If there is one thing that overwhelmingly defined Greg Schiano’s tenure at Ohio State it was press cover-1 man (man-to-man pass coverage with one middle of the field deep safety).

Upon arriving in Columbus, Schiano quickly transitioned the Buckeyes from Chris Ash’s pattern-matching cover 4 scheme to this tight man, single high safety framework.

Although basing out of this pass coverage concept was initially successful – aided by having three future first round corners in Marshon Lattimore, Gareon Conley, and Denzel Ward, and a prototypical deep safety in Malik Hooker – Schiano’s overwhelmingly reliance on cover 1 became predictable. Knowing that they were likely facing cover 1, offenses could use motion and formations to out leverage the Buckeye back seven in the run game and create favorable passing game matchups. And opposing quarterbacks could feel confident knowing they faced single coverage.

Enter Greg Mattison and Jeff Hafley. As head coach Ryan Day stated during the Buckeyes’ first week of spring practice when discussing the changes to the Ohio State defense “I think when you force a team to work the ball down the field, you force guys to sometimes check the ball down and take the underneath stuff and we have really good linebackers and guys that can rally to the ball and really make it hard for teams to score. I think that’s important.”

In other words, Day wants Ohio State to move away from exclusively using aggressive man coverage schemes that were too often resulting in allowing explosive plays and instead force teams to sustain drives. As noted, these big plays came not just from the passing game, but also from the run game, where offenses could formation to pull man defenders out of the box.