Ohio State football: OSU defense doing its chores

After surrendering 31 points and 400 yards to Minnesota, Ohio State defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs has his unit working hard this week on household chores in order to clean up some problems that were glaring in Thursday night’s win,

"“We have a laundry list of things we need to do better and improve on.”"

Tackling is most certainly on Coombs’ list. Overall, it was bad and at times it was absolutely atrocious. He said they have worked on it twice already this week. One of the problems with trying to improve this phase of defense is the potential for injury. Coombs is well aware of this, but feels the reward outweighs the potential risks,

"“At the same time, we do need to tackle better, so we’ll continue to work on it fundamentally.”"

If there is another area that I hope sees improvement it is the pass rush. While Zach Harrison made a game-changing play when he stripped Gopher quarterback Tanner Morgan of the ball and Haskell Garrett returned it for a touchdown, the much-hyped pass rush we’d all been waiting to see was largely a non-factor. This is a very talented group of ends who need to be a disruption each time a team wants to throw.

One thing Coombs is happy with is the way the defensive coaches adjusted to some wrinkles shown by Minnesota. One of those was what can only be referred to as a Heavy Jumbo package where the Gophers had three tackles and a tight end lined up on the same side. The Ohio State football coaches adjusted to this by going to a short-yardage defense and putting a lineman in each gap. This neutralized the advantage all of those extra linemen gave Minnesota,

"“I would really like to compliment our staff because we got some looks and formations we had not seen and they did a phenomenal job of coming up with answers and communicating that with the players.”"

Oregon will present some different challenges than Minnesota. Hopefully, the work being put in this week by Coach Coombs’ defense will lead to a big jump in improvement.