COLUMBUS, Ohio –– For the fourth-straight season, the Ohio State secondary will have a new coach running the room. Matt Barnes is not new to the program though, and his predecessor in the role, Ohio State defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs, is still on staff.

Head coach Ryan Day hopes the reshuffling of responsibilities among his defensive coaches will allow for improvements in the secondary, but the coexistence of Barnes and Coombs also creates an exercise in comparing and contrasting how they go about operating their back end group.

“Let me brag on Kerry’s style for a minute. I admire his energy, he sees everything in practice, he’s all over it, he’s unbelievable,” Barnes said Thursday. “He does a fantastic job. I’m probably a bit more reserved, I’m a little bit more animated maybe on the practice field. But I think we work really well together, I think we play off of each other.”

Coombs, who enters his eighth season in the Ohio State program overall, is notorious for his boundless energy and endless coffee consumption, often resulting in a fiery demeanor on the sidelines.

Barnes, who has been the special teams coordinator for the Buckeyes since 2019, before being promoted to secondary coach this offseason, says his style is “more matter-of-fact.”

“I just want you to get my corrections and I want you to hear what I’m saying, and not necessarily how I’m saying it,” Barnes said. “So I just want to make sure I’m communicating as clearly as I can.”

However, fifth-year senior cornerback Marcus Williamson said the pair are more alike than you might think. Williamson said he routinely catches Coombs and Barnes doing the same celebration on the sidelines when he’s watching game tape.

“You see similarities in how they coach, they’re very energetic, juice kind of guys, we like to say around here,” Williamson said.

While senior safety Josh Proctor echoed the sentiment that it’s not a drastic change from Coombs to Barnes, he has noticed differences in their approach.

Proctor said the biggest one may be Barnes’ emphasis on the extra details, whether that be working on footwork or how the Buckeye defensive backs flip their hips; the fundamental work that Coombs said recently he didn’t get enough time to employ with last year’s unit due to the shortened spring and preseason periods.

“It’s really just coach Barnes just taking over the role of explaining –– I feel like he’s better at explaining things to us, kind of,” Proctor said. “Breaks things down different ways. Coach Coombs is still very much a part of everything we do. He doesn’t miss anything.”

Barnes said the mandate to drive home fundamentals was one handed down by Day, who recognized the impact of time lost to COVID-19 a season ago.

Proctor said communication on the back end has already begun to improve as the returning Ohio State defensive backs are getting a better understanding of the “whole point of the defense.”

Williamson and company are ready to show that last season was not an accurate representation of Ohio State’s talent at defensive back, and with the joint coaching efforts of Barnes and Coombs, the Silver Bullets sound hopeful about their progress thus far.

“When you get into camp and the season and the weird year we had last year, a lot of the focus had to be on scheme, personnel,” Williamson said. “But now we’re just really focused on becoming better football players, and I think that’s what coach Barnes is passionate about, and it’s really been showing in how we’ve been practicing and how we’ve been performing.”