Oregon v Ohio State - A Tale of Two Stories - Part 6 - LB's

Today, I am going to look just at the LB's and here they are, both starters and reserves (I added the reserves because they tend to make an impact):

	SAM	MIKE	WILL
Oregon	Eddie Pleasant	Casey Matthews	Spencer Paysinger
	5-11,207,So	6-2,235,Jr	6-3,226,Jr
Reserves	Bryson Littlejohn	Kiko Alonso	Michael Clay
	6-1,227,Jr	6-4,225,RFr	5-11,209,Fr
	SAM	MIKE	WILL
Ohio State	Austin Spitler	Brian Rolle	Ross Homan
	6-3,234,Sr	5-11,221,Jr	6-0,229,Jr
Reserves	Etienne Sabino	Storm Klein	Tony Jackson
	6-3,232,So	5-11,227,So	6-3,225,Fr

And now let's look at what they contributed:

Ducks	Pleasant	Matthews	Paysinger	LittleJohn	Alonso	Clay	Totals
Tackles	50	72	72	9	15	30	248
TFLs	7	4	6.5	0	1	1	19.5
Sacks	4.5	2.5	1	0	0	1	9
Ints	1	1	0	0	0	0	2
BrUp	4	4	6.5	0	0	2	16.5
FF or FR	3	0	2	0	1	0	6
Block Kick	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Bucks	Spitler	Rolle	Homan	Sabino	Klein	Jackson	Totals
Tackles	38	91	96	6	10	1	242
TFLs	5	7	5	0.5	0	0	17.5
Sacks	1	0	2	0.5	0	0	3.5
Ints	1	1	4	0	0	0	6
BrUp	0	0	5	0	0	0	5
FF or FR	0	1	3	0	0	0	4
Block Kick	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

From a size standpoint, but squads match up quite equally.  Both squads have one 5-11 player and the other two being over 6 foot.  I am not sure I can give an advantage to either squad based on size alone.

Now for how they performed and the very first thing that pops out to me is that the starters for tOSU seem probably play the entire game and the Ducks do more rotation.  Howe did I come about this you ask?  Well if you look just at the starting three for each squad, you'll notice that the Ducks had 194 tackles compared to the Bucks 225.  Also notice that the reserves for the Bucks only accounted for 17 tackles compared to the Ducks reserves accounting for 54 tackles.

So what does this mean?  I would garner the argument that in the 4th quarter, the Duck LB's are going to be a little fresher on the legs, just a little.

As to the other stats, I was surprised that the only category that the Bucks lead is in the number of Ints they've snatched.  However, having said that, the differences are not that much except for the number of sacks and breakups.

Again, what does this mean?

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the Duck LB's are more mobile than the Buck LB's and I make that suggestion based on a couple of things here.  First is the sacks and TFL's, which means that the Duck LB's can and do get into the backfield.  Not that the Bucks don't either, it's just that with the higher quality and more mobile of QB's in the P10, the Ducks had more success at getting to their objective.  Second, the number of break ups is far and away more dominate with the Ducks, which would also indicate that on one play they are in the backfield and in the next (because it's now 3rd and long) play, they are defending the pass.

This is not saying that tOSU LB's aren't dominate, just that they faced offenses that may have not been as good as what the Ducks faced.  Case in point, tOSU didn't face an offense in the B10 ranked better than 34th in the nation with only two teams in the top 50.  The Ducks faced in the P10 a top 25 team, 2 top 30 teams and 4 top 50 teams.  I will get into the schedules on another day.

Suffice it to say, that these two squads match up very very well, however based on the numbers and the utilization of reserves, I would have to give the nod to the Ducks - but just barely.