Ohio State Football: Make-or-break year for Kerry Coombs

The Ohio State football team must show some improvement in their defense this season. This is a make-or-break year for Defensive Coordinator Kerry Coombs.

2021 will be year two for Kerry Coombs being the Defensive Coordinator for the Ohio State football team. Year one did not quite go as planned. He watched his defense get torched up and down the field all season long, including embarrassingly in the National Championship Game.

Now he’s had a full offseason to be with his guys and make some adjustments. He knows who he wants playing where. Ryan Day gives him full jurisdiction to do what he wants with the defense. This is the year he has to show that that sort of power is justified.

Coombs’ unit has a lot of questions to answer from a year ago. They weren’t able to get to the quarterback at a high rate. That should fix itself after the Buckeyes brought in five-star defensive ends Jack Sawyer and J.T. Tuimoloau. There’s no reason the sack totals shouldn’t come up now.

The biggest problem is the pass defense. Ohio State had the 6th-worst pass defense when it comes to yards per game in the country, averaging a whopping 304 yards given up a game. It’s honestly amazing that they were able to make it all the way to that final game.

As I said yesterday, the pass defense doesn’t need to be great. It just needs to be not terrible like it was last season. The offense should be able to win this team games on its own. The defense just has to be average and let the offense take care of the rest.

If the defense can’t even muster that, then Day might need to be looking for a new DC. Coombs has to show that he can improve if he wants to keep his job for 2022.