With busted brackets, dyed green beer, and baseball's opening day comes an additional rite of Spring in Ohio: the constant speculation over who will fill the newest gaps in Urban Meyer's depth chart.
All over the state prognosticators, professional and amateur alike, spend countless hours this time of year making their cases for which former blue-chip recruits will become college football's newest stars. Much as often is the case with a powerhouse program like Ohio State's, hope springs eternal this March as the Buckeyes attempt to replace a number of NFL departees with equally talented youngsters and make a run at the school's ninth national title.
With eight starters returning on offense, there are few questions surrounding what Meyer's team will look like on that side of the ball. Billy Price will slide over to replace Rimington Award winner Pat Elflein at center while a host of young receivers competes to fill the shoes of Curtis Samuel and Noah Brown.
Questions remain on the opposite side of the ball, however. With three-quarters of the secondary joining middle linebacker Raekwon McMillan as early entries in next month's draft, coordinator Greg Schiano has a number of holes to plug in his defense.
But after only a few practices this spring it appears we have a good idea of who will be stepping into new roles. Yet though there would be a multitude of questions if the Buckeyes' quarterback position were unsettled, few seem to be worried about how these changes in personnel might affect how Schiano builds game plans this fall.
Given his decision to shake up the defensive backfield's scheme last fall after losing eight starters the year before, there's plenty of reason to expect the 2017 Buckeye defense to look quite different from the 2016 version. To understand how things may change, we can try to answer the biggest question facing each of his three position groups.
Defensive Line: Is there enough playing time to go around?
Regardless of what Schiano decides to do schematically, the unquestioned strength of his defense lies up front. All four starters from 2016 return, including the Big Ten's reigning defensive lineman of the year, Tyquan Lewis.
"I like our D-line," Schiano answered when asked about them last week. "That’s a group where we got really elite defensive linemen and I think we have the best defensive line coach in America. So when you put those two things together it’s fun to work with those guys and I’m excited to see how it all comes together."
Lewis anchored a front best known for its speed and athleticism, thanks in large part to the 'Rushmen' package that featured four defensive ends on passing downs. In this setup, Lewis manned the left end spot opposite Sam Hubbard on the right, while the big bodies of Jalyn Holmes and Nick Bosa lined up over either shoulder of the center.
The package certainly had its moments, such as harassing Baker Mayfield in the big win over Oklahoma or taking down Wisconsin's Alex Hornibrook for a walk-off overtime sack in Madison. However, the Buckeye defensive front had less impact in the team's losses to Penn State and Clemson, tallying three sacks but failing to register a QB hurry on any additional dropbacks.
One look that may deliver more pressure is the 3-3-5 nickel package that actually substitutes a lineman for an additional defensive back, and places emerging star tackle Dre'Mont Jones at the nose guard position over the center, flanked by a pair of ends on the outside. Though this look removes a talented member of the defensive line, the defense benefits by blitzing the linebackers behind the front three through a multitude of gaps, creating confusion for the offensive line and disrupting the pocket.
This look should be a familiar one for Buckeye fans, as former coordinator Luke Fickell called for it regularly during the 2014 national title run, taking advantage of Darron Lee's exceptional speed as a pass rusher and sending him on countless different blitz paths behind the three-man line. Though Schiano wasn't a part of the staff at the time, he is undoubtedly aware of the potential it brings.
With only the seventh-best pass rush in the Big Ten last fall, there is plenty of room for improvement for the Buckeye defensive line, and their leader is well aware of the challenge.
"How are we going to get them all involved? We have to get them on the field in as many different ways as we possibly can. That’s going to be a challenge to us," said Schiano. "Is there new packages that we can do to get more linemen on the field? Maybe. Is there a way we can rotate them and continue to rotate them the way we have but even more efficiently? Yes. So that’s been one of the things we’ve been investigating.
Secondary: Will they continue to play with only one deep safety?
It didn't take long for Malik Hooker to make an impact in his first start as a Buckeye.
While fans were still in shock over the athleticism displayed by Ohio State's freakish new free safety, analysts quickly focused on what his talent meant to their scheme. Gone was the 'Quarters' coverage with two deep safeties that had been a hallmark of the 2014 and 2015 seasons, replaced by an aggressive man-to-man coverage approach that placed only one safety in the middle of the field.
Of course, such coverage can only be executed with exceptional athletes at the cornerback position, which Gareon Conley and Marshon Lattimore certainly were last fall. While those two are currently busy impressing NFL scouts with their combine numbers, Denzel Ward, Damon Arnette, junior college transfer Kendall Sheffield, and the rest of the young Buckeye corners appear ready to step into the void they left behind.
