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OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 9, 2017

Urban Meyer

Columbus, Ohio

Oklahoma - 31, Ohio State - 16

COACH MEYER: I'll take any questions from you guys.

Q. At times you guys got in the red zone, you just couldn't make the third down play, whatever it was you needed. You had opportunities early in the game. And, I don't know, just in some sense, what do you come away with that you guys gotta get cleaned up/down there?
COACH MEYER: Yeah, it was awful. And we got beat by a good team, a very good team and a quarterback that was dynamic. I thought our defense hung in there against, like I said, a very good player.

Offense was bad. So we're going to do what we do and that's go back to work as hard as we possibly can, starting somewhat tonight and tomorrow and figure this thing out.

Q. You expected, I'm sure, improvement from week one to week two. Had a long time to try to fix the passing game. Do you have any explanation for what the real struggles are with the passing game.
COACH MEYER: It's not one thing; it's several things. So to answer your question, I have some ideas that we're going to work on as a staff. I'm not going to share that right now.

Q. How do you evaluate what J.T. did tonight? Is it another one of those situations where the receivers weren't helping or do you put anything on him for this one at all?
COACH MEYER: Well, the starting quarterback and you lost. We didn't play very well. A lot of it is going to be on him. But a lot of it, until I watch the tape, that's just the nature of the beast.

Last week we threw the ball decently and had 300 yards passing, and this week we did not. And you guys, I've been here, I think, six years now, I'm never going to point a finger at a quarterback.

I'm going to say he's the head dog and he holds -- he's accountable. But without watching the film I have an idea that all three phases of the pass game need to improve, protection.

And they do a good job. They drop -- both teams we've played now, they're dropping in the coverage a lot. So we just have to keep evaluating what we're doing.

But I'm going to make it perfectly clear, there's not a bull's eye on J.T. Barrett. It's part of the system and a group that have to get better.

Q. Fans maybe, media, maybe coaches, too, are sometimes prisoners of the moment. What would this week be like for you? Do you see positions being up for grabs? Is this going to be a drastic kind of thing?
COACH MEYER: We just finished a game, so I'll evaluate that after we go, and we gotta go beat Army is what we have to do and get on a roll. That's what we have to do. You've seen a roll around here a few times. So that's what has to happen.

Q. You seem to get the running game going with J.K., especially after the second half after Parris Campbell's big kickoff return, and then kind of got away from that. What was just your feeling how, I guess, the game was called as it went along, offensively?
COACH MEYER: I wasn't happy with it. So we'll just keep reevaluating and I saw what you saw. J.K. was hitting the ball pretty hard and doing some good things. Mike Weber did some good things. And we're just not getting enough flow on offense. And I'm seeing the same things you guys are seeing.

Q. I know you just said that there's no bull's eye on the back of J.T. Barrett, but I think there's a large portion of this fan base that would like to see or are wondering if there's a possibility that you would ever even consider a change. Is that something that you will look at? Have you thought about --
COACH MEYER: No. No.

Q. And did you think that J.T., in the course of the game, is it hard for him, do you think he might have lost a little bit mentally in terms of just the kind of the way things were going for him? As the game was going on, things weren't going that well, he was missing throws he would usually make?
COACH MEYER: Let me watch the film. We just walked off the field 15 minutes ago. So I'll let you know -- we've seen him play exceptional and he will play exceptional last week.

Q. Obviously you've been talking about the passing issues since last season. Does this feel like the same kind of things, or do you feel like it's different things that are leading to this?
COACH MEYER: Just walked off the field 15 minutes ago, so I don't want to overreact. So I get it -- I'm not disrespecting you, but before I had a tendency to -- let me just digest it, see what's going on.

I feel the same pressure as everyone here to get very good at the pass game. We've worked extremely hard at it. It wasn't good tonight. We've got to get the damn thing fixed, and we will.

Q. So, emotionally where are you right now? Are you just frustrated? Are you angry at all? Are you confused? Why this is still happening?
COACH MEYER: No, just all the above. I've got a team to go coach. And we'll be hard at work tomorrow. We lost a game. We lost a game to a good team. Didn't play very well. Get back to work and get better.

It's a long season. Long season. This is -- when you blow out a younger team -- smaller team or a team that's not very good, that doesn't -- we were challenged first half against Indiana, didn't play very well and played very well in the second half. This game we didn't play very well. So we'll go back at it and it's a long, long season. Good players.

Q. Baker Mayfield, the game he played --
COACH MEYER: He's a good player, really good player. And I told him afterwards. Got a lot of respect. I love his competitiveness and energy. We had him wrapped up, I want to say, eight times and he came out of that thing. So a very good player. And move on.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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