Tim May: Buckeyes preaching versatility in intriguing linebacker room
COLUMBUS — As James Laurinaitis readies his gaggle of linebackers for the coming Ohio State season, there is at least one among the group he can use in a how-to video to teach the others.
“Cody Simon,” Laurinaitis said, referring not so ironically to the only one in the room with some starting experience from last year.
Don’t misunderstand. Laurinaitis, former Butkus Award winner at Ohio State and a long-time NFL stalwart, believes the rest of his group is rich in talent. That is referring to Sonny Styles, a converted safety who just keeps growing; journeyman havoc-creator C.J. Hicks; preseason camp-riser Arvell Reese; steadily improving from mid-season last year Gabe Powers; and freshmen Payton Pierce and Garrett Stover.
But those fellows are at various points on the learning curve in a defense that demands all linebackers be interchangeable, whether they’re put in at the MIKE [middle], WILL [weakside] or SAM [strongside]. Most of the time the Buckeyes are expected to be in two-linebacker sets in this, the third season of coordinator Jim Knowles’ 4-2-5 scheme. There also likely will be times when three linebackers will be on the field, thus the drive by Laurinaitis, in his first season as the fully fledged Ohio State linebackers coach, see that, well, everyone knows their responsibilities.
So again, who in his room best gets it, can be held up as the example to which to aspire?
“Cody Simon is a guy you could put at MIKE, at WILL, at SAM,” Laurinaitis said. “You can move him all around. He’s the unquestioned leader of the group. He’s the leader of the defense.
“He gets everybody lined up. He’s very technical, has really good footwork, really clean footwork, which allows him to change direction and get off blocks and tackle well. So I think Cody Simons probably, if you said who’s the most overall, you know, LB, just because he can go anywhere and you can do anything with him.”
The drive in preseason camp is to bring all the others up to that level, or at least close enough, with Styles, son of former Ohio State linebacker Lorenzo Styles of the mid-1990s, looking like the leader of the rest. As mentioned earlier, though, all have upsides that put them in the Ohio State room in the first place, and while the development process continues, nothing beats real game experience which starts Aug. 31 vs. Akron.
“They’ve just got to play, man. Yeah, they’ve just got to play,” Laurinaitis said.
Through preseason practices thus far, Laurinaitis indicated he has seen steady improvement in all as he force feeds the mix and match.
“I think the more reps and the more you kind of move guys around — sometimes it’ll be Cody and C.J., it’ll be Cody and Sonny, it will be Arvell and Sonny, it’ll be our Arvell and Gabe,” he said. “You’re just moving guys around.”
The responsibilities in the contemporary game from one play to the next can be dizzying, even listening to Laurinaitis explain them.
“And so you’re not just teaching a guy, ‘Hey, the Mike backer does this, this and this,” he said. “ Hey, no, it’s cover three. There’s a curl flat guy, a hook, curl, curl flat [across the middle of the field]. Whose [coverage responsibilities] are those four pieces underneath? Right?”
Then put at another linebacker spot the next play, how do the responsibilities change?
“Can they figure out?” Laurinaitis said. “Because that’s football, sometimes the nickel is supposed to go to the boundary. Sometimes he’s not.”
Sometimes mistakes are made and must be cleaned up on the fly for Ohio State, no questions asked.
“Figure it out,” Laurinaitis said. “So it’s always cross training them. … I don’t want, like, the Will linebackers to know only one technique, and the Mike, that’s another technique. No, they’ve got to know both because in our scheme, they’re gonna be put in both situations. … So the expectation is, know what you’re doing.”
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