Ohio State's offensive line prepares for the next level

Justin Frye never had the experience Paris Johnson Jr.'s currently having.

The Ohio State offensive line coach and associate head coach for the offense was always a starter, setting a school record with 45 consecutive starts at Indiana between 2002-06, being voted as a team captain and the team’s most outstanding offensive lineman.

He was talked about as a “tough kid,” a “great kid,” a “smart football player.” Johnson gets all those attributes too, but attached with the descriptors of “former five-star” and “eventual first-round NFL Draft pick.”

Frye was never at that level. But that doesn’t mean he’s changing his interactions with Johnson heading into what could be an incredibly important season.

As spring turns to summer, the offensive line coach is re-teaching last season’s starting right guard the left tackle position, perfecting the footwork changes and technical adjustments of coming back outside after spending his college career inside as a converted five-star tackle.

Frye understands where Johnson’s future is heading. He can already picture how his NFL Combine will go, saying the Cincinnati native will blow it out of the water and test incredibly well.

He just has to get his left tackle to that place.

“I mean, he’s a high-level player,” Frye said. “We’re going to get him there to play that way because ultimately (that’s) what you have to do: you press play and you get to play like a first-round draft pick.”

As spring turned to summer, that became the rallying cry for the most-senior members of Frye’s room, with players like Johnson, Dawand Jones, Luke Wypler and Matthew Jones coming to a point where they are competing not only to better the line and the offense as a whole, but to build their resume for what comes next.

For Frye, it’s all about maximizing players’ abilities and putting them in a good position to get noticed by teams at the next level. That starts with understanding the inner workings of the game, understanding the team element of the line: where someone has help and when they don’t.

And there’s always something to work on, Frye said, whether it’s Johnson, who’s returning to tackle for the first time at the college level, or Dawand Jones, who’s heading into his third year on the outside.

“There’s something we can find to make it better,” Frye said. “It’s just a daily push with all those guys.”

It’s something Frye’s seen out of Johnson.

After practice, the Ohio State offensive line coach catches up with his junior left tackle, asking him how he feels being a college-level tackle for a set number of practices, something Johnson responds to with, “I’m getting it, feeling good about it.’

That’s all that NFL teams are looking for: good football players that can fit right in.

Of the players that are aiming to make that jump in the next year, Frye sees that potential. It’s just his job to get them there.

“If you play good football, then you are going to be a good football player,” Frye said. “So we’ve just got to get them to play their best. All these guys have aspirations, as they should, to do that. So that’s our job, just to work and work and work and maximize your skill sets.”