It’s no coincidence that Cade Stover and Mitchell Melton, two players expected to be in Jim Knowles’ linebacker room when the Buckeyes began spring camp, have both subsequently switched positions.
Each may have talents better suited for other positions, Stover moving to tight end and Melton to the defensive line, but the Buckeyes’ new defensive scheme – at least its base look – doesn’t externally appear to feature much space for a surplus of linebackers to see significant snap counts in 2022.
Even after the departure of the two aforementioned Buckeyes, plenty of questions remain about what role several linebackers will have on the Ohio State defense in the forthcoming season.
“I think when you look at our numbers, there is a little bit of a logjam at linebacker, especially being in the 4-2-5,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said after practice Tuesday. “And because of that, you've seen Cade move. Not that that was the reason why he moved. But you see a little bit of movement there. You saw Mitchell move because we do have a lot of linebackers right now on the roster. And so guys are trying to find their role on the team.
"I think that's, again, the part of a college coach is you have to figure out how do you best put guys in spots to be successful? And I think we've done that with those two guys.”
But that’s not to say the two starting spots at Mike and Will are already locked down. Cody Simon, Steele Chambers, Tommy Eichenberg and Teradja Mitchell all started games in those spots a year ago, and they’re all back again vying for a feature role in the middle of Knowles’ defense.
None in that group will have prior experience playing for Knowles to lean on as they jockey for a higher rung on the proverbial linebacker ladder, although the Buckeyes’ new defensive coordinator has already gotten a good impression of what each one brings to the table so far during the spring.
“You have to be able to make an assessment and in order to make an assessment, you got to get the guy's repetitions. And there's a lot of talent, but none of it is completely proven, right? Because you have guys all competing for positions,” Knowles said Tuesday. “So that's where you want to take guys and maybe move them to other positions just to get a chance to look at them.
“I think Tommy has been a great leader for us. I really liked what I've seen out of Tommy. I think he's mastering the defense quickly and making plays. And he's quiet, but he's fierce. And Teradja is also a guy who leads in more of a vocal way than Tommy, but he gives us a lot of that energy.”
Beyond them, USC transfer Palaie Gaoteote will be in search of a larger role after playing just 78 snaps at linebacker last season. Perhaps to a lesser extent, Arizona State transfer Chip Trayanum will expect to get on the field as well in his third season of college football, even as he’s switching over from running back.
Like Melton, Gaoteote has seen some time at Knowles’ hybrid Jack position, though he’s also a candidate to play Sam when the Buckeyes have a third traditional linebacker on the field this season.
“From the linebacker position, EA, we want to try to find a role for him. So we had EA involved in that Jack position and also in a Sam position, which we'll utilize sometimes against teams when they play two tight ends, which our offense does a little bit,” Knowles said. “So we've gotten EA in there and Reid Carrico also in that Sam position against the two-tight end offense.”
Carrico, a top-100 prospect out of Ironton, Ohio, redshirted as a true freshman last year during a season in which he played just 19 snaps all year. But at Sam – if the position is used more than in 2021 – the 6-foot-2, 230-pound linebacker might see at least a slight increase in workload.
“Reid has a chance. He's a quiet guy, but he's definitely determined. And I see him making progress every day,” Knowles said. “And then we had Cade when he was with us kind of working that Sam position as one of the guys, and we put Reid in there today and I thought he did a great job. So I think he's got a chance to really contribute in that area.”
Knowles said his scheme will likely employ the Sam position more at Ohio State than it ever did in his previous stop at Oklahoma State because the nature of the Big Ten will require him to do so. Ohio State has both Wisconsin and Iowa on the schedule this season, which will likely mean facing particularly run-heavy attacks in both contests.
“Not a lot,” said Knowles when asked about how much he played a Sam linebacker at Oklahoma State. “I mean, we were prepared for it. And we faced a good deal of 12 personnel, but we never really had to get into it. Because 12 didn't really play like 12. So 12 was playing more like 11. And we were able to do mostly everything with our base defense. So we had the subpackage, I call it, prepared, but we didn't have to use it a lot. I predict we'll have to use it more here based on the Big Ten.”
For as many names as there are at linebacker – and we haven’t even mentioned highly touted true freshmen C.J. Hicks and Gabe Powers – Knowles said options aren’t a bad thing and that he’d have even more linebackers in his room if he could.
“You always like to have more," Knowles said. "Now a lot of times at linebacker, it does come down to just a couple guys who play and into the rhythm of the game, but you want more because you want that ability, if somebody goes down or to spell somebody or to rotate. … The best will play a bunch, but you want more guys that are competing, you want guys that are tugging on your shirt saying, 'Coach, why am I not in there?' And then if there's something incomplete about their game, you tell them 'OK, well, this is why you're not in there.' But if it's not, then you got to put them in there.
“So you want guys that are good enough and are pressing to go and you want as many of them as you can have.”
