It was during an offseason, Josh Proctor remembers, when he was feeling sick and was refusing to pick up his phone even for his Ohio State coaches.
When Matt Barnes couldn’t get ahold of him, he found Proctor 's address, came to his young safety’s house and sat with him just to check in on things. That provided a turning point for how Proctor viewed Barnes.
“He just sat there and talked to me to make sure I was OK,” Proctor said. “I think after that, our relationship really grew.”
For sophomore Marcus Hooker, the Buckeyes’ other up-and-coming but inexperienced safety, he can’t remember the exact day when he began to really take notice of Barnes’ demeanor, but he knows it happened pretty quickly during his freshman year.
“When we first got here, I met Coach Barnes and Coach (Jeff) Hafley, and (Barnes) introduced himself to me and I kind of was like, ‘Wait, he got a little pep to him,’” Hooker said. “He sparks the day whenever you talk to him, and he’s always being so bright and upbeat whenever you speak to him.”
That outlook on the man who would one day become his full-time position coach was present from the first week of spring practice in 2019.
“I remember our first practice, and I did something in a drill well, and he came up to me at the end of practice and said, ‘You did well today,’ and he called me ‘Little Head’ because I guess he said my head is little,” Hooker said. “Ever since that day, he’s been calling me Little Head. He just makes me smile whenever he talks to me, and he always tries to brighten my day. Even if he knows I’m having a bad day, he tries to bring me toward a good direction of my emotion because that was kind of something that I’ve struggled with my freshman year and going into my sophomore year.”
On the outside looking in, as the two safeties provided some insights from behind the scenes last week, there appears to be a higher level of respect and trust that Barnes is building with his players in his second season at Ohio State – his first season in charge of the safeties full-time after being promoted to special teams coordinator and safeties coach in the spring.
Barnes’ situation is similar to the one that Al Washington described in the spring, as he had come to Ohio State in 2019 tasked with building the Buckeye linebacker corps back up after it got demolished the season prior. Under Washington’s leadership, that unit bounced back in a big way, and it’s now the one that Ryan Day believes is the strength of this season’s defense.
Washington quickly gained respect and trust from his players, and that was one factor in the bounce-back and uptick in production. Barnes seems to be gaining that same type of respect and trust from the two players who will be leading the charge at a position that could be the backbone or backbreaker of the defense.
The safeties are so crucial to Ohio State’s defensive success with the way the Buckeyes use them, making Proctor or Hooker (or, really, both) two of Ohio State’s most important players in the entire program, regardless of which side of the ball they play on.
They each play an entirely different style than their predecessor Jordan Fuller, a nearly impenetrable stopper who rarely flashed but was almost always reliable to not give up a big play. In Fuller, Barnes and Co. had full trust that he was going to be in the right position. In 2020, with Fuller gone, the tables are turned as Barnes will be the one called on to make sure Proctor and Hooker are put in the right positions to succeed.
For Barnes, because he now has momentum in another go-round, it makes that job easier and allows his players to more willingly buy in.
“You know, when you’re brand new it’s really hard to coach a player the way that they should be coached without any sort of preexisting relationship,” Barnes said. “That player needs to trust you, and you’ve gotta find the ins and outs of what really makes that player tick. So just time spent has been big for me to really get to know our players and to build trust on both sides.
“That’s been big for me and just a general level of comfortability here and just the way of what to expect on Tuesday practice during the season, what to expect on a Friday walk-through after having a full season of doing it now.”
“I feel like Coach Barnes is underrated. A lot of people talk about Coach Coombs – of course Coach Coombs knows what he’s talking about – but I feel like everybody sleeping on Coach Barnes.”– Ohio State 2021 safety target Derrick Davis Jr.
Of course, Barnes is not going to be on an island as he begins his first regular season with the title of safeties coach. Along with defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs, the Buckeyes’ cornerbacks and safeties work in a collaborative process to ensure there’s as much continuity and consistency as possible. Coombs’ voice is still the most powerful in the room, but Barnes is still going to have a major role when it comes to ensuring Proctor, Hooker, Lathan Ransom and Bryson Shaw are put in good positions to succeed and are aware of their duties every week.
In talking with a couple safeties not directly involved with the day-to-day goings on of the program – one who likely will not become a Buckeye (Derrick Davis Jr.) and another who can’t wait to become one (Jantzen Dunn) – it appears that Barnes is fit for the role.
“I feel like Coach Barnes is underrated,” Davis told Eleven Warriors. “A lot of people talk about Coach Coombs – of course Coach Coombs knows what he’s talking about – but I feel like everybody sleeping on Coach Barnes. He just slept on. I feel like he ain’t gonna be slept on no more.”
When asked if he thinks Barnes will be a full-time defensive coordinator in the next five years, Davis scoffed at the timeline.
“Shoot, I don’t even know if it’ll take that long,” Davis said. “I give him, if they have another successful year, the year after next, I see him being a coordinator, if not a head coach, somewhere. He just knows what he’s talking about. He studies the game just like we study it, but he studies it more.
“You can tell he has love for the game. Everything to him ain’t football-minded. We talk about other stuff. It’s not like we talk about just football. He asks me how my family’s doing, I ask him how his family’s doing. To me, that’s what makes him a complete coach. Not everything is about football. We still talk about life.”
For Dunn, when he took an impactful visit to Ohio State in the winter of 2020, two things stood out coaching-wise: Coombs’ intensity, which every Buckeye fan knows about, and Barnes’ intelligence, which Buckeye fans have been learning more about as we have progressed through the offseason.
Dunn’s father, Mitchell Dunn, was just as impressed with Barnes’ acumen as a football mind, and he’s a major reason he’s excited for his son to play for Ohio State. This offseason, Jantzen began to take watching game film much more seriously, and it was all because of Barnes.
“It was an offseason thing he wanted to add to his game,” Mitchell said. “Coach Barnes had mentioned to him you can only get so big or strong. So what else can you add to your game? He sent him a video of guys watching game film. That changed everything.
“We’re gonna be hearing about Coach Barnes for a long time in this sport. He really knows his football, and he knows how to build relationships with kids.”
Again, it’s a collaborative process in the defensive backs room, but Barnes is still a big voice in that room. As they start a season in which their roles will be just as crucial as ever, by many accounts they appear to be in good hands with Barnes at the helm, and that could go a long way in determining just how far this season goes.
