Corey Dennis Named Ohio State Quarterbacks Coach

Corey Dennis, who has served as a senior quality control coach at Ohio State for the last two years, was just named the Buckeyes’ new quarterbacks coach.

He has spent the last two seasons working with the team’s quarterbacks and wide receivers.

Dennis replaces Mike Yurcich, who left to become the offensive coordinator at Texas.

The news isn’t a huge surprise, as it was reported on January 1, and even speculated upon a year before that when Ryan Day was looking to find his own replacement.

Dennis was a wide receiver and quarterback in high school, then played wide receiver for Georgia Tech from 2011 to 2014.

He cames to Ohio State as an intern in 2015 and earned a Master’s degree from OSU in 2017.

Dennis is married to Urban Meyer’s daughter, Nicki, and has two young sons.

In mid-December, it looked like Dennis and his family would be moving to Colorado.

New CSU head coach Steve Addazio had targeted Dennis to be his quarterbacks coach in Fort Collins.

On December 16, Day was asked about the report linking Dennis and Colorado State. He smiled, looked to a spokesman to ask if it had been officially announced, and then said, “I don’t know. I don’t know if they have or not yet. I don’t want to blow them up. I know he has a chance.”

At the time, it seemed like Dennis was clearly on his way out the door.

But when it became apparent that Yurcich’s position was likely to open, Dennis never made that move to Fort Collins.

In the past two years, Dennis has been a part of two of the most explosive offenses in Ohio State history.

The 2018 Buckeyes scored 42.4 points per game and averaged 535.6 yards en route to a 13-1 Rose Bowl championship season.

In 2019, they again went 13-1 and made the College Football Playoff. OSU averaged 46.9 points and 529.9 yards per game.

He will be the third person to hold the designation of quarterbacks coach in the last three seasons. But by retaining Dennis, the Buckeyes keep some continuity in the quarterback room during one of the best periods in program history.

The full release from Ohio State is below.

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Corey Dennis, a senior quality control coach with The Ohio State University football team for the past two seasons, has been named the team’s quarterbacks coach by Buckeye head coach Ryan Day. Dennis has been on Ohio State’s staff the past five seasons, including working the past two seasons with Day, wide receivers coach Brian Hartline and the Buckeyes’ quarterbacks and receivers.

“Corey is a talented young coach and someone I’ve worked closely alongside for three seasons,” Day said in making the announcement. “He knows our system and he knows how we teach. I think he is going to allow us to develop some continuity in the quarterback room, and that’s important. I also believe that he is going to be an excellent recruiter for us.”

Dennis was elevated to a senior quality control coach position with the football program in July 2018. In this new position, Dennis had increased off-field coaching responsibility in the areas of game planning, practice planning and daily organization with both the wide receiver and quarterback units.

These past two seasons have been two of the most celebrated offensive campaigns in recent school history, with two Ohio State quarterbacks – Dwayne Haskins in 2018 and Justin Fields in 2019 – becoming Heisman Trophy finalists as well as Big Ten Quarterback and Player of the Year. The duo combined for 91 touchdown passes. Ohio State has also produced back-to-back seasons with four receivers reaching at least 1,000 career receiving yards, including Parris Campbell, who set the single-season receptions record of 90 in 2018, and K.J. Hill, who broke the 21-year-old career receptions record this year with 203 career catches.

Dennis previously worked as a graduate assistant coach on offense for the 2016 and 2017 seasons, working primarily with the Buckeye receivers, and as an intern in 2015. He has been a part of three consecutive Big Ten Conference championship teams at Ohio State and also victories in the 2019 Rose Bowl, the 2018 Cotton Bowl and the 2016 Fiesta Bowl.

A high school team captain while at Charles Henderson High, Dennis was recruited to Georgia Tech as a wide receiver but ultimately ended up doing much more for coach Paul Johnson’s Yellow Jackets. He played receiver, played in the defensive secondary and was a key special teams performer between 2011 and 2014. He finished his career by playing in all 54 games for Tech teams that won two ACC Coastal Division titles and also played in four bowl games.

Dennis graduated from Georgia Tech in December 2014 with his degree in business administration. He joined the Ohio State staff as an intern in time for the 2015 spring season. He has since earned his master’s degree in sports management from Ohio State, graduating in 2017.

Dennis and his wife, Nicki, also a Georgia Tech graduate and who was a four-year student-athlete with the school’s volleyball team, reside in Dublin with their young sons, Troy and Gray.