Ohio State football: Day taps former colleague for offensive line coach

“I am thrilled to welcome Justin, his wife, Lauren, and their family to Ohio State and the football program,” Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said in a release. “Justin and I have worked on the same staffs together and I’ve seen first-hand how good he is at developing his players as well as building personal connections with them. I believe he’ll do great things here to enhance his room and our offense as a whole.”

Frye is a native of Elwood, Ind., who played offensive line at Indiana for Gerry DiNardo and then Terry Hoeppner.

He began his coaching career at Indiana as a graduate assistant in 2007 for head coach Bill Lynch then spent two seasons as a graduate assistant at Florida under Urban Meyer.

The sports communications and broadcasting grad was a full-time offensive line coach for the first time in 2011 at Temple under Meyer protege Steve Addazio, whom he followed to Boston College in 2013.

At both of those stops, he shared a staff with current Ohio State head coach Ryan Day.

Frye spent the last four seasons at UCLA, where he worked under head coach Chip Kelly, an early adopter of the spread option offense and Day’s top mentor.

Frye had the title of offensive coordinator and offensive line coach the last three years in Westwood, where the Bruins ranked 12th nationally in scoring offense and 14th in rushing last season.

UCLA had a 1,000-yard rusher in all three of the full seasons Frye handled the offensive line, and he helped produce some of the best running backs in the nation at both Temple (Bernard Pierce) and Boston College (AJ Dillon and Andre Williams).

Football Outsiders rated the UCLA seventh in the country in average line yards, a metric that a attempts to measure only the amount of rushing yards attributable to the blocking up front by separating them from the ones gained by a running back after he breaks through the line.

Ohio State ranked No. 2 in line yards last season, but the Bruins had more success in short-yardage situations, where they were 26th and Ohio State was 51st.

Pro Football Focus ranked UCLA 42nd in the nation in run blocking while Ohio State was fourth, though that figure includes all players (not just offensive lineman). Ohio State was 28th in pass blocking while UCLA was 63rd.

The PFF grades also show a different running style for the Bruins, who used gap blocking almost two thirds of the time. Ohio State was predominantly a zone blocking team last season, utilizing that style on almost 70 percent of its runs according to PFF.

Gap blocking typically utilizes more down blocks, angles and pulling linemen to create a hole while zone calls for linemen to block an area and a back to find a crease.

Over the weekend, Ohio State announced Brian Hartline was promoted to passing game coordinator.

Hartline will continue to coach the receivers, whom he has molded into one of the best units in the country over the past four years, while adding responsibility in offensive game planning.

Jim Knowles has been hired to revamp the defense while the rest of the composition of the staff on that side of the ball has not been finalized.