questionnaires asked on the playoff committee last year not rewarding Texas for taking the risk of this game and how that was a, not a rallying cry. It was a different kind of cry last year in terms of if you wouldn't have played Ohio State, you would have made the playoffs and the answer is don't lose to a bad Florida team and the, the lost to Ohio State still gets you in. So it's, you got knocked out by Florida, not Ohio State. And what he's saying here now, what Steve Sarkiesian is saying is that like there's no big risk in playing this game that you want to play in it. He's not concerned about what the end result because it's an opportunity to go against

5:12best to see who you are. And this is what you want as a competitor. You've got 10 other games to go play as well after this. But it was just interesting to hear him say he doesn't, you know, doesn't need to spend much time thinking about what this game means and the risk based on even himself last year or this year saying that the loss last year kept them out of the playoffs. Yeah, I thought that was the second most like kind of question behind the guy who talked about his dream where they beat Ohio State by 17 points, which is like, is this a touchdown club meeting? What is going on here? Yeah, it was, you know, to your point, if you don't lose to a foreignate Florida team, if you're, if you have three losses last year and the third one is like, well, you lost to Alabama or you lost to, I think they lost to Georgia last year as well. But you know, you lose to a team that is a playoff team. You lost to Oklahoma net last year, for example. And that was your third loss.

6:14Congratulations. You're probably in the college football playoff. Don't lose to a foreignate team. That would be my advice to you. I think that whoever loses this game still probably has a decent chance of making it with three, three losses this year as long as they don't lose to a foreignate team. So that's that end. But, you know, as far as Sark's approach to this goes, I kept juxtaposing him in my mind with Lincoln, with Lincoln Riley and how Lincoln Riley is like, oh, well, we don't want to play Notre Dame anymore because we can't play them exactly the right time and exactly the location we want. And, you know, boy, we really want to play him. But oh boy, they wouldn't accommodate our many wishes. And Sark is just kind of going, yeah, man, bring it on. And which is great. Like, that's he had a question just sort of about, you know, what this means for college football in the whole, like this kind of game and the atmosphere and all that kind of stuff. It's like, this is great for college football. This is exactly what everyone should be doing. And the fact that not everyone is doing it doesn't mean that well, Ohio State and Texas

7:16should stop scheduling games like this. Like no, everyone else should schedule games like this and should stop being a Texas tech or a Penn State or an Indiana or, you know, I'm sure I'm not thinking through the SEC teams and some of their chicken scratch, non-conference scheduling, but I'm sure they have something I'm not thinking of right now. But everyone should be doing this. And I love Sark's approach to that. And that's what college football should be. You need more games like this. Yeah. And he was asked about the last two games against Ohio State and does it drive you. And I like how he's talking about you, Ryan Day always talks about you play with emotion, but you can't let emotion play with you. And Sark saying, you know, it's good you have emotion, but you can't get emotional. And the emotion helps you maybe until the opening kickoff. And after that, it's about execution. It's about mental and physical toughness, which I agree with people think that the emotion

8:17well, they've lost two games in a row to Ohio State. The emotion is just going to carry them in it. It whenever we watch these big games, the first quarter is like you're buzzing and buzzing and buzzing. And then it eventually turns into a football game. Like the buzzing wears off. And then it's just like, it's possession by possession. It becomes a football game. And so yeah, you can't carry through this entire emotion. And if you're emotional and not executing, then what's the point? I want to talk about Jeremiah Smith because Texas has done a better job against him than anybody since he's been in college. Two games against Texas, seven receptions for 46 yards, including one for three in playoffs, six for 43 last year. Sark was saying, he garners your attention. He deserves our attention. He's arguably the best player in college football. The guy looks like Julio Jones, but Tom, then he talks about you've got to throw, you've got to change your speeds with them. It can't just not be fastballs. Yeah, I love that analogy where he's talking about, you know, you've got these, if you're

9:18a great baseball pitcher, but all you got is a fastball. Eventually, guys will adjust to that and Ryan Day and now Arthur Smith are pretty good at diagramming in offense and figuring out how to scheme guys open and all that. And so they do have to mix things up a little bit, but you know, there's sort of that immediate online reaction where Jeremiah Smith has one catch for three yards against Texas in the cotton bowl and everyone goes, see, if he was in the SEC, he'd be the 47th best receiver. It's like no one with a functioning brain thinks that and you have to do is watch how much attention he gets and it's like, yeah, if you put enough guys on anyone, eventually you can take them away usually most of the time. Texas has been very good at that, but it has not been like, well, we just pulled the guy off the bench and threw him on their one on one. Because he's been going against SEC opponents, receivers all year, he's ready for that. That is not what we're talking about here. But, you know, yeah, Sark knows they have to keep mixing and matching and it's going

