How Jim Knowles is improving the Ohio State Football team’s defense

After last year’s terrible defensive season, the Ohio State football program knew they needed a change. Ryan Day knew that he couldn’t let the offensive talent that he had go to waste. He decided to part ways with most of the defensive staff and went to work assembling a new one.

New defensive coordinator Jim Knowles already seems to be having an impact on the defense as a whole. Even though the Buckeyes have only had three Spring practices so far, there is already a noticeable change in how he coaches the defense vs. his predecessors.

Knowles has more of a teaching approach than Kerry Coombs or Matt Barnes did at DC last year. Instead of being laser-focused on “winning every drill”, Knowles is more concerned about teaching technique and knowledge of his defensive system. He thinks that will go a long way.

Day hasn’t let this go unnoticed either. Day mentioned to reporters how this is a change from what the program has had in the past. A change is exactly what this team needs after back-to-back disastrous seasons from a defense that is way too talented to perform like they did.

Knowles is just getting started implementing his system and the Ohio State football team has only had one practice in pads so far. There is still a lot more work that needs to be done. It is refreshing though to see Knowles wanting to teach these things now so he doesn’t have to during the season.

Getting better fundamentally is something this defense needed to do after some embarrassing performances last year. There were missed assignments, undisciplined angles to ball carriers, and a ton of missed tackles. It’s Knowles’ aim to eliminate all of those issues.

We probably won’t learn a lot about the defense in the Spring Game in terms of improved performance without tackling, so we’ll have to wait until Fall practice to see if things really take hold.