COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — How two new coordinators would perform was among the biggest questions facing Ohio State entering the 2025 college football season.
Their demeanor this week as the top-ranked Buckeyes take a breather from the first month of the season probably said all anyone needed to know about how it’s going so far.
But if there was any doubt, offensive coordinator Brian Hartline and defensive coordinator Matt Patricia actually said it out loud, too.
“I think that it’s been awesome,” Hartline
said. “I think I’ve really enjoyed it. I think I love the connection with the guys. I love the interaction I have across the board with the personnel.”
The team’s fulltime receivers coach since 2019, Hartline had the title of offensive coordinator for the past two years, but this is the first season he is calling plays. That was still head coach Ryan Day’s duty two years ago, and Chip Kelly handled it last season en route to a national title before leaving to become the offensive coordinator for the Las Vegas Raiders.
“I think that every chance you’re in that situation or you get an opportunity to call a game, there’s an opportunity to learn and grow,” Hartline said. “And frankly, I do it daily with coach Day, but to be out there doing it live, there’s nothing like those kind of reps.”
The Buckeyes (3-0) maintained a conservative game plan for new starting quarterback Julian Sayin in a 14-7 win over then-No. 1 Texas to open the season before opening it up the last two weeks in comfortable wins over Grambling State and Ohio.
With no game this weekend, Hartline and crew and crew have an opportunity to look more closely about what has worked and what hasn’t.
“Let’s do a good job of being organized through that bye and then come out of the bye ready to haul until that next break we have,” Hartline said.
While Hartline has been back in Columbus since 2017, Patricia just arrived so he has had a crash course in getting to know the players on the roster.
So far, the long-time New England Patriots assistant and former head coach for the Detroit Lions likes what he has seen.
“These guys have been unbelievable to go into the meeting room,” said Patricia, who last coached in college at Syracuse in 2003. “And I think I’ve said this before, but it’s such a joy to be around these guys. There is that professionalism that you walk into the meeting room, they’re very serious. They take notes. They want to learn what the game plan is. They really want to learn about the opponent, but then there’s just that also joy of, like, they are young kids.
“They just have that youthful energy about them. They love the game for the game. It’s just all of that stuff being around younger players that just come out of them.”
With the Big Ten opener at Washington set for next Saturday, both coaches talked about the challenge of going on the road for the first time and playing in front of what has the potential to be a loud, hostile crowd, but they also described being more worried about continuing to develop their units.
“We’re going to keep building out our personnel packages to do different, vastly different things so you don’t get a bead on things, but it ultimately comes down to the players that make the things go,” Hartline said. “So they’ve done a really good job of that.”
Both have overseen a somewhat significant amount of change both in personnel and scheme.
On offense, Ohio State has a new starting quarterback, new starting tackles and new starting running backs, but more than that the Buckeyes have utilized multi-tight end sets more frequently than at any time in the past decade-plus.
Ohio State’s base defense is still a 4-2-5, but Patricia has utilized the roster — much larger than he was used to in the NFL — to craft multiple packages, including a new five-man “Penny” front with a true nose guard and athletic edge rushers in a two-point stance.
“It’s been fun having that many pieces, that much depth,” Patricia said. “And we have young guys in those positions, too, but being able to put out different sub packages or different base packages and put some of those guys in those positions has been really good. And I think those guys earned an opportunity to go play, so to be able to have that much opportunity to do that with those guys has been really good.”
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