10:21to be fascinating because you have the last couple of years, it's been Pete Kowski as Texas's defensive coordinator and it was Chip Kelly and then Brian Hartline as Ohio State's offensive coordinator. Now it's Arthur Smith going up against Will Must Champ. So you got two different guys coming into this game, sort of with fresh eyes and maybe some new approaches and some new ideas on how they might go about doing, you know, doing the thing on Saturday around Jeremiah Smith. That is one, you know, of many, many elements of this game that I'm really, really interested to see. But Tony, can I give you a hot take? Jeremiah Smith stats might depend a lot more on the Collins Simmons versus E and more matchup or, you know, whoever is rushing against Philip Daniels, then it does again about the specific strategy for Texas's secondary against Jeremiah Smith. Yeah, and we will talk about that on both our Texas Texas State Rewatch and the ball state of Ohio State rewatch because it's going to be, it's going to be a lot to discuss there

11:28and it's a significant portion of how those games are going to go, I believe. Looking at other areas of what Sark was saying, I thought the discussion on the two quarterbacks, Archman and Julian Sand, who was asked, you know, compare them to this game last year and he said that it's drastically different from both of them from last year, where they were last year, the confidence in the pocket, their comfort level, the comfort running the ball, the trust and the timing with receivers and any he added at the end. It should be a pretty high level quarterback play, should be pretty high level quarterback play Saturday. And I would agree with that just based on watching the two, the two games that we have watched and two very comfortable quarterbacks. And again, we'll talk about these in the rewatch, but he saw that as well. And of course he would. But I like whenever you talk to head coaches and they can rattle off the names of the other team, it's always interesting. James Franklin is, he'll give you the all 22 of, you know, everything basically like,

12:34and even get into who's the nickel and who's the dime. And Sark is like that as well going through the names of everybody. And I don't know if it means anything, although I'm mentioning Steve Sarkieson and James Franklin, I bet Dan landing does it as well. And it's like, well, maybe if you know all of the names, you can't win a championship. I don't know. I don't know if that's what the cut off is. And that's kind of a cheap shot, but it was just me thinking out loud, I'm sorry. Yeah, it's a, I'm going to guess that there's probably, it is a correlation, just not equal causation from there, but we'll, you know, we'll, we'll see. But yeah, it is, where did you even start on that? Because now I'm hung up on James Franklin and Thurk. The quarterbacks. Oh, yes, the quarterbacks. Okay, yeah, you go back to week one of last year and there's a couple pieces of that sentence. Number one is last year. Number two is week one. These were, this was the first start for both Archmaning and Julian Sain last year, where you didn't know what you were going to get.

13:35The defenses didn't know what they were going to get and Texas going in against Matt Patricia had no idea what they were going to get. And I think you saw Arch get kind of confused a few times and you're playing on the road and it's a loud hostile crowd. And I mean, there's a lot of stuff there that all kind of makes that a really difficult spot for him. But it this year, I mean, last year, Ohio State essentially in the second half treated Julian Sain. It wasn't quite like JJ McCarthy at Michigan, but it was just kind of like, well, you got a two touchdown lead. Just don't screw this up, kid. And it was that, that's, you know, that approach then, I mean, it worked then and they won the game and all that. But, you know, how much he grew over the course of the year where you look back at that at the end of the year, like, can you imagine, you know, fathom that that was this year? I think Archmaning is kind of in the same kind of boat where last year he just looked, he looked overwhelmed and he looked confused and it looked like everything was going a thousand miles an hour. He has gotten a lot better. So don't take, you know, Texas fans don't look at Julian Sain that you saw in week one

