Matt Patricia has been the toast of the town in Columbus and beyond since Saturday for coming up with a game plan that bedeviled Texas quarterback Arch Manning and the Longhorns, but his boss wanted to be sure praise went all around during his weekly press conference to preview Ohio State’s game against Grambling this Saturday.
“Well, I think it was a very well-thought-out plan, but these weren't all of a sudden brand new coverages. There's only so many coverages you can play. You can play one, two, three, four. I mean, there's only a few of them. And when you're talking about great coaches like Tim Walton, Matt Guerrieri, James Laurinaitis, Larry Johnson, I mean, these guys know our players, and they know how to coach.
“So when Matt (Patricia) comes in and kind of has some wrinkles and different thoughts on how we want to attack it, they all work together in there.”
That’s a dynamic I was curious about when Patricia was hired. It sounds good in theory for him to come in and more or less act like a quality control agent while the holdovers from the staff try to recreate the winning formula of last season, but he’s making more than a million dollars and played a key role in multiple Super Bowl seasons with the Patriots.
He’s been a head coach in the NFL.
Egos are still a thing, especially in high-level sports, so would he actually come in and operate that way?
Would the rest of the staff actually receive him?
Apparently so on both counts, at least so far.
But that’s not all Day saw Saturday after watching the film.
“Now, that sounds great, but the players have to go put it on the field. And I think that's where the credit really needs to go. I mean, certainly it was a great plan. And you've got to give our coaches a lot of credit, but to see a guy like Jermaine Matthews, and he was all over the ball… and a guy like Caleb Downs, organizing, and talking, communicating, and making sure guys are in the right spots.
The guys up front fighting their tail off. Arvell [Reese] and Sonny [Styles] filling the holes, Peyton Pierce.”
Now, you might think that is coach-speak, and to a certain extent it is.
Of course praising the players is important both for their egos and confidence but also perhaps as a message to recruits, too.
“Hey guys, come here and ball out and the coach will make sure everyone knows you did!”
But I see another underlying issue here.
I couldn’t help but hear some of this as a response to the last three years.
Patricia’s predecessor, Jim Knowles, came to Ohio State regarded as a genuine guru.
He was described as a mad scientist who did things a certain way but got results (Oklahoma State was the top defense in the country statistically in 2021 under Knowles).
Then for 2.5 years the results were mixed at best. Yes, the Buckeyes improved significantly from 2020-21, but they couldn’t have gotten much worse.
They also failed their two biggest tests of 2022 (Michigan and Georgia) because the coordinator hung them out to dry with overly aggressive play calls.
A year later, Knowles threw the players under the bus after failing to force a punt in the second half at Michigan, lamenting no one made a play when he overcorrected and did little to stop the Wolverines from bleeding the clock.
(To be clear the main reason the Ohio State defense improved in 2022-24 was recruiting much better players in the back seven while the front four matured.)
We also didn’t get to see some of the most notable stuff Knowles had done in his previous stops — though we still wrote lots of stories about the “Leo” or “Jack” hybrid position anyway — and there was some confusion as to exactly why that was the case.
A story published by CBS Sports after Knowles left for Penn State in January confirmed some long-held suspicions, including that Knowles never went all-in with his scheme because it didn’t jibe with defensive line coach Larry Johnson’s love for four-man fronts.
CBS Sports also reported that Knowles didn’t take kindly to Day coming down hard on him after the defense was ripped apart at Oregon in the middle of last season.
If that is how it went down, it speaks very poorly of Knowles on multiple fronts.
He was hired to run his defense, not some bastardized version of it, so he needed to get everyone in line to do it before the middle of year three. That’s what the $2 million is for.
That said, if Day did put his foot down after the Oregon game (good for him), Knowles holding a grudge about it makes very little sense to me.
I mean, IT WORKED, most importantly. The defense got much better. It was far from perfect, but they played heavier up front, made life easier for the linebackers and figured out how to turn Caleb Downs loose (which was good because even after all that it took him making a couple of shoe-string tackles to save the Texas game).
Knowles got all the credit for that, too. The Guru finally guru’d, and the Buckeyes won the national championship.
All good, right?
I guess not. The grass is always greener for some people, but upon first blush Ohio State may be better without him anyway.
Something else Day said also sounded like a callback to a complaint he had early last season.
“You didn't just see wild rush lanes, and that’s unselfish as well because you did see some drop eight where you saw some guys [defensive linemen] in coverage.
“They're not in that moment rushing the quarterback, and then you saw some guys push the pocket and sort of hold their lanes as opposed to just wildly running up the field after the quarterback. That was all part of the game plan.
“And so when you're unselfish and you're not worried about your statistics, man, you can play great team defense. But that takes a bunch of buy-in from everybody.”
I don’t remember which game it was, but Day went on a mini-rant about just this thing early last season when he didn’t like how the front was playing too aggressively.
Is it a coincidence that wasn’t a problem Saturday with the defense under new management?
Seems unlikely.
For more from Tuesday, you can check out my YouTube channel where I am sharing interview highlights regularly, and as always please help spread the word about this newsletter by sharing it anywhere you see fit!