INDIANAPOLIS – Jermaine Mathews saw the difference in Ohio State’s cornerbacks three weeks before the 60,000-plus at Ohio Stadium experienced it at the spring game.

Mathews got his first taste of that when he strolled the sidelines at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center for a spring practice March 24. He watched the aggressive, in-your-face nature of technically sound cornerbacks like Denzel Burke, Jordan Hancock and JK Johnson.

And that’s when he saw how he would be a fit under a new defense run by coordinator Jim Knowles with Tim Walton and Perry Eliano manning down the back end as the two coaches in the secondary.

“I got to see that for the first time and see how they coach those guys,” Mathews told Scarlet and Gray Report. “They can press, they got good feet. I was watching them during their individual drills. They all got good feet.”

The four-star 2023 cornerback out of Winton Woods checks in a tick under 6-foot-2, weighs about 175 pounds and boasts good length while combining the physical profile with an eagerness to get physical at the line of scrimmage. The Buckeyes are shifting their philosophy to implement more physicality at outside corner, and that style fits well with the state of Ohio’s top-ranked cornerback.

“That’s really what describes my game is the physicality,” Mathews said.

SGR got to see that up close on Sunday.