Ohio State Football: Defensive versatility needed more than ever

For most of the last two decades, the Ohio State football team has run a basic 4-3 as their base defense. All of the previous defensive coordinators liked that base defense and wanted to keep that as the defense that everything came out of. There wasn’t a ton of versatility in those sets.

Versatility is what was needed last season. Instead, Kerry Coombs and Matt Barnes barely changed up any looks when the defense got shredded. They just kept doing the same thing that got them shredded, and it ended up in two losses in an embarrassing fashion.

With Jim Knowles coming in, versatility is needed now more than ever. The personnel needs to be versatile in what they can do because Knowles wants many different looks coming from his 4-2-5 base set. No two looks are going to be the same because he wants to dictate the pace of the game.

Ohio State has a few months to figure out what that versatility will look like. They have to figure out what players fit the best in what positions to make this defense tough to stop. It’s what made Oklahoma State a top-five defense while Knowles was there last season.

If the versatility increases, then the amount of turnovers and stops the Buckeyes get should also increase. They should have players running at the quarterback from all kinds of different places and angles to confuse teams in the passing game.

On running plays, expect Knowles to bring defenders in from different gaps to stop backs after only a couple of yards. This may not be the type of defense that gets a lot of tackles for loss on run plays, but they won’t allow the big running plays either. Those are the plays that killed Ohio State last season.

I’m interested to see who Knowles thinks is the most versatile player on the defense.