All throughout the offseason, we at Scarlet and Gray Report will start the day by answering a question related to Ohio State football, whether it has to do with the team in 2022, recruiting or looking back at past teams and players.
Ohio State's offensive coaching hierarchy could look a bit different in 2022 than it did a season ago.
On Sunday, the Buckeyes announced that wide receivers coach Brian Hartline would be promoted to passing game coordinator along with keeping his original duties in the wide receiver room.
On Tuesday, Ohio State officially announced the hiring of former UCLA assistant coach Justin Frye as both the offensive line coach — replacing Greg Studrawa — and as the associate head coach for the offense.
As it stands now, Ohio State's offense has a passing game coordinator (Hartline), an associate head coach (Frye), an assistant head coach for the offense (running backs coach Tony Alford) and an offensive coordinator (tight ends coach Kevin Wilson), along with a head coach in Ryan Day, who also serves as the main offensive play caller.
That's a lot of cooks in one kitchen.
So what could this look like when it comes to a prepping for a game?
According to Scarlet and Gray Report recruiting analyst and former Vanderbilt director of recruiting Eric Lammers, it could just mean different focuses for the coaches when it comes to prepping the entire offense.
Whether its for the run or pass game, it starts by getting info from graduate assistants and analysts about an opposing defensives run coverage, blitz tendencies and personnel packages, helping devise a plan to combat that, passing it up the food chain eventually to the head play-caller — Day — to make the final call.
"Assuming Day gives Hartline and Frye these responsibilities, (it) essentially just gives these guys a bigger voice and helps prepare them for being an offensive coordinator," Lammers said.
Most of the time, those titles mean increased paydays for those involved, even though Ohio State has not announced the terms for Hartline or Frye's contracts for 2022.
But until the offensive coaching staff is set ahead of spring ball, it's unclear what that hierarchy will look like.
It will be Hartline's first time as anything other than solely a wide receivers coach, while Frye has worked as a run-game coordinator at Boston College and an offensive coordinator at UCLA under head coach and offensive play caller Chip Kelly.
No matter what the roles were in 2021, Day and the rest of the offensive coaching staff were clicking in 2021.
Ohio State had the No. 1 total offense (561.2 yards per game) and scoring offense (45.7 points per game) in the country, also finishing first in yards per play (7.96).
The Buckeyes finished second with 76 touchdowns and third with 380.9 passing yards per game.
What Hartline and Frye could provide in their new roles could be a semblance of balance, bringing in an offensive game plan to Wilson and Day that could continue that amount of success in both the pass and run games in 2022.