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The most interesting things I heard at Ohio State on Tuesday involved Ryan Day on assistant coaches — new and old.
We covered nitty gritty football issues last week, so there wasn’t as much talk about that this time around with a hobbled Penn State team coming to town.
He did preview the Nittany Lions a bit, so you can look for more on that later in the week, but this is more big picture stuff.
Of course he said Penn State is no average 3-4 team, and there is some truth to that, but again we’ll worry about that at the end of the week.
Assistant coach is an unavoidable topic this week because Jim Knowles fled back to his homeland after riding Caleb Downs and an experienced front seven to a national championship-caliber defense after coming up small in the big games his first two seasons in Columbus.
He nearly blew the Notre Dame game watching his corners get repeatedly torched in man coverage while protecting a big lead, but I was curious to see what he would do with a new pack of players after having some ups and downs trying to figure out how to make his schemes work with five-star guys like J.T. Tuimoloau and Jack Sawyer.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I was excited by the Knowles hire because it seemed like just about exactly what I had been saying Ohio State needed: A guy with a scheme that worked because it was good not because it had unbelievable players in it.
Of course no scheme works without players, but there has to be a happy medium there somewhere.
I guess Knowles found it last year after two years of trial and error — first he was too aggressive then not aggressive enough — but I’ll never be convinced it would have actually worked without the unbelievable versatility of Downs, who had multiple touchdown-saving tackles against Texas.
In an unbelievable bit of irony, Matt Patricia (and I had my doubts when he was hired) has come in and done all the things Knowles never did, most notably install new fronts and get along with the other assistant coaches.
“But the fact that Matt was available, man, it ended up being a home run. And so just being thorough and making sure we're doing what's right by the players, I think getting some of their feedback is important. Talking to Caleb, talking to Sonny, what do you guys think about this?
And then the last part, which is probably the most important part is getting the feedback of the assistant coaches. Because, you know, Tim, James, Larry, Matt, they have to work with whoever this guy is who comes in. And that's probably the part that maybe isn't getting recognized enough because, yeah, Jim did a great job last year.
Matt's doing a great job this year. But what's the common denominator? Those coaches and the players.
Day was also more specific in what defensive line coach Larry Johnson did this year to help make things work.
“I think for him, this style of defense is just a little bit different. So I think it's given him a little bit of a challenge to learn something new. You're seeing it's not just all four-down front, although you still see a lot of four-down front. So there's still so many things that he teaches that's the same way that it's been his whole career. But he's also getting challenged in other areas, and I think for him, it's exciting because it is something a little new.
Why Johnson could not do this before when Knowles’ defense called for a hybrid three-man-type front has yet to be explained, but the most obvious answer would seem to be maybe Knowles sucks at dealing with other people.
He’s the tortured genius who can go in a dark room and come up with a great game plan, but perhaps is people skills are lacking.
For what it’s worth, his media appearances were often weird because it seemed like he wanted to have deep football conversations but then at the same time he would bristle at many football questions and often respond in passive aggressive, pandering tones — pretending to respect the question when he really didn’t.
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Hearing the Ohio State players casually diss him has been somewhat shocking, too, both because he had a reputation as a coach players love before he got here (and some did here I’m sure) and because it’s just been really rare in my time covering the team.
Day took the high road Tuesday when Knowles came up, but he did leave a breadcrumb or two to let you know where he actually stands on the issue of Knowles leaving for a Big Ten foe even as he avoided coming out and saying it.
“I think it goes back to what we were saying earlier just about how college football and how it's changed and the money and everything like that. It's just you're seeing some things that maybe we're not used to. But I guess when you look at the NFL, you see more of that than you would in college. But I guess we're getting more like the NFL.
“So we try not to take those things personal, but we are human.”
These days that counts as being candid for a football coach, and I respect Day both for being willing to do it and pulling off such a rhetorical feat.
If you want to see more of what's being said during Ohio State interviews, check out my YouTube channel.
Otherwise, I’ll be back with more later this week!