Dont really think the type of D made the difference, it was the poise and confidence that Earle displayed. He grew up during the off week, night and day.
It makes a huge difference. VT essentially presses and contests every throw. They play their safeties down, bring more pressure, essentially just create a lot more stress on the offense. Ohio State played the whole first half with two high safeties. They basically only rushed 4 the whole half also. This equals more time and open windows in the middle of the field if the oline holds up, which it did. This gave Metcalf a lot more room to operate. Stone targeted him 9 times and he had 8 catches.
Even after his game Saturday, Stone is still 13th in the conference in completion percentage and is 12th in yards per attempt and yards per pass. That means a lot of short passes, which should mean a better than 53% completion rate.
He did play better Saturday, but Ohio State stayed very vanilla because they knew they could just out-athlete us. Let?s see how he does against WMU and App, teams that will mix up their coverages and blitz.