Carry On Waiting
Ohio State is still without a defensive backs coach to replace Jeff Hafley who left for Boston College after the season.
It is nearing an open secret at the moment that Buckeye head coach Ryan Day has his sights set on Tennessee Titans defensive backs coach Kerry Coombs, who was the cornerbacks coach at Ohio State from 2012 through 2017.
The fact that no other names have emerged only fuels the rumors. The problem currently, however, is that Coombs and the Titans are in the middle of an impressive NFL playoff run, playing this weekend for an AFC Championship.
Day spoke with reporters on Wednesday and was asked about the Coombs rumors and if a hire had already been made. He declined to get into any names.
“No, we haven’t hired anyone yet,” he said. “Still going through it all. Just go from there. I’m not going to go through that right now.
Day was also asked where the new coach would be situated — either in the press box or on the sideline. Hafley was up in the press box, while Coombs has always been on the sideline.
“We haven’t hired anybody yet,” he said. “Once we go about the business of hiring somebody we’ll figure that out.”
How High is Two High?
When Ryan Day brought in his new defensive staff prior to the 2019 season, he did it wanting a single-high safety defense with four down linemen.
That’s what he got, and the results were fantastic.
The Buckeyes finished with the No. 4 scoring defense, No. 9 rushing defense, No. 1 pass efficiency defense, and No. 1 total defense nationally.
Day has already said that despite losing three starters from the secondary and having the need to replace Jordan Fuller as the deep safety, the one-high look will remain.
On Wednesday, he doubled down on that thought, but added a caveat.
“Yeah, that’s kind of our base,” he said of the one-high safety. “We definitely can get to a 2-high look and we will. We’re going to diversify a little bit more this year, but certainly we don’t want to change our philosophy. We kind of built that this year. We thought we made some great strides there. Certainly not perfect. But we’re going to keep the structure of what it is now, but we’re going to diversify a little bit as we move forward.”
No More Room at the Horseshoe Inn
Ohio State was scheduled to host Georgia running back Jahmyr Gibbs on an official visit this weekend, but that visit is now off because the Buckeyes don’t really have the room.
Ohio State already has a running back committed in 3-star Ohioan Miyan Williams. Williams rushed for 5,823 yards and 68 touchdowns in high school, finishing with 992 yards as a senior.
There was thought that the Buckeyes would try to add a second running back to the class, but Day said on Wednesday that it was unlikely.
“The numbers are pretty tight right now. So probably not,” he said. “But we’ll kind of see how things go.”
At this point it looks like the Buckeyes are done at running back unless something changes.
