Ohio State football: Secondary deeper but still unsettled

A bunch.

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“We want to play as many guys as are ready to play,” Barnes said, echoing something head coach Ryan Day has said about multiple positions. “So do we have a set depth chart at this time? We don’t. We’re gonna continue to evaluate that to get the best guys on the field up until the time the foot hits the ball, and we’ll continue that evaluation throughout the game.”

That sounds like coach-speak or pregame gamesmanship, and to a certain extent it is both.

Coaches hate to give away secrets or tip off their upcoming opponents to what they might do, and they want to keep the carrot of playing time out there as long as possible for youngsters still trying to earn a spot.

Given the way Ohio State recruits, it is also fair to assume the Buckeyes should have good depth, well, pretty much everywhere.

But was not the case in the secondary last season.

After losing three starters — all NFL Draft picks — from a stellar 2019 defensive backfield, Ohio State struggled to stop opposing passing games in 2020.

The starters were shaky, and the options behind them were limited.

Barnes and defensive coordinator Kerry Coombs — a secondary coach himself by trade — knew they would have their work cut out for them last winter with the players they lost.

They did not know how much more difficult the COVID-19 pandemic would make doing the job of developing players, be they veterans looking to take the next step or freshmen who didn’t know what they didn’t know.

They have been hoping a normal offseason would yield much better results, and so far the results are encouraging.

Just don’t expect to find out who has been the most encouraging until next week.

“Well, I think we’ve got at every position multiple guys that we feel really good about,” Barnes said. “So it’s a long season, it’s a physical season. The nature of college football has changed in the course of the last 10 or more years where 60 plays used to be a lot of plays, now 90 plays is a lot of plays. So you’re really playing a game and a third, and over the course of a season, you play 12 games and then hopefully a conference championship game, and then who knows from there. There are plenty of reps to go around.

“So I think we have a lot of guys that we feel confident in at multiple positions. We feel like we’ve got a lot of guys that we have a great deal of confidence in, and that will afford us to play a variety of players.

At deep safety, those players include senior Josh Proctor, Marcus Hooker and Bryson Shaw with Proctor appearing to be the clear leader to retain a spot he held at the end of last season.

At cover safety, Marcus Williamson, Lathan Ransom and Cam Martinez appear to be the top three, while the cornerback is more of a mystery.

Sevyn Banks and Cam Brown were starters last season, but Brown is coming back from a season-ending injury, and Banks has been banged up at times in the preseason.

Redshirt freshmen Lejond Cavazos and Ryan Watts have intriguing talent, while true freshmen Denzel Burke, Jakailin Johnson and Jordan Hancock have had their moments since arriving over the summer.

There’s also senior Demario McCall, a wild card after switching from offense for his sixth season in Scarlet and Gray.

Then there is the “Bullet” position, a hybrid safety/linebacker spot that has been part of the defense the past two seasons but looks like I could be more heavily utilized. That spot has Craig Young, Kourt Williams and Ronnie Hickman battling for playing time.