It’s no secret to any college football fan that the Ohio State Buckeyes struggled on the defensive side of the ball last season, particularly in big games, surrendering 45 points to the Michigan Wolverines and 42 points to the Georgia Bulldogs – their only two losses on the season. The poor defensive play might have cost them a chance at the national title, and so defensive coordinator Jim Knowles is making a major change.
When Jim Knowles arrived at Ohio State, he brought a new scheme with him. And part of that scheme was a hybrid defensive end/linebacker position he called “Jack.” He said before the season that he would like to see the “Jack” position used in at least one-third of the defensive snaps last season. But Knowles said it just wasn’t effective, and this spring he’s cutting it out of the playbook entirely to focus more on a traditional four-man front, saying “you have to go with what works.”
“I don’t know how much we’ll be delving into the Jack this spring,” Knowles said according to Dan Hope of Eleven Warriors. “We did not quite use the position as much as I had hoped last year. It just didn’t seem to develop with our personnel. And so this spring, I want to focus on the fundamentals of our four-down and really getting better at the fundamentals.”
This means that former five-star defensive end Jack Sawyer will now be playing defensive end full-time opposite of fellow five-star starter JT Tuimoloau after he spent much of the last year learning the Jack position.
“He’ll work on all those fundamentals of being an end. I think that’s important for Jack,” Knowles said. “I feel like he didn’t have the improvement or the big jump that he could have last year because he got involved in the Jack stuff and maybe he wasn’t as focused as he could have been to make those improvements at D-end. So I want to make sure I keep him at D-end opposite JT.”
We’ll have to see how these changes help the Buckeyes next year.
