New Ohio State Running Backs Coach Carlos Locklyn Discusses Move, RB Room

COLUMBUS — New Ohio State running backs coach Carlos Locklyn met with the media for the first time since joining the Buckeyes a week ago. He answered a slew of questions about the timing of his departure, what he has seen from his running back room in the first week, recruiting at Ohio State, and much, much more. The highlights of everything he had to say can be found below.

• “I’m pretty excited. This has been a journey.” “I have to pinch myself every morning that I’m here.” “Great place, great people. Great young men.”
• Initial reaction to the first time Ryan Day reached out to him? He was getting out of bed and got a text from Day. He shook his wife awake to look at the text, but she didn’t know who he was.
• How do you handle this running back room? “This ain’t my first rodeo.” He’s been part of talented running back rooms before.
• How do you get the best out of your RBs? I get the best out of them because I love them. He just got done reading Jim Tressel’s “Winner’s Manual” and found some good stuff in there about purposes and goals.
• “This is the worst coached position in football. It’s terrible.”
• It takes great strength to make a decision to leave a place like Oregon.

• How is he assessing the talent here? He recruited most of it so he knows them and what they do. He has been breaking them down since they were in high school. He is getting to know Sam Williams-Dixon and TC Caffey because those are the two guys he didn’t know.
• “I know what my purpose is. My purpose is supporting the people.”
• What did you learn from your time at Memphis with that running back room? “We live in such a selfish world.” He tells the kids that the ball is gonna go flat one day. It doesn’t cost you anything to celebrate another man’s success. When a room learns to be one, they can feed off of each other.
• How did your career in law enforcement prepare you for coaching? It’s a lot easier to handle a room of 5 or 6 players than a pod of 51 inmates. Or going on a domestic call.
• There are some great RB coaches out there but he says it’s the worst-coached position because he wants head coaches to know that. They shouldn’t just hire guys who are recruiters.
• His mother was in the military, so he is used to moving. He has lived everywhere.
• Day told him he wants him to develop the room, get the guys going. “I can only be me, and I told him that.” When he steps into this room, his mindset is to do his job so well that living, dead, or unborn, nobody could do it better.
• He prefers to be called “Coach Lock.”
• Why leave law enforcement and “start at the bottom?” Coaching football was “God’s decision.” He felt he could reach more young people through football than law enforcement, “so that was part of it.”

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