Kerry Coombs wanted Binjimen Victor to know his first-ever practice in an Ohio State uniform would be far from easy.
“Hey, Victor,” the Buckeyes’ cornerbacks coach shouted at the freshman wide receiver during warmups for practice Aug. 7 — the first day of fall camp. “Not gonna be your day today.”
Victor — the 6-foot-4, 185-pound wideout and former top-100 recruit out of South Florida — wasn't having it. He showed no signs of being intimidated by the often-fiery Coombs. His response was subtle, yet said so much.
The freshman wide receiver simply put his hand in front of his facemask and lifted his index finger in the air. “Shhhh,” the motion represented.
That takes quite a bit of courage for a freshman to do on Day 1 of fall camp, but when you peel things back and look at the relationship the Buckeyes’ cornerbacks have with the wide receivers at this time of year, it makes perfect sense. The two position groups — and their coaches — compete every day in practice and it’s a constant battle for bragging rights at the end of each day.
“Whole lot of trash talk,” Coombs said Sunday at Ohio State’s team media day, flashing a giant smile. “[Wide receivers coach] Zach [Smith] has got a lot of swagger and he’s got all that Zone 6 stuff and knows about all that Twitter stuff so he’s having fun all the time with that and his players have the same personality.”
“But I think our guys have a real enthusiastic personality, they’ve got a lot of swagger in their own right. We play against each other every day, we compete every single day.”
This all stems from Urban Meyer’s constant craze to create competition within his football team. Every day is a chance to either win or lose and with an abundance of playing time available this fall, that level of competition is amped up a notch when it’s time to be on the practice field.
It’s quite evident with the wide receivers and corners this time of year.
“We don’t like them too much,” Buckeyes freshman wideout Austin Mack joked. “We’ve had pretty good battles and we talk a lot of smack between each other.”
The corners say they win most days. The receivers, of course, refute that notion.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Each unit has an abundance of talent and the likelihood is that the results are somewhat split.
“The receivers, we push them and they push us,” redshirt sophomore cornerback Marshon Lattimore said. “It’s nothing personal, it’s just being competitive. We talk our trash and all that, but other than that we just push each other.”
“I enjoy the competition.”
And at the end of the day, that competition is what it’s really all about for Ohio State. The wide receivers are trying to beat the corners in an attempt to make them better in the long run and vice versa.
The trash talk is only temporary.
“There’s a winner and a loser every day and that’s important to them,” Coombs said. “If they don’t want to win, they shouldn’t be here. It evolves into a lot of that. We try to limit it. We certainly don’t ever want it to become physical or too nasty, but we also want to have some fun.”
Added Mack: “When we put the pads away and we’re off the field we’re all brothers. We’re all part of the same team, but it’s definitely a war when we go against each other every day.”
