Jack Sawyer leaves spring as Ohio State's main 'Jack' candidate

Jim Knowles loves Jack Sawyer’s toughness.

The Ohio State defensive coordinator loves the way the sophomore defensive end plays, loving his ability to snap back at him a bit too.

“I’m from Phlly, so I kind of like that,” Knowles said. “It’s kind of like, ‘OK, now we got a relationship.’”

Sawyer likes the way Knowles teaches, the responsibility the coordinator takes when players mess up, saying it’s not their fault, but his with how he’s teaching. He’s living up to the hype of being a “mad scientist” when it comes to X’s and O’s, but is an approachable teacher off the field.

Sawyer and Knowles together have high expectations with each other. And in the spring game, the defensive end showed it off a bit.

Sawyer lined up as Knowles’ Jack in Ohio State’s spring game, the defensive end and linebacker hybrid position, the wild card at the end of the Buckeyes’ defensive line that’s expected to do anything and everything at a moment's notice.

“You talk to offensive coaches and they always have to make different plans for three-down, four-down, whatever you are. Can you do both out of the same personnel? It starts there,” Knowles said of the Jack position .

“And then it goes to how to attack protections. Now, all of a sudden, once you got the guy moving around, you got them in different places, now you see how the offense adjusts to that and their schemes and you can come back with other things and counter in the passing game. That player’s productive in terms of the pass rush because I think they develop a mentality. They develop a mentality of being kind of a wild card, being a guy who makes plays.”

Knowles sees that in Sawyer: the 6-foot-4, 260-pound defensive end, who finished his freshman season with three sacks, two pass breakups and a forced fumble.

All Knowles needed was speed and short-space quickness, someone who can fit into tight spaces and make plays between the gaps, emphasizing in explosion and disruption anywhere he ends up.

It’s something Sawyer showed during the Buckeyes’ spring game, standing up on the end and rushing the quarterback one play before going out in coverage and trying to disrupt the receiver, something that wasn’t perfect, but is something that’s being worked on. Sawyer wasn't the only one at the position either, with Mitchell Melton, Javontae Jean-Baptiste and Zach Harrison each getting reps at that end position.

With one season under his belt, that was Sawyer’s goal no matter where he ended up on the field heading into 2022. He wanted to be a Silver Bullet again, something he felt Ohio State’s defense didn’t live up to a season ago.

“Being a Silver Bullet, you can’t take it for granted,” Sawyer said. “I think last year, maybe, we kind of just expected things to happen because it did earlier in years previously. We just expected to win and, I think, kind of got complacent a little bit. And that’s why we slipped up a few times here and there and almost slipped up in the Rose Bowl again. I think this year we’re just taking everything more seriously and really trying to lock in every little detail.”

That clicked for Sawyer in the middle of last season. It’s something he felt, an understanding of what it took to play college football at Ohio State, settling into a routine for the longest season of his football life.

Even through the expectations heading into his freshman season, coming in as the No. 1 weakside defensive end in the 2021 class and the No. 12 player in the county, coming to play for his hometown Buckeyes as a Pickerington North graduate, that’s not what Sawyer was focused on.

He tried to block out that noise, focusing on getting better and improving, remaining consistent.

Sawyer was still developing into who he wanted to be.

“I came in kind of, you know, still developing into a man,” Sawyer said. “Coming into my sophomore year, I feel like I’ve grown up a lot and I feel like I’m a man now. Coming into my sophomore year, I’m just trying to be the guy people expect me to be and just try to be the best player I can for my teammates and help us win in every possible way.”

That was even before Sawyer knew he would be one of Knowles’ Jacks heading into 2022. The sophomore defensive end could just feel big things ahead for himself.

“I think I can take a huge jump this year,” Sawyer said. “I plan on it.”