Ohio State Football: Offensive staff getting crowded

The Ohio State football team has a new offensive line coach in Justin Frye. He comes in after Ryan Day made the decision to move on from Greg Studrawa. Frye comes in with clear expectations on how to coach the offensive line and will likely also be the run game coordinator.

With Frye coordinating the run game, Brian Hartline coordinating the passing game, and Day overseeing the entire offense, that leaves some confusion for another member on that staff. That staff member is Kevin Wilson, who is currently the offensive coordinator.

Wilson also coaches the tight ends in addition to his role as OC. But the tight ends seem to have a shrinking role in this offense. Jeremy Ruckert was hardly used this season after all of the preseason talk about how he was going to dominate mismatches.

With that being the case, what exactly does Wilson do? He doesn’t recruit at a high level because most of the offensive recruits are here to play under Day or Hartline or Tony Alford. It’s a bit confusing now that the Buckeyes have decided to cram a bunch of offensive minds together who do generally the same things.

I have no idea what this means for Wilson’s future with the Ohio State football program. He seems like a valued member of the staff from the way Day talks about him. There have been no rumbles of him being forced out for any reason. He could get a shot at another head coaching job at a smaller school, but that would have happened already if he was going to do that in 2022.

Wilson seems like he could be valued more elsewhere in my opinion. I actually think keeping Wilson on the staff is a good idea because he helps Day come up with some great offensive concepts. But overlapping duties with other coaches makes less sense.

We’ll see what happens in the next few days. I’d be surprised if Wilson left, but I don’t see how much value he’s going to be able to bring to the Buckeyes in 2022.