Ohio State officially filled the vacancy on its coaching staff on Wednesday when it promoted Parker Fleming to special teams coordinator.
Rather than going outside the program to hire a direct replacement for Greg Mattison, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day opted for continuity by reassigning Mattison’s responsibilities to returning defensive coaches while making Fleming, who has already been with the Buckeyes for the last three years, one of the team’s 10 full-time assistants.
“Parker Fleming is somebody that knows what we do very, very well,” Day said. “He’s got the respect of our team, and we think that’s a really good move there. And promoting from within is something that I believe strongly in, and I believe that it’s gonna be an opportunity for these guys to really be part of our program for a long time and keep some continuity.”
Now that Fleming is taking on a more prominent role with the Buckeyes, we take a closer look at what you should know about Ohio State’s new assistant coach.
He’s a familiar face
Much like quarterbacks coach Corey Dennis last year and wide receivers coach Brian Hartline in 2018, Fleming is being promoted to Ohio State’s full-time staff of assistant coaches after already working with the Buckeyes as a quality control coach.
Fleming has been with the Buckeyes since 2018, joining the program in Urban Meyer’s final season. He’s already been working closely with the special teams units for the past three seasons, so the Buckeyes’ returning players know him and many of them – particularly the kickers, punters and long snappers – were already working closely with him.
He also had a previous stint at Ohio State in 2012 and 2013, Meyer’s first two seasons coaching the Buckeyes, when he worked with both offense and special teams as a graduate assistant.
“The best quality control coach in the country”
As Matt Barnes shifts his focus to working extensively with the secondary rather than coordinating the special teams, one can safely assume Barnes endorsed the decision to make Fleming the new special teams coordinator. And not just because he’s being promoted in the process.
Having worked closely with Fleming for both of the past two years, Barnes has consistently praised Fleming as an up-and-coming coach who has been an invaluable resource to Barnes as his right-hand man on special teams.
“I’ve got the best quality control coach in the country in Parker Fleming, and he’s been a major, major help to me, and helped me bridge the gap in where there were maybe some differences in the terminology from things that I was used to to what had been done here,” Barnes said of Fleming in 2019. “He’s been integral in that meshing.”
The Ohio State specialists who have worked with Fleming for the past three years have been highly complimentary of him, too.
“The guy’s an absolute genius,” former Ohio State long snapper Liam McCullough said in 2019. “He knows our program, our schemes and our culture inside and out, and he weaves it together in a way that really, sometimes I’ll get in there and I’ll meet with him and he’ll say something or he’ll make me think about things or reflect on things where I’m like, ‘Damn, there’s no way. Nah, I think I got it. I think I know what I’m doing.’ And then I’ll walk out of the room and I’ll be like, ‘Damn, he’s really right.’”
He helped design Olave’s punt block
In his first year as Ohio State’s quality control coach for special teams, Fleming helped create the Buckeyes’ most iconic play of the 2018 season.
Along with then-defensive coordinator Greg Schiano, Fleming designed the play that led to Chris Olave’s punt block that Sevyn Banks returned for a touchdown in the third quarter of Ohio State’s 2018 win over Michigan.
Urban Meyer gave Fleming credit for his part in that play after the game, admitting he did not want Schiano to call it but also acknowledging he was wrong.
“To tell you the truth, I didn't think we could do it,” Meyer said. “I saw it on Wednesday practice. And I grabbed Parker and I said, you can't, you only have 2.1 seconds to get there. And he's not that fast. And Schiano kept saying, we can do it, we can do it … Not the first time I've been wrong.”
Experience as a full-time coach
The biggest question when promoting a quality control coach like Fleming is often how that coach will be able to handle the recruiting responsibilities that come with being a full-time assistant coach, but Fleming already has some experience in that regard.
Before he came to Ohio State, Fleming was the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Texas State. He spent two seasons with the Bobcats, starting as wide receivers coach and special teams coach before he was promoted to the co-coordinator role. Before that, he was the wide receivers coach for two years at James Madison.
Fleming also filled in as special teams coordinator for Ohio State’s game at Michigan State this past season when Barnes was unable to make the trip due to a positive COVID-19 test.
There’s a big difference between recruiting in the Sun Belt and the FCS and recruiting the top players in the country at Ohio State, but the combination of his experience handling those responsibilities elsewhere and familiarity with how Ohio State’s recruiting operation works should help him get up to speed quickly.
A former college quarterback
Like Day, Fleming was a quarterback at the Football Championship Subdivision level before he started his coaching career.
A product of Georgia’s Decatur High School – where he later began his coaching career in 2010 – Fleming was a backup quarterback from 2006-09 for Presbyterian College, where he also saw some playing time as a wide receiver and on special teams.
Fleming never became a full-time starter for the Blue Hose, but completed 11-of-20 passing attempts for 179 yards and a touchdown while also rushing for eight yards and two touchdowns and catching four passes for 62 yards and a touchdown.
