Steele Chambers has breakout potential in Jim Knowles' defense

COLUMBUS — The play stood out as an example of the explosiveness that Steele Chambers brings to the linebacker position. He was lined up out over a slot receiver, but blitzed on the snap. He knifed between the left guard and center. Despite being held a bit by the guard, Chambers broke through and chased Penn State quarterback Sean Clifford to the sideline, forcing a throw-away out of bounds as Clifford looked to avoid the sack.

The play was a win for Ohio State early in a tight game last season, and further proof that Chambers was starting to feel more comfortable at linebacker after switching from running back in the offseason. Those types of plays were increasingly looking more natural to him.

Chambers, at the time, saw it a different way.

“There are still things to fix,” he said. “Even on that play, I probably could have dipped and ripped a little more so I didn’t get held.”

See, Chambers is a bit of a perfectionist. Not fixating on the minutiae of a given play, one little thing that could have been done a measure better, and moving on to the next one is something he’s had to work on. That’s especially important at linebacker, where you can have one bad snap and then find the ball coming right back at you on the very next play.

So while Chambers’ move from running back to linebacker went about as well as anyone could have expected — to the point that he was arguably the team’s best linebacker last year — he feels like there’s plenty of room to grow now that he has his feet under him at a position he had to refamiliarize himself with after two seasons on the other side of the ball.

“Steele is growing every day into the position,” defensive coordinator and linebackers coach Jim Knowles said. “He continues to be a work in progress. He’s always learning.”

The muscle memory of linebacker seemed to come back to Chambers quickly, and now he’s had a full year to understand what it means to play the position at this level after being a standout at both linebacker and running back in high school.

“It’s been 365 days,” Chambers said. “I can say I’m a linebacker now … Coach Knowles came in and started teaching some big-picture stuff, and I felt like at that point I was able to learn the position a lot better and become more aware of what I was actually doing on the field.”

From a production standpoint, that means Chambers could be in line to see his numbers spike this season. Knowles’ linebackers last season at Oklahoma State, Malcolm Rodriguez and Devin Harper, finished with 131 and 95 tackles, respectively. The defense is designed in a way to spill a lot of action to that position. That’s going to put Chambers and Tommy Eichenberg, both of whom are expected to play the majority of the linebacker snaps this year, in a position to post the first triple-digit tackle season from an Ohio State linebacker since Raekwon McMillan in 2016.

If Chambers is out there this fall flying around and racking up tackles at a high clip, well, that won’t surprise anyone who watched him do the same for four years in high school.

“He was a great two-way player,” said Tim McFarlin, who was Chambers’ head coach at Blessed Trinity High School in Roswell, Ga. “He had over 30 offers, and they were split pretty evenly between offense and defense. Our defensive coordinator said he thought Steele had a higher ceiling at linebacker than at running back.”

That coordinator wasn’t alone.

McFarlin heard from plenty of other high school coaches in the area about Chambers’ potential at linebacker. He was a gifted, powerful running back to be certain. But the flashes at linebacker led many to believe that defense would be the ultimate landing spot for Chambers at the next level. Some college programs, including Clemson and Stanford, felt the same and offered Chambers with visions of starting him out on defense.

Chambers, though, was set on running back.

“That’s what I really had fun with in high school, so that’s where I pictured myself playing in college,” he said.

The Buckeyes offered Chambers that opportunity, but made sure to keep the linebacker door open. Former coordinator Greg Schiano thought Chambers had real potential on defense. After Chambers made the switch last summer, strength coach Mickey Marottie told Chambers the same thing. Even Chambers’ father said he figured his son would ultimately switch to defense. Running backs coach Tony Alford was on board with whatever made Chambers most comfortable and content with his place on the roster.

Linebacker, it turns out, offered a quicker path to the field.

Chambers played 423 snaps last season, a number he wouldn’t have come close to sniffing had he remained at running back. In the final eight games, he led the linebackers in total snaps, playing nearly 100 more than the next player. Chambers didn’t always do everything right, but he did things fast, which made him stand out among of group of players who at times looked stuck in the ground and indecisive. That’s never been Chambers’ way.

“On defense, he just had a heavy presence,” McFarlin said, recalling a game in Chambers’ junior year, a playoff game against Thompson in which Chambers chased down a speed sweep — a bread-and-butter play for the opponent — early in the game for a loss.

“He tracked it down, fit the angle and closed. He had an impact on that game because he took that away from their offense. He had the ability to shut down a team’s strengths.”

Chambers’ speed and instincts are his best attributes. He knows that at 6-foot-1 and 232 pounds, he doesn’t fit the mold of a traditional between-the-tackles plugger. He’s worked to get better at taking on blocks from bigger offensive players.

“He’s crafty,” tight end Cade Stover said. “Sometimes it’s hard to get your hands on him and that kind of pisses me off. He’s just a good, smart ballplayer with a nose for the ball.”

In Knowles’ defense, Chambers is going to get the chance to work side-to-side, use that speed and those instincts, and kill plays when they get spilled to him.

“I feel like I’m more free compared to last year,” Chambers said.

That doesn’t guarantee Chambers anything, but the fact that he looked so comfortable, so quickly last year suggests that there’s room for a big jump this fall.

If it all comes together for him in a defense that seems to suit his skill set, Chambers has a shot to reach his own lofty goals in 2022.

“The goal is to be one of the best in the Big Ten,” he said, “one of the best in the nation.”