Matt Barnes doesn’t predict those who get their first glimpse at Ohio State’s defense when it lines up against Nebraska for the Oct. 24 opener will see sweeping changes, at least in the terms of the scheme. On Wednesday, he said the Buckeyes plan to continue to utilize the single-high safety defense with which they had success a year ago.
Or at least that’s what he wants people to think.
Either way, the Buckeyes have spent the past nine months figuring out how to best move forward without someone Barnes referred to as the “quarterback” of their 2019 defense: Jordan Fuller.
“I thought as highly of Jordan as I've ever thought of any player,” Barnes said on Wednesday.
Marcus Hooker and Josh Proctor, for all they offer to the Buckeyes’ defense, are very different safeties from their predecessor.
Fuller was, as Jeff Hafley once called him, the eraser at the back of Ohio State’s defense. If something went wrong in front of Fuller on a given play, the safety shut it down before something egregious happened. He was a known, reliable commodity who was rarely out of position.
Hooker and Proctor are perhaps both more physically gifted than Fuller, but they’re younger, less experienced and will need time to grow into the spot Fuller manned over the past three seasons.
“(Fuller) was obviously plenty athletic and made a ton of plays here, but (Hooker and Proctor) are probably at least as athletic if not more and certainly have the skills,” Barnes said on Wednesday. “But we all know it's not always the fastest guy is the best player. It's not always the guy that jumps the highest or is the tallest or the heaviest that are the best players. It's the guy that's the best at playing the game, and a huge part of that is football IQ. And Jordan's football IQ is through the roof.
“I think Josh and Marcus are both very smart, very capable players. But there is no substitute for experience, so we've just got to keep finding ways to get these guys more and more and just show them things to expect.”
The expectations at safety won’t change in a post-Fuller secondary, Barnes reiterated. He wants the deep safety to recognize formations, help set the defense and understand coverages at a high level.
But instead of the strength of Ohio State’s safeties being the reliability of Fuller, it might be the flexibility offered by both Hooker and Proctor, both of whom have differing skillsets.
“Proc has many things that I don't have,” Hooker said. “Josh is a great ballplayer – tremendous ballplayer, as a matter of fact. He has a great way of making his way to the ball. He's fast as he comes down. And his size even plays a huge role in the fact of being safety. Josh has many things that I can't do, and I have many things that he can't do. We all have our own ways of working. He handles his. I handle mine. We both work together on the back end, so we kind of keep ourself together.”
The way Barnes describes Hooker is as an instinctive center fielder who can go sideline-to-sideline to take advantage of his “freakish ball skills.” Does that sound like anyone else who once patrolled the defensive backfield in Columbus? Maybe somebody with the same last name?
Barnes, in his second year on Ryan Day’s staff, didn’t coach former first-round pick Malik Hooker, Marcus’ older brother. But having heard stories and seen film of Malik, he says his understanding is that Marcus has “a lot of similarities” with his older brother.
If Hooker looks like his brother, even just a little bit, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him lining up with the starters as the deep safety. He says he learned from Fuller about the importance of open-field tackling to prevent big plays last year but also hopes to increase the number of interceptions from the position.
“We all have different mindsets playing safety, and I feel like mine is just getting the ball,” Hooker said. “We want to have huge turnovers and things like that. I know I can tackle and do things of that nature, but I'm trying to be more focused on trying to get the ball any way that I can and put our team in a better position to score on offense.”
Proctor could end up playing some or even most of his snaps either inside the tackle box or closer to the line of scrimmage. The way the coaches, including Barnes, have talked about him sounds similar to how they discussed their ideas of the hybrid linebacker-safety bullet that never quite materialized as they hoped a year ago.
Barnes said Proctor is “probably a little more comfortable” covering man-to-man and playing “closer to the box.” That could allow him some opportunities to be in some areas traditionally reserved for linebackers.
“I'm a physical guy,” Proctor said. “I like being physical. I don't care how big you are.”
Hooker, an aspiring ballhawking safety who can create turnovers, isn’t a carbon copy of Fuller, and neither is Proctor, the 6-foot-2, 202-pound Oklahoman who seeks contact. That forces Barnes and Kerry Coombs to get creative with how they set up their secondary.
But they’ve spent the past nine months behind their drawing boards figuring something out.
There’s not just one answer to the question of who replaces Fuller at safety. The presence of both Hooker and Proctor – and, as they both noted, their ability to play together even in a single-high safety defense – offers the defensive coaching staff a healthy dose of options. Plus, by moving them around, the Buckeyes will have the opportunity to get both onto the field at once while remaining primarily a single-high safety defense.
“I think they've got a little bit different skillsets, which I think is a good thing,” Barnes said. “I think situationally, one skillset versus the other allows us to be a little bit more multiple where we need to be and play them at some different spots. They both played at a high level, and we're counting on those guys in a big way for us this season.”