14:37last year and go, well, you saw they don't trust this guy. You know, Ohio State fans don't look at Archmaning and go, well, there's stuff that he just can't do. Like, guess what? Texas has figured out what he's good at and what he isn't good at. And some of the stuff, even the simple stuff, like last year, you saw him like bouncing crossers and just, there are certain throws that he just doesn't seem to do all that well. Like when we watched the Texas State game, they didn't throw a lot of those. Like, I think they've kind of figured out, okay, here's what he's good at. Here's what he's not. Guess what? Do what he's good at. Do more of that and get stay away from some of the stuff that's not quite as good. Yeah, Ohio State fans don't get into the idea that this is Bryce Underwood and he's the same quarterback he was last year type of thing because I don't think he is. A couple of last things on linebacker Rahim Biles. He said he's a problem. He's a problem because he has a unique skill set. He talked about his time playing in the secondary back in central Ohio and also be- Big ringed in central. Before Pit. He's got instincts that are hard to qualify.

15:37Quantify, he plays the game on another level intellectually and then he has the skill set physically to match that. We will probably talk about him when we do our rewatch. But obviously he's going to be a guy to watch. And the last thing that I wanted to mention time is when somebody asked Steve Sarkiesian, did you watch, what do you think of the college football weekend? What do you think of Notre Dame's uniforms and what do you think of the Michigan thing? And he mentioned, well, I didn't see much of the Notre Dame stuff but I didn't see their uniforms were blue. And then he did talk about the Michigan thing singing after the fact and just a little bit of a dig there at the end when he said my main takeaway was that my biggest thing is I was shocked they stormed the field. That was like, shock, they stormed the field. That was probably a surprise. And you know, just kids trying to have fun, even though if you go to Michigan's photo gallery from that, like it's the, I even, I'll have it on the cover of like the header photo for

16:40Michigan Monday this week. It's like, I think somebody in their 30s and then somebody in their 60s, like running out onto the field. So not just the kids having fun, everybody having fun and enjoy a big win like that one. Yeah, that was a surprising, surprising outcome for sure in any number of ways. Imagine telling Michigan fans going into the stadium that they, you're going to be storming the field at the end of the game. Thanks to the thrilling win you've got coming up over Western Michigan. Yeah, I did, did enjoy that one. I also thought he had a really thoughtful answer. He was asked about evaluating the play calling of the last couple games against Ohio State and sort of where they struggled and where they succeeded. And he said, you know, they didn't run well enough in 2024 in the cotton bowl. They didn't pass well enough in 2025. But he said the overarching theme there between those two games is you have to find a way to find balance. And I think I get the sense they probably are feeling more confident in the past game right now than the run game. Probably they've got some, they've got some explosive running backs, but just the efficiency

17:41at running in terms of running the ball wasn't there. We'll get into this again more in the rewatch show. But I thought that was a very interesting answer. He is phenomenal. He is great. I mean, we should, we do press conference for analogy for Ryan Day every week during big games where it's like, oh, just Ryan's seen tight today, just Ryan's seen loose. What is it? What does it all mean? And, you know, Sark has been, we have covered Sark before and Sark has always like great, long, interesting answers. He also, he did not seem at all on Monday to be someone who was deeply stressed out or very, very concerned about this weekend's game. No, seems to be excited for it. And he kept talking about the opportunity to play a number one team and what that means for this team, for his team and they're excited about it. The last thing on the play calling, he said, if we had a few more passes, I probably feel better about my play calling last year. So there you go, some thoughts on what we saw from Steve Sarkieson on Monday at his weekly press conference. And like Thompson, he was in a good mood. It'll be interesting to juxtapose that with Ryan Day's mood on Tuesday and then Ryan

18:44Day's mood again on Wednesday and see if the mood has changed at all. But if you're watching, go and hit that thumbs up. We appreciate that. Subscribe to the channel. If you've not yet done so, if you're watching on mobile, go ahead and hype this video. You can do that. It's a little thing there that you can do on mobile. It helps the algorithm. It tells the algorithm to go push us forward and we appreciate that. And of course, you can start reading a review on all of your podcast platforms to search Buck I Weekly. Go ahead and search Buck I'm Tomorrow morning as well. Go ahead and search the time and change. It'll surely show as well. And the absolute best way to support what we do is find us over at Buck I Insiders.com. Sign up and become a member. Say hello to us over there. We'd love to talk to you about this game. Got a lot coming. So just find us out. All of these avenues because it's going to be plenty to see. So that will do it for me. Thank you all for tuning in. And we will talk to you all tomorrow later today. Probably. See you soon. Bye. Bye.

19:44Bye. Bye.