Ohio State’s summer performance reviews offer more evidence that Justin Frye faces the most pressure to perform this season among the Buckeyes’ assistant coaches.
While the rest of Ohio State’s returning assistant coaches, Ryan Day, Mark Pantoni and Mickey Marotti all received ratings of “performance exceeds expectations” on their summer performance reviews, Frye received a rating of “performance meets expectations.”
Day’s listed goals for Frye – the only returning assistant who didn’t receive a new contract this offseason – are to build the offensive line to “championship level play – physical, tough, and dependable,” recruit and sign the “best OL class in nation,” and “enhance Run Game gameplan and creativity.”
Frye wrote in his year-end self-review that he needs to “continually adapt and adjust to the new recruiting ways of college football” and that he plans on “building this room and team back to championship level this season.”
Day provided similar goals to each of his other assistant coaches in their evaluations. New assistants Chip Kelly, Carlos Locklyn, James Laurinaitis and Matt Guerrieri also received grades of “meets expectations,̦” but all of them are in their first year as full-time assistants for the Buckeyes and their performance reviews – which were completed in June but released by Ohio State this week in response to public-record requests – were written before they had coached a game in their new roles.
Day’s performance review was written by Gene Smith in May before his retirement at the end of June. Smith wrote that “it has been my greatest blessing to work with Ryan” and that he “will miss many people but none more than Ryan.” He assessed that Day “exceeds expectations in many areas,” citing his personnel management, growth as a leader and presence in the community.
In his self-review, Day identified “delegating responsibilities better, especially on offense,” and “holding assistant coaches accountable for production and performance of units at high level” as two opportunities for improvement. Day addressed the first area by hiring Kelly to be Ohio State’s offensive coordinator after calling offensive plays himself for his first five years as head coach.
Chief of staff Quinn Tempel conducted Pantoni’s review, in which he wrote that Pantoni “may have had to wear the most hats of anyone in the program,” praised Pantoni for spearheading the national rule change to eliminate photoshoots on unofficial visits and wrote that he has “full faith” that Ohio State’s recruiting “will be amongst the nation’s best” as long as Pantoni as the Buckeyes’ general manager.
Day, Frye, Guerrieri, Locklyn, Marotti, Jim Knowles and Larry Johnson all listed beating “TUN” – or some variation of “the team up north” – and winning the national championship among their goals for the 2024 season after the Buckeyes failed to beat Michigan for each fo the last three years.
Links to the full performance reviews for Day, each of his 10 assistant coaches, Marotti and Pantoni can be found in the links below.
- Head coach Ryan Day
- Tight ends coach Keenan Bailey
- Offensive line coach Justin Frye
- Safeties coach Matt Guerrieri
- Wide receivers coach Brian Hartline
- Defensive line coach Larry Johnson
- Offensive coordinator Chip Kelly
- Defensive coordinator Jim Knowles
- Linebackers coach James Laurinaitis
- Running backs coach Carlos Locklyn
- Secondary coach Tim Walton
- Director of sports performance Mickey Marotti
- General manager Mark Pantoni
