Buckeyes still have work to do in the secondary

The challenge is exacerbated by the lack of football activity in the offseason and the unusualness of this regular season, and it grew larger last weekend when Cam Brown was lost to a season-ending leg injury.

Brown had been sharing one cornerback spot with Sevyn Banks while Shaun Wade mans the other, but head coach Ryan Day called Brown a critical loss.

The first man up to get more playing time could be Tyreke Johnson.

A redshirt sophomore from Jacksonville, Fla., Johnson was a five-star recruit coming out of Trinity Christian Academy three years ago.

In the past, Day has stated he needed to work on his consistency to earn a major role in the defense, but Coombs declined to get into any potential deficiencies in his game this week when asked to assess Johnson.

“Conversations about what players need to do better are best had with the players and that’s where I’ll have those conversations, but what Tyreke does well is he plays very hard every day in practice,” Coombs said. “He studies the opponent. He prepares himself to play, and he will do that this week and obviously, be prepared to go out there and play and hold up the standard of the unit.”

Coombs has no shortage of other options if Johnson doesn’t grab the role and run with it, but he is doing more of a juggling act this year than normal.

On one hand, he is still learning what almost a quarter of his room can do at this level because they are true freshmen.

“I’m seeing growth,” Coombs said of the youngsters. “You know that’s a process, and the disappointing thing of course is not having had spring ball or really training camp with those guys. That makes it a little bit more challenging for them so their learning curve is accelerated another notch beyond just being a freshman at Ohio State, but I love those kids. They’re working hard. They’re preparing themselves to play.”

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a need to cross train players at multiple positions because a coach never knows when a player could test positive for the virus and be sidelined.

That is something that could happen even the day of the game, as the Buckeyes learned with linebacker Justin Hilliard last week at Penn State.

(Hilliard tested positive and still wasn’t able to suit up even when that result later turned out to be a false.)

“I think we’ve been training our guys from June for the possibility of having to be able to play in a game suddenly, and I think that that’s really important to try to prepare them for that,” Coombs said. “We had that same situation Saturday before the game where you all of a sudden are going to be thrust in a role and the team is going to be depending on you, so you’re going to have to be able to step up and fill in. And so in the secondary room right now it’s all hands on deck. Everybody has to understand that their role may change slightly for this week’s game. It may change for the next five week’s games, and you better be prepared to play more than one position in the back end because there’s going to be moving parts as we go through a season like this.”

Beyond the depth chart, there is also the matter of how the starters are playing.

The coaching staff graded 10 defensive players as champions last week at Penn State, but that group did not include outside cornerbacks Banks and Wade or slot corner Marcus Williamson.

The Nittany Lions threw for 281 yards last week and three touchdowns, and quarterback Sean Clifford was able to have some success attacking the Buckeyes on the outside even though they contained star tight end Pat Freiermuth.

"If you’re if gonna play corner — and particularly if you’re gonna play corner in Ohio State — you have to have a short memory. You have to understand that by the nature of the defense there’s going to be pressure on you every single down, and you’ve got to step up and make plays.

“I have no doubt about their confidence or their ability to do that job, but I also understand having been here for a long time and the nature of how we’re going to play football that those teams are gonna throw those balls, and they’re gonna catch a few sometimes.”