Fixing the Ohio State secondary will be a two-man job in 2022.
Of course, turning things around on a unit that ranked 96th in the country against the pass last season will require many more hands on deck. But the primary responsibility will fall onto the shoulders of new secondary/cornerbacks coach Tim Walton and safeties coach Perry Eliano, who will operate in tandem to try and help cure what plagued the Buckeye back end a year ago.
“Tim and Perry both have tremendous résumés. You saw what Perry did last year, and then certainly Tim’s background of not only playing here, but his background in the NFL,” Day said at a press conference Monday. “They both have great secondary backgrounds, so they’re gonna work together.”
Walton, a former Buckeye cornerback from 1990-93, has 11 years of NFL coaching experience under his belt, and has earned rave reviews from multi-time All-Pro cornerback Jalen Ramsey, among others. Eliano, a cornerbacks coach on Luke Fickell’s staff at Cincinnati for the past two seasons, developed a pair of All-Americans at the position in Sauce Gardner and Thorpe Award winner Coby Bryant in 2021.
But exactly what each of their responsibilities will be for the Buckeye secondary might have had less to do with Day and more to do with new Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, who Day deemed “the head coach of the defense” on Monday.
“That’s really something that Jim felt strong about. He likes to really coach the linebackers and be able to have a handle on the front end,” Day said. “And the back end, having two guys back there with the experience that they both have – and their résumés – is gonna be tremendous. They’ll start to build their relationship as time goes on, but just very fortunate to have those guys as part of the organization.”
Knowles said any defensive staff he’s helped assemble has had two secondary coaches, and given that he has assumed the role of linebackers coach for Ohio State, the allocation made plenty of sense for the Buckeyes.
“In today’s game, big time college football, things get spread out quickly, you’re most vulnerable to giving things up in the secondary – and (to getting) mismatched or making mistakes,” Knowles said. “That’s where you can get hurt the most, and quickly. We need two quality coaches there, I believe that, to be able to spend the amount of time necessary to get those guys ready, because they’re just placed in so many different positions. It can win or lose games for you, so I think we need to commit coaching resources there.”
The relationship between Walton and Eliano hasn’t had a whole lot of time to develop yet in Columbus, as both coaches were officially announced as new Ohio State hires less than three weeks ago. The Buckeye coaches have spent much of their time on the road recruiting since then, and Day said Monday was the first real day in which the new staff had been assembled in totality at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
But with both defensive back gurus possessing decades of coaching experience, their pre-existing level of familiarity might aid in their professional correspondence.
“I had already known of Perry,” Walton said. “Being in this coaching profession for a while, you know a lot of the same people. So I’ve been knowing him for a while, haven’t had the chance to work with him before, but I’ve been knowing him. The thing about coaches, a lot of guys know a lot of the same people. Even though you don’t necessarily work with them, you become friends with them or get to know people throughout the journey of the coaching life.”
Eliano said some of that acquaintanceship arose at a professional development seminar the two took part in several years ago in Miami.
“This is not my first time working with him, and we hit it off and had great chemistry,” Eliano said. “So fast forward to now, we’re working together side-by-side.”
At multiple stops in his career, and in Cincinnati in particular, Eliano said having more than one secondary coach has been beneficial to both his defensive backs and the defense as a whole. Working alongside Bearcats’ safeties coach Colin Hitschler a year ago, Eliano helped lead Cincinnati to the second-fewest average passing yards allowed in the country. Now working with Walton, Eliano hopes the collaborative process yields similar results.
“We all have our specialties as far as I’m coaching the safeties, he’s coaching the corners. But at the same point in time, we’re a secondary. And I think that’s extremely important, just in my time as a coach, that those two entities work together,” Eliano said. “Just like when I was at Cincinnati, I coached the corners and we had a safeties coach – we still are one. … It’s not a corners and safeties. Yeah, we have our position, but at the end of the day we are a secondary. We are defensive backs. I’m just excited to pull from him and vice versa.”
Besides their own relationship, the ones Walton and Eliano form with their new players in Columbus will be just as important, if not more. Eliano said he’s already had the chance to sit down and talk to each safety on the roster individually, but both coaches have only just begun the process of building what they hope will be an airtight unit come next season.
They’ll have plenty of time to do so over the offseason, but unfortunately for the pair, the Ohio State fan base might not be particularly patient when waiting for improved performance at just about every level of the Buckeye defense by the start of the year.
