Spring Learnings: Defensive Backs

The loss of multi-year starters Kurt Coleman and Anderson Russell at safety combined with a spring game featuring a secondary that looked lost at times gives Ohio State fans the perfect opportunity to be concerned about something.

During a summer with very few question marks on offense or defense, the secondary will certainly be a topic of conversation. But let’s face it, when half of your questions that need to be answered heading into fall practice involve your third wide receiver and running back, you are in pretty good shape.

So even though the holes at safety and the apparent inability of Chekwa or Torrence to reach shut-down corner status are mildly concerning, count me as far from worried about it.

Here are a few things that I learned this spring about the secondary.

The secondary was hit the hardest (next to the offensive line) from being split up in the spring draft.

It takes cohesion and teamwork in the secondary, and when your starting corners and soon-to-be starting safeties aren’t even playing on the same team with each other, can you really make a judgment about the secondary?

The answer is no.

Combine that with the defensive schemes being extremely limited and you have the ingredients for a bad showing from the secondary, regardless of the level of talent that you have.

Long story short, take everything you think you learned about the secondary in the spring game and throw it out the window.

Orhian Johnson was extremely impressive this spring.

Instead of focusing on the spring game performances, I think a better indicator of things to come is how early and definitively Orhian Johnson locked down the starting safety spot next to Jermale Hines.

What was supposed to be a battle in the spring quickly turned into a two man show. While Hines locking down a spot was not surprising, I expected the competition over the other safety spot to last the entire spring and into the fall.

That didn’t happen and all of the competition in the secondary quickly moved to the star position. A week or two into practice and the coaching staff didn’t even pretend that the safety spots were still up for grabs.

This indicates to me that Johnson was lights out, and hopefully we will see some big things from him this year.

Stop worrying about the cornerbacks.

It is difficult for me to understand exactly what people are worried about with the cornerbacks. We have two returning starters who are both seniors and who both played above average last year.

Neither of them really stood out, I will give you that, but at the same time, neither one consistently got beat either.

Most of all, I don’t understand people’s concerns about Chekwa.

Are we really still hung up on the fact that he got picked on by one of the best QB’s in college football over the past decade (Colt McCoy) in a bowl game two years ago?

I say get over it, our cornerbacks are experienced and should be two of the best in the Big Ten.

I can understand some mild worries about the secondary this summer, because really, what else is there to worry about?

At the same time, the defensive front seven is going to be the secondary’s best friend (just like last year), so even if there are issues (which I think are either non-existent or greatly exaggerated) they should be masked.

The secondary won’t be as good as the front seven next year, but that isn’t a fair comparison.

I predict that our defense is going to be very, very good next season, and the secondary might not be a major reason why, but they will certainly do their part.