Ohio State continued to overhaul its defensive coaching staff, the Buckeyes got good news at the NFL draft entry deadline and Ohio State has a new schedule for the 2022 season.
All of that made for a newsy week since our last episode of Real Pod Wednesdays, and we dive into all three of those topics as Griffin returns to the show this week.
First up, we take a closer look at Ohio State’s new hires on the defensive coaching staff – secondary coaches Tim Walton and Perry Eliano, as well as multiple additional support staff hires – and what we expect them to bring to the Buckeyes. We also reflect back on the tenures of Kerry Coombs and Al Washington and discuss how they should be remembered at Ohio State and why they are now headed elsewhere. In a little over 26 minutes of talk about the coaching staff, we also share our thoughts on yet another offensive coach getting a coordinator title and why we don’t believe there will be any further changes to the full-time coaching staff before the 2022 season.
At the 26:20 mark, we shift the conversation to a discussion about who will and won’t be leaving Ohio State to enter the 2022 NFL draft. Dan explains why the return of Zach Harrison shouldn’t be viewed as anything but a great thing and why Dawand Jones’ return may be the Buckeyes’ most important win among this year’s NFL draft decisions. We also discuss why this year’s NFL draft decisions went as well as Ohio State could have hoped, how many Buckeyes we think we will be drafted this year (36:26), who we think Ohio State will miss most next season (38:26) from the 2022 draft class and why the Buckeyes could have some work to do to get down to the 85-man scholarship limit (43:10).
Finally, we take a look at Ohio State’s newly revised 2022 schedule and share our early thoughts on what bodes well for the Buckeyes and where they could run into the biggest challenges before making our initial predictions (54:20) for Ohio State’s 2022 regular-season record.
You can listen to Real Pod Wednesdays in the audio player above or wherever you listen to podcasts, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.
