‘You can’t stop us with 11’

On Saturday morning, Ohio State Buckeyes offensive coordinator Chip Kelly did what coaches do before a big game and praised the opponent. In this case, it’s the team Kelly and the Buckeyes will face for the College Football Playoff national championship on Monday — the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, and especially their defense.

But in the midst of analyzing the Irish, Kelly deftly changed the subject just enough to jab the Oregon Ducks. It was beautiful scalpel work by a veteran smart aleck.

“They can double anybody they want, but they can’t double everybody,” Kelly said, referring to Notre Dame’s coverage options Monday. “If they do that, it’s a penalty – they have too many guys on the field. And we saw that before against a team, once before in a game.”

Oh, yes. We did that. When Oregon defeated Ohio State 32-31 in Eugene, Ore., on Oct. 12, one of the talking points coming out of the game was that coach Dan Lanning apparently took a quick one with the rules to help stop the Buckeyes’ last drive. To summarize what happened before I got to Kelly’s shot against the ducks:

Ohio State tried to drive for the winning field goal in the last minute. With 10 seconds left, the Buckeyes had the ball at the Oregon 43-yard line on third-and-25. Needing about 15 yards to get within range for a kick, they had just one play to get there before attempting a long field goal or a Hail Mary pass into the end zone.

Just before Ohio State snapped the ball, Oregon called timeout. The Ducks came out of that stop with 12 men on the field, sending an extra defensive back after some apparent confusion about who should be on the field in the front seven. The game’s broadcasters commented on Oregon’s apparent lineup upset.

Buckeyes quarterback Will Howard lined up his unit with three receivers on the right and one (star freshman Jeremiah Smith) on the left. The extra defender was on the side with three wideouts, creating an imbalance that may have forced Howard to throw the other way. He lofted a pass to Smith around the 30-yard line that was broken up by Oregon cornerback Jabbar Muhammad.

Ohio State coaches immediately yelled at the officials that Oregon had too many players on the field and a flag was dropped. The Buckeyes got five yards closer to field goal range, but lost four seconds off the clock. In that situation, time mattered more than yards—Ohio State was likely down on one last play, and Howard erred by scrambling and sliding too late. The clock expired and the game was over. Oregon won.

In the following days, Lanning was asked if the penalty was intentional — sending 12 men out and creating a coverage look that would force Ohio State’s hand to throw to the other side of the field. Lanning never fully confirmed it, but indicated — with a laugh — that the Ducks gave up five yards on purpose in exchange for time off the clock.

“We spend a disproportionate amount of time on situations,” Lanning said. “There are some situations that don’t come up very often in college football, but this is one that was obviously something that we had been working on.”

Well, there was an Oregon-Ohio State rematch on January 1st in the Rose Bowl. And part of the Buckeyes’ pregame motivation, Kelly says, avenging tricks in Eugene.

“It was a unique message to our players that you can’t stop us with 11,” Kelly said Saturday. “You had to stop us by 12. And then you saw the final score of 11 to 11.”

Final score: Ohio State 41, Oregon 21. And it was worse than the score suggested, with the Buckeyes roaring to a 34–0 lead in the second quarter. For the Ducks, it was not pretty to play the Bucks directly.

“It was a message to our team in the week leading up to the Rose Bowl that I think really resonated with our guys,” said Kelly, who ironically is the most accomplished coach in Oregon history.

The aftermath of that Oregon-Ohio State I game forced an immediate rule change (called an “interpretation”) designed to prevent rewarding teams for taking late penalties:

“After the two-minute timeouts in either half, if the defense commits a substitution error and 12 or more players are on the field participating in a tackle, the officials will penalize the defense for the violation and, at the option of the offending team, reset the game clock to that point , which appears on the snap.

“The game clock will then restart on the next snap. If the 12th defender attempted to leave but was still on the field at the snap and had no impact on the play, the normal five-yard turnover penalty would be enforced without adjusting the clock.”