Ryan Day wanted to maintain continuity when choosing a new defensive coordinator, and Matt Patricia brings a flexible mindset that he and his staff believe will keep the Ohio State defense playing at a high level. And after 19 years in the NFL, Patricia says he’s excited to coach college kids again.
Columbus, OH – Ryan Day says he didn’t hire Matt Patricia to be Ohio State’s defensive coordinator just because of the numbers on his resume: 19 years in the NFL, 16 years with the New England Patriots, six years as Bill Belichick’s defensive coordinator, and three Super Bowl rings.
Those numbers are the reason you make the call. But any successful – or national championship – CEO knows you better hire the right fit and you better be sure he can handle the size of the job. Day has learned that lesson the hard way on the defensive side (Kerry Coombs). So he called lots of people. Patricia’s bosses. And most importantly Patricia’s peers and those he led.
“One of my questions was what did it look like?” Day said Friday when all of the coaches met with the media. “You ask guys who were actually in the building, you ask coaches that he coached with, you gotta make a lot of calls to find out about people. And what you found out was he was running the defense.”
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Positive talk, obviously, reigns this time of year, especially coming off the Buckeyes’ historic run to the national championship. Nonetheless, what makes an NFL guy come back to the college game for the first time since 2003?
Well, let’s do a little of what Day did when he made his reference checks. Let’s ask the guys who have been in the building with Patricia since he moved into his new office last month in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.
“He’s authentically excited to be back in college football,” linebackers coach James Laurinaitis said. “You can tell there’s a yearning to get back to why you got into coaching – to impact young people and teach the game of football. The few times he’s been in front, talking to the guys, you can sense he’s excited to just teach ball.”
Longtime and legendary defensive line coach Larry Johnson, who said he never thought about retirement after the season, is ready to break in another DC.
“He’s very smart,” Johnson said. “He’s done a good job introducing what he feels is his philosophy, trying to merge two things together. It’s a great defensive scheme to play in.”
“He’s very smart,” says defensive line coach Larry Johnson (above). “He’s done a good job introducing what he feels is his philosophy, trying to merge two things together. It’s a great defensive scheme to play in.”
Secondary and cornerbacks coach Tim Walton was promoted to co-defensive coordinator and will work with Patricia on game plans and organizing the defense. He praised Patricia for his high football IQ, that he knows how to disrupt quarterbacks, that he is passionate about his job and doesn’t overlook details. They worked together in their pre-NFL days at Syracuse.
“We speak the same language,” Walton said. “I’m going to show him the lay of the land, a little bit of the college perspective because it’s changed a little bit since he’s been there.”
Day also made it a priority to hire a DC who didn’t demand hiring his own staff and blowing up what works. That was necessary when he hired Jim Knowles. But Knowles and the current staff of Walton, Johnson, Laurinaitis and safeties coach Matt Guerrieri collaborated to build the best defense in the nation last season. Day wanted no part of rebranding the defense – often the result of an outside coordinator hire – and he didn’t want any of his defensive position coaches to leave.
“Having somebody that was willing to work with the guys that were here was very important,” Day said. “I just want to make sure that I really praise the guys in that room. I think Matt and Tim working together as the coordinators is going to be critical.”
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But that doesn’t mean the defense won’t evolve. Patricia’s history shows he is comfortable deploying multiple base fronts and schemes to accommodate the talent. Already, linebacker C.J. Hicks – he played some safety at Alter High School – has relocated to the defensive end room because rushing the passer is his greatest talent.
Every coach talks about putting players in the best position to make them successful. Coach speak? Perhaps for some. But probably not for Patricia.
He learned the necessity of such an approach when he coached at New England. As the Patriots lost players, it became increasingly difficult to replace them with a similar players because they almost always drafted at or near the end of each round. He said he’s run everything from 3-4 to 4-3 fronts to every nickel and dime package that’s been devised to every sub package imaginable.
“Let’s just get the best players we can, let’s bring them in, and let’s figure out how to use them.” – Matt Patricia
“Let’s just get the best players we can, let’s bring them in, and let’s figure out how to use them,” Patricia said of the New England philosophy.
Recruiting and mining the transfer portal well minimizes that effect in college. But for a new boss like Patricia, it allows the defense to stay on brand and have less to learn. Every coach wants his players to know the schemes so they can play fast and aggressively.
No coach has been more successful than Nick Saban was at Alabama. And no coach had coordinator turnover like Saban. Day said he studied how Saban managed the revolving door of offensive coordinators but managed to keep the defense intact.
“All those things led me down this road with Matt, who even in a short period has already worked hard on building relationships with the staff, with the players,” Day said. “His experience is going to have credibility when he walks in a room with the guys.”
So here’s 50-year-old Matt Patricia landing on his feet at Ohio State. His three seasons as the Detroit Lions head coach ended in 2020 after three losing seasons. He returned to New England as a defensive advisor for two years. He was a senior defensive assistant with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2023. He took 2024 off.
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Is he still on the rebound? Or is Columbus, working for Ryan Day in the national spotlight, and coaching kids what he really wants at his age? As Laurinaitis said, Patricia sounds a lot like Chip Kelly last year when he gave up a head coaching job in the Big Ten to be an assistant coach.
“I’m so excited to be here,” he said as he sat down in front of Ohio State beat reporters for the first time. “I know I’m probably going to say it a thousand times, but it’s really the truth.”
Patricia had a sharp No. 2 pencil tucked between his ear and ballcap. No doubt something he learned as an engineering student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, and as an application engineer with an HVAC company for two years in East Syracuse.
Now he carries the pencil and a notebook with him everywhere he goes. He is a compulsive note-taker about anything he sees, hears or pops into his mind about football. Those notes have made it into two three-ring binders at least three inches thick based on how far Patricia held his fingers apart. They are known as the “Bible.” When he walked into a meeting and set one of them down on the table, the reaction was audible.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s just reference.”
Sounds like a teacher. Patricia said that mentality – he was raised by two teachers and a wrestling coach – is another reason why he wants to be a college coach again and recruit.
“I really got into coaching when I left engineering to pursue my passion of working with young men and really being influential in their lives and helping them grow,” he said. “That’s what college coaches were for me.”
But that’s not all. NIL rights and the 12-team playoffs makes the college game a lot more like the NFL. Day talked about how things in the game, like running quarterbacks, are trickling up and trickling down more than ever.
Patricia, without a team to coach this past season, watched the playoffs.
“One of the most exciting things in college football was the playoffs,” he said. “That’s what I love about the NFL – just give me a chance.”
Patrica has the rings to prove that, even for a guy who played at RPI, all you need is a chance. And now he has another at the highest, most scrutinized level of the college game to prove Ryan Day made a good hire.
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