The Ohio State football program will always be the answer to a trivia question many other teams would like to have been a part of. Whenever anyone asks who won the first-ever College Football Playoff championship game, the answer is your Ohio State Buckeyes.
But remember, OSU almost didn’t make it there. After an early loss to Virginia Tech, the Buckeyes were written off. However, Ohio State just continued to get better and better and ended up squeaking its way into the CFP and winning the whole thing.
Former Ohio State linebacker Joshua Perry discussed that season and the so-called “Chase” the team tagged on their quest to beat Alabama on the most recent Glory Days: Dreams and Nightmares podcast. As a Buckeye fan, you know most likely know the podcast well, but Perry and fellow teammate, former receiver Evan Spencer detail the 2014 season when OSU made that highly improbable and unlikely run to the national title.
As a part of Wednesday’s segment, Perry talked about the reason Ohio State was able to beat Alabama, and it had everything to do with former Buckeye head coach Urban Meyer’s obsession to detail. We have of course heard stories about how intense and driven Meyer was, but Perry opened up about a little-known fact of why he believes OSU was able to not only make it into the playoff but to chase down the Crimson Tide in the Sugar Bowl.
“He became obsessed with the hand placement,” said Perry of Meyer. “He came back, and he said, ‘I was down there on the field watching them in pregame, and I watched their D-line warm up, and those guys, they strike better than anybody and their hands are quicker and their hands are always inside. They got perfect technique, and their thumbs are up and their elbows are in.’ And he said, ‘We don’t have a guy who can strike like that.’”
“We came out in that offseason, and before we could do contact and really put our hands on each other, we had two-by-fours that were taped together to practice the hand position,” Perry said. “Just the inside hands, like your hands were on the outside of the two-by-fours. That’s how tight your hands are supposed to be. Elbows in. And then we start doing that every day in practice with our pads on. (Meyer) would go down the line, and he would basically watch all the skill-position guys strike one another, and it was like a competition to see who could get their hands inside and who could re-set their hands.
“And then coach Anthony Schlegel developed an actual apparatus that you can attach to a weight rack in the weight room to practice what we called ‘The Difference.’ It was such a point of obsession that (Meyer) named it ‘The Difference.’ The difference between Alabama and Ohio State was how the (expletive) we struck each other, how our hands worked.
“That was the obsession, but that’s why Urban’s an elite coach is he’ll take something that nobody would really think of that would be the difference between a national title contender and the actual champion is just the hand placement and being obsessed about it.”
You can watch this short segment on your own via the Glory Days: Dreams and Nightmares YouTube channel.
This is some of the inside information you get from Perry and Spencer during an inside look to that season and we’re all for it. If you haven’t check out the podcast for yourself, we highly encourage you to do so.
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