Tiernan;598846 wrote:^^^
OK fine...I'll blame him for those too. TWHPIH lost 4 NCs for the Buckeyes.
Tress is a great coach and makes few mistakes as grave as replacing Zwick just because Hamby can't catch a pass his grandmother probably doesn't miss. I will maintain until I die that had Hamby caught that pass, we never hear of TWHPIH again, Bucks beat both TX and PSU and roll undefeated the following year too with back to back NCs. Zwick became a pariah and suffered from shell - shock around the team. But the mechanics that kid had were so far beyond anything TWHPIH ver hoped to have. A dark stain on the Tressel legacy that according to some close to the man say still bothers him because he knows the quality person Zwick is compared to the punk TWHPIH turned out to be.
Pardon my ignorance but what does TWHPIH mean?
I agree that Zwick should have stayed in during the Texas game in 2005 and if he had I do believe that we would have won that game, however, I also don't have any doubt in my mind that Smith would have been the starter the following week (or even had Zwick started the following week Smith would have come in and played the majority of the time and been starting the next week). The problem for Smith against Texas was that it was his first game of the season. If that game was the following week I think he probably would have played better. Smith had earned the starting job by the end of the previous year and proved that he deserved to be the starter with his performance against Michigan that year (arguably the greatest single performance by an OSU player in the history of the rivalry). I think it was also very clear that while Zwick had better mechanics Troy brought another element to the offense with his running ability (which was desperately needed in 2004 when Lydell Ross was our running back) and it seemed VERY obvious to me and most covering the team at the time that Troy was a better leader and that the offensive players responded better to him in the huddle. Mechanically Troy may not have been the better QB, but he had more of the intangibles than Zwick did. Even if Zwick played the majority of the Texas game giving the Bucks the win (which I believe would have happened) I still believe that Smith would have eventually become the starter again. It's hard to argue against a guy who won by the largest landslide in Heisman Trophy history.
The truth is though that we don't know what would have happened. Maybe we still would have lost to Texas and Penn State and maybe even Michigan if Zwick had been the starter. Maybe we would have beaten Texas if Smith would have started and played the whole game if Zwick had remained o the sidelines. We just don't know and all we can do is speculate on what could have been. But let's be honest, Joe Montana in his prime could have started against Florida and OSU still would have lost by two scores.
