Ohio State football: Do Bucks even need a co-defensive coordinator?

Now that Greg Mattison has retired, the Ohio State football team no longer has a co-defensive coordinator. Do they even need one?

The Ohio State football team has liked to use co-offensive and co-defensive coordinators dating back to Urban Meyer. It seems that the program likes to split up duties. While it can just be a title that gets an assistant a pay raise, it does ultimately matter who calls the plays.

With Greg Mattison off into retirement, the Buckeyes no longer have a co-defensive coordinator. Now they just have Kerry Coombs. He still coaches the secondary and calls most of the defensive plays. The question now is if the Buckeyes even need a co-defensive coordinator.

If Ryan Day likes what Coombs is doing and has the potential to do, it wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to have another guy brought in to be a co-DC. If you want to have someone with that title, then it would make more sense to promote Al Washington to that title than bring someone else in.

Better yet, just give Coombs the full title. He already calls the plays and does all of the defensive formations as it is. Then if the defense suffers like it did this year, you can get rid of him and move on. If the defense improves, then Coombs can get full credit as he deserves.

If I were to guess what Day is going to do, it would be to promote Washington to co-DC. Larry Johnson is already the associate head coach and doesn’t really want to be a coordinator. It makes sense to give Washington that title if the title really matters that much.

I would be shocked to see Day hire someone else from outside to take the co-defensive coordinator title. Honestly, it just wouldn’t make sense.