Ohio State Football: Matt Barnes has made defense better

The Ohio State football team looks like a completely different team than the one that lost to Oregon in Week 2. That team was a team that was a complete mess on the defensive side of the ball. They couldn’t stop anyone from running the ball all over them.

Oregon gashed the Buckeyes to the tune of 400+ yards on the ground. The Buckeyes also ended up losing because of that poor defensive effort. After that game, a lot of people, including myself, wanted to have Kerry Coombs fired immediately.

While Ryan Day didn’t do that, he did take the play-calling duties away from Coombs and moved him up to the booth to coach. He then moved Matt Barnes into the play-calling role. Something had to be done, and Day decided this was the best course of action.

Since that move was made, the defense has looked much better. The Tulsa game was the first game that this move was instituted. The defense wasn’t great in that one, but that was the first game that this move was made, and some growing pains were expected.

After that, the Buckeyes played much better defense against Rutgers and Maryland. They now have had a pick-six in the last four games as well. Their defense has been able to create big plays, even if they haven’t been able to play great all of the time.

So far, having Barnes in charge of the offense has been a great move. With an offense as high-powered as they have, they just need to have an average defense to win games. That should be good enough for them to make the Playoff too because they would win the rest of their games.

The rest of the schedule starts to toughen up a bit the rest of the way. We’ll see if Ohio State can keep up that solid defensive play.