COLUMBUS, Ohio –– Ohio State has given up four passing touchdowns in the past two games, which is almost half as many as it allowed in 14 games a season ago.
More surprisingly though, is that three have been scored on preseason All-American cornerback Shaun Wade, the projected first round NFL draft prospect and lone returner from last season’s starting secondary.
Following the Buckeyes’ win against Penn State, head coach Ryan Day and defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs expressed no concern over Wade’s performance, but how would Wade evaluate himself through the first third of the season?
“More disappointment, no lack of confidence,” Wade said Tuesday. “You’re gonna be disappointed when you want to be great, so at the end of the day I’m always gonna be disappointed. Even when I have a good game, I’m gonna know one play that you probably don’t see that I know that I could’ve done better at.”
Despite being a returning starter, this season hasn’t been without its learning curves for Wade.
A slot corner the past couple years, Wade has moved to the outside to replace the stellar play of first round draft picks Jeff Okudah and Damon Arnette from a season ago, but the transition hasn’t necessarily been quite as smooth as many assumed it would.
Wade is still acclimating to the new position, and even said he is taking pointers from younger corners like junior Sevyn Banks.
“The biggest challenge is probably the distance from the ball. Everything is definitely farther, especially from the field side,” Wade said. “Really what I’ve been doing is going back from last year, watching Jeff and Damon and just trying to take some things they did last year to this year. I still learn from coach Coombs, learn from even Sevyn, people that been playing outside corner more than me.”
Wade said he’s used to being closer to the ball, fighting through blocks and making more tackles in the box. That might be why it felt strange not to hear Wade’s name called much in the season opener, although on one of the only times his man was targeted, Wade made a great play to break up the pass.
In fact, Wade said trying to pick off passes rather than break them up might have led to a couple of the catches he’s given up in the past couple games.
“These last games I’ve definitely been trying to go for the interception,” Wade said. “I been watching my film, just watching myself, sometimes I just need to go for the PBU, just break the ball up. And that’s what I’ve been noticing, sometimes I just feel like I’ve been trying to go for the interception too much, and that’s what happens when you get greedy.”
Generally, Wade has been in good position, even when the opposition has come up with the ball. But he said he’s picked up on a tendency in the film room that he needs to fix in order to break up more plays.
Wade said he has been jumping backwards, rather than straight up with a receiver or forward toward the ball.
An example Wade gave was in the last game against Rutgers, when a Scarlet Knight tight end came up with the ball in the end zone despite the pass essentially being a 50-50 jump ball between the two.
“We both kind of had the ball. He was a tight end, the tight end is stronger than a DB so eventually he probably was gonna take the ball away from me,” Wade said. “But I still jumped back, if I jumped into him, it distracts him, I hit him, we both make body contact. We didn’t make body contact, we both just had hand contact on the ball. So instead of jumping back, jumping into the player.”
Wade said neither he nor his coaches sugarcoat anything when it comes to the evaluation of his play, but he did say that all corners, “from the Jalen Ramseys to the Marshon [Lattimore]s,” always have things to improve on.
More than anything though, Wade said his main concern is the game’s end result.
“At the end of the day, you just want to win,” Wade said. “If I play bad and we win the natty, I’m gonna be happy because we won the natty.”
