Ohio State head coach Ryan Day is coming off a year in which he went from many fans wanting him fired after the Michigan loss to becoming an Ohio State coaching legend by winning the National Championship. As often happens when a team has a great year, other programs want to poach their best coaches to try tap into that success.
Thus, Ohio State lost Offensive Coordinator Chip Kelley to the NFL’s Las Vegas team and then Defensive Coordinator Jim Knowles to rival Penn State.
This week it was announced Ryan Day would replace Knowles by hiring long-time NFL coach and former New England Patriots Defensive Coordinator Matt Patricia. It was a surprising and controversial pick that has generated wildly varying thoughts.
I will look provide my positives, negatives and other thoughts on the hire, but first here is a word of advice on this news. DON’T LISTEN to either Michigan or Ohio State followers feedback on this. Their hatred for each on such things blinds them and makes their analysis extremely one sided.
I also list how big of a factor each item is as High, Medium or Low.
REPORT: Ohio State Buckeyes Hire Matt Patricia for Defensive Coordinator
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Positives of Hiring DC Matt Patricia
1) Patricia’s has strong defensive experience and acumen (High)
Patricia’s defensive expertise has been built under years coaching under maybe the greatest pro football defensive mind ever in Bill Belichick.
I have seen some paint this as Patricia never really was a good Defensive Coordinator for six years in New England because it was Bill Belichick who was calling all the shots and the main driver of the Patriots defense in helping to win their 6 overall Super Bowls. No doubt Belichick was heavily involved in defensive game planning and key decisions. But there is no way a coach of his caliber would have someone on his staff in a key role like Patricia was who wasn’t a strong defensive mind and added a lot of value.
Coaching under Belichick means Patricia has faced virtually every kind of offense in the NFL and knows how to successfully game plan against it.
2) Brings NFL concepts to the Ohio State defense which should make it more flexible and effective (Medium)
This follows a trend in college football of hiring NFL coaches who bring more sophisticated concepts to the college level. Ohio State’s biggest rival Michigan has used this extensively for their recent Defensive Coordinator hires.
Defensive systems leveraging NFL concepts also has very strong appeal to recruits with NFL aspirations, which for Ohio State is EVERY recruit.
To be clear though, Patricia is not being hired by Ohio State to recruit. Jim Knowles did not play a major role in recruiting either. He is being hired to scheme and create great game plans. Ohio State has great assistants that will retain doing the bulk of recruiting.
3) Ability to leverage truly superior defensive talent for the first time (High)
New England’s year after year success meant the Patriots never had high draft picks, so on offense and defense, beyond Tom Brady they typically did not have elite talent to work with and yet produced very effective defenses. Some may cite how the Patriots were not statistically that great on defense, but that reflects the talent they had to work with as well.
At Ohio State, for the first time Patricia will have superior talent to work with in developing the Ohio State scheme and game plans to shut down opposing offenses. The Patriot way is to identify the other team’s biggest strengths and then game plan to take those away and force other players to beat you. The better the talent you have, the easier it will be to execute that strategy.
4) This is likely a Short-term (“Bridge”) hire anyway to groom existing OSU Assistants to take over as Defensive Coordinator (High)
Before Patricia was hired, there was thought Ohio State would promote either Assistant Head Coach and Secondary/Cornerbacks coach Tim Walton or Safeties coach Matt Guerrieri to DC, since Ryan Day has spoken so highly of him. I think this hire may have been meant to be short-term anyway to better groom these assistants to take on the roll as Ryan Day may have felt they are not quite ready yet.
As part of the Patricia announcement, they promoted Walton to co-Defensive Coordinator and Guerrieri to Passing Game Coordinator. They both worked under Jim Knowles of course, getting exposed to all his ideas and now they will get exposed to the NFL defensive concepts that Patricia will bring. And because they are strong recruiters their promotions help ensure they keep that focus so Patricia can focus on game planning.
Negatives of Hiring DC Matt Patricia
There are several legitimate concerns about the hire though.
1) Lack of College Experience (Medium)
Patricia last coached in college as a Grad Assistant at Syracuse from 2001 to 2003. Though this lack of experience is a legit concern, I give this a medium weight due to how the college and pro games are now closer in style than they have ever been. The NFL has adopted many college-oriented concepts like RPOs and the college game continues to try to bring in more sophisticated NFL like concepts.
When Ohio State comes up against offenses that might not be seen much in the NFL, that is where the strong experience of the OSU defensive assistants will come into play.
2) The lack of success as the Head Coach for Detroit Lions is a warning sign (Low)
I am listing this as a negative since some want to make a big deal out of this, but I don’t equate success as a Head Coach with a coach’s abilities as a Coordinator at all. There are TONS of examples of great coordinators who just don’t make good head coaches. So many that I am not going to even bother to list them here.
Of course, just last year look at the criticism Ohio State received hiring Chip Kelly as their OC and by all accounts he did a great job in helping them win a Championship.
3) Abrasive personality raises questions on how well he can connect with and coach college players and collaborate with OSU assistants (High)
This is the biggest concern. Patricia is a disciple of Bill Belichick so it probably wasn’t a surprise that in his Head Coaching stint in Detroit he formed a reputation for being abrasive and not connecting with people. This may have been a primary reason for his failure. Taking on the personality of someone who is successful vs. being his own coach, with his own style.
When you are winning big like Belichick did you can get away with being abrasive and rather rude. Think of Bobby Knight for Indiana basketball as well. If you are not winning, you can’t.
It is well known that this young generation wants to know the “Why” are we doing something and not just be told the “What” you need to be doing. This will be much stronger at the college vs the pro level as well because when a player is not under contract like they are in the NFL, you need to be more careful with how you treat them.
But, all good coaches learn from their failures and adjust so I assume Patricia will be able to do the same. If not, this could be a problem for Ohio State.
4) Past personal issue raises red flags (Low)
Back in 1996, Patricia was arrested and later indicted on charges of sexual assault. The charges were later dropped. Anything tied to sexual assault should be taken seriously and is a concern. This is where organizations need to do their “due diligence” and understand the full reasons and background behind any such incident.
Given this happened 29 years ago and Patricia has worked for many organizations since then, I have to assume the risk on this is low, but it must be mentioned.
Final Thoughts
Some may want to list “lack of recruiting acumen” as a negative as well, but as I wrote earlier, many college Coordinators don’t play large recruiting roles anyway and Ohio State has very strong recruiting from their Assistant Coaches making this a very minor factor.
In Ryan Day’s six-year tenure at Ohio State, he has only really had one bad assistant hire which was naming Kerry Coombs as Defensive Coordinator where he served in the role in 2020 and 2021.
Coombs was known as a great recruiter but game planning and play calling was not his strength, so it didn’t work out well as the Buckeye defense performed very poorly those two years.
Patricia is being hired for his game planning and play calling. And Ryan Day is a meticulous individual, so it’s hard to imagine he hasn’t vetted out this hire and feels very comfortable it will work.
I think as long as Patricia is willing to collaborate with the strong staff OSU has and is able to connect with the players, he should do well before handing the DC reigns to someone else. But no doubt about it. This hire was surprising and controversial.
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