It was one of the worst kept secrets in college football that the Buckeyes and Kerry Coombs were set to do another dance with a big defensive vacancy needing to be filled. Of course the Buckeyes had to wait for Coombs' current run to end, which it did in the AFC Championship Game as the Tennessee Titans came up short against the Kansas City Chiefs.

To say there is a lot of excitement around Buckeye Nation would be an understatement as Coombs is ready to start 'planting flags' on the recruiting trail and bringing his unique level of excitement and 'juice' back to the Ohio State program.

In this week's edition of the 3-2-1 brought to you by our friends at Hague Water Conditioning, we talk a little bit more about Coombs' return as well as the reeling Ohio State men's basketball team and much more.

1 - The juice is coming back to Columbus

After spending two seasons in the NFL, Kerry Coombs is back at Ohio State with a Defensive Coordinator role and you better believe he will be working with the secondary as the Buckeyes continue to hold a firm grasp on their BIA (Best In America) status.

While we have not had a chance to talk to Coombs yet as he has been busy on the recruiting trail and getting things in order for his big return to Ohio State, we already know that he is making a major impact behind the scenes as he is forging a quick relationship with Ohio State's lone non-signee, Cameron Martinez and also undoubtedly already re-introducing himself to high school coaches, especially behind enemy lines up in 'That State Up North'.

But even more than that, he has not been a stranger already at the WHAC. The Ohio State football team is in offseason conditioning right now as the calendar reads January but Ohio State Director of Strength and Conditioning, Mickey Marotti has already had a chance to see Coombs roaming the halls of the facility with coffee in-hand.

"Oh yeah, he was there the first day in the morning," Marotti said. "He's in there 5:30 in the morning, just lifting weights, drinking his coffee, you know being around the boys talking everybody that's the way it's just (the) Energizer Bunny. He'll bring he'll bring that you know, I mean, you guys know what he is."

People are wondering how Coombs and Greg Mattison will mesh running Ryan Day's vision for the Ohio State defense. We have been told not to worry one bit. Both coaches are veterans of the game and are both working toward the same goals. This is a very different situation than when Mattison was demoted at Michigan by Jim Harbaugh and Don Brown was installed as the Defensive Coordinator and completely scrapped anything that was being done previously.

Plus, don't you think that Mattison would rather be out there recruiting on the same team with Coombs, rather than against? This looks like it could be a perfect pairing for the Buckeyes and once again proving that Ryan Day is pretty darn good at assembling coaching staffs. We won't have any real data to back this up with until the season gets underway and we can see the on-field product, but we can assure you that everyone is on the same page at the WHAC and while guys like Jeff Hafley and Mike Yurcich will be missed, this team is not going to miss a beat.

2 - This could be a special class

We get frustrated too with the rankings at times. Players are going to move up and players are going to move down but at the end of the day, the coaches are going to go out and recruit the players that they want.

Ohio State has done a pretty good job of going out and 'selecting' more than many other programs. Sure, this class may have slipped a couple of points in the latest (and final) ranking update of the 2020 Rivals100 and Rivals250.

But with 14 scholarship players already on campus now as mid-year enrollees, the coaching staff already has had a chance to evaluate a lot of these players in terms of being in a college program and while things right now are limited to the weight room, the reviews have been extremely positive from the man charged with leading the team during this part of the season, Mickey Marotti.

The wide receivers have been the group that everyone has talked about the most with Ohio State inking a four-man receiver class that rivals the top receiver classes signed by any school during the Rivals-era in recruiting.

"The wideouts. I mean obviously you have those four guys are all different. You got the (little one?) Mookie (Cooper) who is 195 pound bowed-up guy that's kind of quick guy. You got Gee (Scott) who's kind of like Austin Mack-ish. Then you got Julian (Fleming) and and then you got Jaxon (Smith-Njigba). So they're all different. They've been great. I love their work ethic. I love their focus so far. We've separated them just because it's such a big group. So we'll separate them all the way to the end of January and then we'll start integrating with the other guys."

14 players in a mid-year class is an incredibly large number, leading to the decision to keep them as one of three separate groups going through January work. The other two groups have the group of veterans who have seen plenty of playing time and then a group of second and third-year players who are still developmental and looking to break through.

One good thing about such a big group is that they have that bond as a recruiting class and can really stick together as they are figuring out what it is going to take from advancing from a high school star in a small pond to being a college football player, more than just losing a 'black stripe' at some point during either spring or fall camps.

"I just think it's easier when a bigger group, when there's three guys, that's a bad deal," Marotti added. "And when there's only three guys, there's nowhere for them to go. With this big group that are always together and they're always pushing each other, because in that big group, you have more of a chance to have positive leadership early on than you do if you have three guys."

