ICYMI: Book excerpts | 'Buckeye Rebirth': Game against Spartans brought Buckeyes together like never before
Urban Meyer calls it his"Bob Newhart couch." Every day, the Ohio State football coach sits in Mickey Marotti's office and chats with his friend and strength coach to get the pulse of his team. After the Buckeyes' Sept. 22, 2012, game against UAB, both knew what was urgently needed.
Meyer could tell from talking to Marotti that the coaching staff hadn't yet fully won over the players. They weren't disrespectful, and they weren't defiant. But they just as obviously weren't ready to embrace everything the new regime was preaching. "There were times during the season and during camp when it was miserable," senior fullback Zach Boren said."I was like, 'Oh my God, I have no idea how we're keeping up with this level of practices, with this grind.'""Guys were coming up to me saying, 'Man, I'm not going to make it,' " Sabino said."Guys were just blown out. And it was still fairly early in the season. A lot of us were exhausted physically.
The Buckeyes hadn't forgotten the sting of the previous year's loss. The Spartans, long considered underachievers, had seemingly turned the corner under former Buckeyes assistant coach Mark Dantonio. They had beaten in-state rival Michigan four straight times, shedding their"little brother" status.The meeting room at the Brighton, Mich., Marriott seems an unlikely location for a turning point in a football season.
"The whole purpose was, 'If you're all in, you're all in,' " Meyer said." 'Don't put your glass up, don't toast, if you're not all in.' ""I'm not ," defensive end Nathan Williams said,"it was kind of like we were actually going into war. I know people say football is a war sometimes. But that's really how it felt. It was like we were about to give our lives up for a greater cause than ourselves.
The momentum carried into the game. On the game's first snap, quarterback Braxton Miller ran for 20 yards, starting a 75-yard touchdown drive. Miller wasn't around for the end of it. On a 13-yard run, he was tackled out of bounds by Isaiah Lewis, and the quarterback's helmet hit an equipment case on the Ohio State sideline. The personal-foul penalty moved the ball to the Spartans 14.
"It was a little option play," Hall said."I got the pitch, and I remember I broke through and got tackled on the sideline, and he landed right on me." "It was a little against our MO at the time, throwing a dropback pass on first down," Herman said,"but it was the right thing to do at the time because it was so packed in at the line."
"I planted wrong," Miller said."It would have been a long run, maybe a touchdown if that hadn't happened. Everything went numb." "We were so pumped," center Corey Linsley added."The level of intensity was unbelievable. We all kind of locked arms and said we've been waiting for this for a long time."
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