When a person is part of something special, they don’t ever really leave. Even when they move on, their legacy remains in place, providing a time-release reinforcement of what they helped to build.
The legacy of cornerbacks at Ohio State goes back a long way, but it really picked up in the mid-1990s. In 1996, the Buckeyes had three future first-round cornerbacks on the roster in Shawn Springs, Antoine Winfield, and Ahmed Plummer. In 1998, they did it again with Winfield, Plummer, and Nate Clements. Nearly 20 years later in 2015, Ohio State had three first rounders for the second time in three years, this time with Eli Apple, Gareon Conley, and Marshon Lattimore.
What may look like familiar territory now for Ohio State and its cornerbacks really isn’t, however. Cornerbacks coach Kerry Coombs and his players are on an unprecedented pace. No school ever produced three first-round NFL draft picks in two years at corner before the Buckeyes did it in the 2016 and 2017 drafts. And the four first-round cornerbacks produced by OSU under Coombs are more than any other Big Ten team has had in the last 20 years. It’s the same number that Michigan has produced in the last 40 years.
Coombs deserves a ton of credit for adding to the Ohio State legacy at the position, but his former players who have moved on are making sure they are still involved in upholding the legacies they left behind.
“I’ll tell you a great story — Eli Apple texted me Thursday or Friday night after the first practice,” Coombs said. “And he is texting me about technique stuff. He had watched our guys practice. He had watched the film. He was on the eve of the Giants camp and he watched our guys’ film and he’s texting me about technique. So I came in the next day and I thought, ‘Man, this is great stuff. I can’t wait to share it with them.’”
What Coombs didn’t know was that his former players now in the NFL — Bradley Roby, Apple, Marshon Lattimore, and Gareon Conley — had been helping his current players all along.
“So I get them in there and I said, ‘Hey, listen guys, I gotta tell you something, Eli just texted me last night about you guys and this and this and this,'” he continued. “And they said, ‘Oh yeah, Coach, he texted us too.” I said, ‘What do you mean he texted you too?’ ‘Oh yeah, we’re in a group chat.’ They’re in a group chat. Eli, Gareon, Marshon, and Bradley are in a group chat with my current players and they’re all watching and coaching each other throughout camp. They don’t let me in on it, which is phenomenal. They talk about me I assume, I’m not in the chat. But what a great thing for four NFL guys to take that much interest in what’s going on in their unit.”
It took a lot of work to build what Ohio State has now at cornerback. Roby and company have all kinds of sweat equity built up and they don’t want to see their investments fall into disrepair. So they are in constant contact with current Buckeyes Denzel Ward, Damon Arnette, Kendall Sheffield, and everyone else who wants the kind of insight that only NFL cornerbacks can provide.
“They have that pride and they want those guys to excel,” Coombs said. “And what I’ve learned is learn from your players.”
Coombs and his current players have tapped into a well that the former players spent years drilling, and now it has created a fountain of knowledge that doesn’t look to be running dry any time soon.
The players just call it a group chat.
Woody Hayes, however, would call it paying forward.