The bigger question comes at the safety spot left vacant by Hooker. His counterpart, returning strong safety Damon Webb, struggled when left in man coverage against slot receivers, especially against play-action fakes. As the season went on, opponents began focusing on Webb in coverage, forcing Schiano to flip the responsibilities of his two deep men, asking Hooker to come up to the line in coverage while Webb played center field.
Though the Buckeye pass defense didn't give up as many big plays with Hooker blanketing a slot receiver or tight end, the run defense suffered as the young free safety struggled to properly maintain leverage, leading to a team-high 14 missed tackles. Webb, meanwhile, proved to be a solid run defender, recording 52 tackles on the season with only six missed stops.
With very clear strengths in Webb's game to go along with clear weaknesses, the question then becomes how to best pair those attributes with those of Hooker's replacement. For now, the leader in the clubhouse is senior Erick Smith, but Jordan Fuller and Jahsen Wint will be in the mix as well.
Which of the three ends up opposite Webb may well dictate how they, and the rest of the OSU defense, line up to do their jobs. If no members of this quartet prove capable of reading quarterbacks and making plays on the ball from the middle of the field, we should expect quite a bit more 'Quarters' matchup-zone coverage as a result.
Linebackers: Can Chris Worley successfully transition inside?
Four years ago, Meyer took what seemed to be a gamble on a pair of unheralded high school safeties in Darron Lee and Chris Worley. After the team struggled to defend spread offenses with traditional 4-3 or nickel personnel, Lee emerged as the starting SAM linebacker in 2014 and became an instant star, emerging as one of the nation's best defenders in open space.
After Lee departed for the NFL one year ago, Worley seemed to be the perfect replacement, having followed a nearly identical path and backing up Lee at the SAM spot for two years. In his debut season as a starter last fall, Worley stepped up admirably, tallying 43 tackles with 4.5 for loss and four passes broken up.
But although his primary responsibilities forced him to defend space outside the tackles, he was more than willing to take on bigger blockers, even if it meant he wasn't the one bringing down the ball carrier.
As of now, Worley is the current starter at middle linebacker, a position that requires a fairly different skill set. Though he and former starter Raekwon McMillan are roughly the same height, McMillan carried an additional 12 pounds of muscle (according to the team's official roster) and did so for a reason.
Playing linebacker inside opens up a defender to all kinds of contact, regularly taking on the blocks of centers and guards that outweigh you by at least 50 pounds. One of McMillan's strongest attributes is his ability to shed these blocks before making a tackle, which, despite the proliferation of spread offenses, is still the main job of a middle linebacker in today's game.
Worley's desire to seek out contact and make plays, as he showed throughout the Michigan game, certainly won the admiration of his coaches.
"He’s just a really, really smart football player," Schiano said of his new middle linebacker. "He’s a guy that I think understands the game at a very, very high level. When you’re a MIKE linebacker, we lost what I think is a man’s man in Raekwon McMillan. Really fine football player, a smart football player. We needed to make sure that we could try to replace him that has that kind of presence about him."
With Worley playing in the middle and Jerome Baker and Dante Booker on the outside, the Buckeyes appear to be trotting out as athletic a trio in school history at the position, which should pay dividends when facing the high-powered passing games of Oklahoma or Penn State. However, looming late-season matchups with more traditional and physical offenses from the state up north may prove to be the group's true test.
There is certainly some upside to Worley's move, though. One question from NFL evaluators that continues to surround McMillan is his ability to stay with receivers in pass coverage. Against big, lumbering tight ends he certainly had all the necessary tools but lacked the pure foot speed to stick with shiftier players out of the backfield. Worley, on the other hand, is much better suited to stay with those backs when needed.
But therein lies the rub with Worley's transition inside. Perhaps more than anyone else, his success at a new position this spring dictates the answers to not only his position's biggest questions but to those of the rest of the defense as well.
Worley provides the requisite athleticism to follow a back in man-to-man coverage, giving more reason for Schiano to feel comfortable calling for single-high safety looks. But if the new man in the middle can't shed blockers efficiently on his own, the defensive line will need to be more conservative in both personnel and technique, asking players like Jones to eat up blocks instead of pinning their ears back and shooting gaps against the run.
Although there are still lingering questions with a handful of departures, including his co-coordinator, Fickell, Schiano doesn't seem phased by the challenge.
"Certainly you can’t change everything you do but there’s little tweaks and things you pull from each other that let you continue to enhance it."
We'll see just how little those tweaks turn out to be.