3 - The basketball Buckeyes have got to get tougher

The word tough (or some variation) was used more than 20 times during a Wednesday interview session with Ohio State Chris Holtmann about his team by either the head coach or the assembled media.

Yes, the Big Ten schedule is tough, but it really seemed as if the focus was on the toughness of his team, an Ohio State team that has lost five of its last six games and will look to get back in the win column against Minnesota on Thursday night, a team that Ohio State already lost to on the road.

Ohio State has averaged 78 points scored in the last two games but the defense has failed them in a pair of games that they have split, allowing 79 points per game.

Even when the team was struggling earlier, the defense was keeping Ohio State in some games and if that is starting to go, what will be the fate of this team?

"Bottom line, we just have got to find a way to play tougher and smarter," Holtmann said on Wednesday afternoon. "And I think that may seem like an over simple simplification, but there's a lot that goes into that."

If it were as simple as fixing one thing, making one tweak, don't you think that the Buckeyes would have done that by now?

No, this is something that has kind of been a culmination of things as Ohio State has fallen from the No. 2 team in the nation to now being unranked and having a lot of people seriously questioning their postseason status as Ohio State would be a double-digit seed in the Big Ten Tournament if action started today and forced to play on the first day of competition.

"So really, I think it's just the whole overall team chemistry just needs to become better," freshman guard D.J. Carton said. "We need to be more connected on the floor and we need to bring more of a passion to this game. I think that's what we've kind of missed. We kind of missed that passion that people play with that we were at the beginning of the season."

Let's see if we are talking about a different topic next week in this same piece or if the Buckeyes will finally be able to turn the corner.

1 - What is it going to take to finally break through?

Following up with the basketball theme, what is it going to take?

More offense? That is not going to help without slowing down the opponent.

More defense? Ohio State overall had been a pretty good defensive team but at the start of their four-game slide, the Buckeyes couldn't spit in the ocean on the offensive side of the ball.

It would be too easy to just say "more offense and more defense". There is not a coach in the game, at any level, that doesn't want that for their team.

Ohio State was close to 14 points better than its opponents in non-conference play while in league play the Buckeyes are half a point better than teams, which is no margin at all. And when you figure that Ohio State has a 32-point and a 12-point win in league play, that is going to lead to a lot of losses when the Buckeyes don't have any consistency from game-to-game in the conference schedule.

We could go through all of the usual suspects of not turning the ball over, needing a consistent secondary scorer behind Kaleb Wesson, more consistency from the free throw line, etc... and those would all be correct and would lead to some better results.

But for now, this team remains an enigma as Holtmann and his staff try to crack the code of why this team went from being world beaters to a team that just can't seem to get out of its own way.

2 - Who will step up to fill the leadership void?

Jumping back to football, there is a long time before September when the team will take the field at Ohio Stadium for the season opener.

Every year we ask about the 'leadership' question. It is just a staple of college football as players have three to five-year careers within a program and move on. And that number can be even smaller with the popularity of the transfer portal these days.

That means that leaders have to step up each year because it is not an overnight process for a leader to emerge.

Mick Marotti gave some insights into his idea of leadership, someone who is more than a player with a loud voice who is there to cheer on his teammates.

"If you're going to be a leader you've got to have all three qualities... you've got to be seen, you've got to be felt, you've got to be heard," Marotti said. "If you don't have those three, you're not a leader. When the NFL scouts come in, 'How does he lead? Vocally?' I'm like, what does that? I don't know what that means? Does he do the other two? Then if he's vocal, yes, then he's a leader. But anybody can cheerlead. That doesn't mean you're a leader."

Marotti went on to say that a player like JK Dobbins really emerged as a leader as his time in the program went on.

Who will be the next players up? You already know who some of the junior and senior returners will be. Guys like Justin Fields will have to take on those roles as well as some guys on the defensive side of the ball. But Marotti knows that it will take more than just a loud voice to be an effective leader.

Generally the team does not pull a lot of stripes in the spring practice session as these players are drinking from a firehose in terms of learning things.

But just listening to the way that the staff talks about some of these players, and the fact that it is Ryan Day and his staff determining the stripe removal, rather than Urban Meyer.... we can see an accelerated path to losing that stripe in the early session.

We are not going to offer up any predictions as to who at this point (we need to have a prediction every week in this piece and it would be foolish to burn through more than one now) but it just feels as if this class is pretty special and that more than one player will be able to check off all the boxes in order to 'officially' become an Ohio State football player with that designation.