My thoughts on your bullets in order:
* I don't believe people meant immediately. Long before Riley was hired people have been discussing roster mismanagement, e.g., DE, LB, etc. Riley has inherited better starting talent at certain positions (e.g., Collins, Valentine); however, their impact is being muted because other positions like DE are horrendous right now. Our tackles are getting doubled and/or chipped and that's no problem for opposing teams because they are dominating 1v1 against our DEs. That is difficult to handle unless you blitz aggressively; however, we have zero LBs on the roster and both RI and Bando are banged up. If this kind of defensive performance were happening in year four I'd be very concerned and openly critical. Right now? Not so much.
There is no doubt we are thin in some positions especially on Defense - The DE was hurt by some bad recruiting and attrition - The LB was hurt by attrition and also some poor recruiting - However Riley has much talent on the offensive side than he ever had at OSU - he also has a true dual threat QB that he has not had probably ever - however we do not choose to use him as a dual threat????
* I don't know that I'd say no change. We have decide on more passing because on OL is unable to consistently get a push and our RB options simply aren't great. I'm interested to see how things progress over the next couple of years on the offensive system front.
Being on West coast and having a good friend who had a son play for OSU and Riley and was a fan I have casually followed OSU for years - Trust me this is the same offense same plays same issues for that matter - We say we RB problems yet we have seen one back Newby no one else has gotten any real playing time how do we know Wilbon will not do any better until we see him get a carry. How about that late highly rated RB addition is he hurt?
* I'm all for substantive posts about coaching but I'm not sure we are seeing that. For example, everyone is calling out Reed all the time. Why? Brown was spotty last year, DPE is hurt and Westy has done a nice job in his absence, Foltz is hurt and we have no back-up, and our coverage has otherwise been good. People need to explain what they are seeing from a coaching perspective that is causing them to have concern.
Watching our kickoff and punt coverage I would bet we give up a very damaging return at some point this year. Most of y concern on him comes from watching OSU play - He is not a good coach imo
* Most certainly. I think the biggest concern is the slow start mentality. This was a problem the last couple years as well. I'm not blaming Pelini exclusively as Riley and staff have to have our guys ready to play; however, this does appear to be something that has been continuous across the last and current staff.