There’s no way around it, Ohio State is replacing a lot of talent on defense this season.

It’s not like that’s anything new at Ohio State, but it does create more questions marks than Ryan Day’s offense will garner heading into 2020.

The Buckeyes lose an all-time great defensive end, one of the program’s best ever cornerbacks along with two other starters in the secondary, the top three defensive tackles on the team and their best linebacker of the past couple seasons.

It’s a group that improved tremendously as it collected years of starting experience, something that the 2020 defense does not possess a whole lot of.

But just because the defense will be manned by first-time starters and unproven talent this year doesn’t necessarily mean we know how they will perform. All we can do at this point is project into the future, which is what I’ve done here with my position group predictions relative to last season.

Will each position room take a step forward, backward or jog in place in 2020? Before you dive into the defense, you can check out yesterday’s position group predictions for the units on offense here.