Ryan Day Wants To See Heavy Rotation At Defensive End

As Ohio State prepares for the 2025 season, the need for a strong defensive end rotation will be a focus. As the Buckeyes saw first-hand last year, it can be a long season living in the age of the 12-team College Football Playoff.

The less worn down a defensive line is, the more havoc they can create in January. In other words, fresher equals pressure.

Ohio State went into the transfer portal twice this year to bolster that rotation, adding Idaho State’s Logan George in January and North Carolina’s Beau Atkinson last month.

The additions add to fourth-year players Kenyatta Jackson, Caden Curry, and CJ Hicks, all of whom are expected to be part of the OSU rotation.

“Yeah, I think we’ve always done that,” head coach Ryan Day said recently. “We’ve always rolled guys. I even think when I first got here in ’17, we had all those guys. Tyquan, Bosa, we used to roll those guys. The more we can do that, especially with the length of the season, we’re going to need to do that.”

As Day mentioned, the 2017 defense featured a rotation at defensive end of graduate senior Tyquan Lewis, senior Jalyn Holmes, fourth-year junior Sam Hubbard, and sophomore Nick Bosa. True freshman Chase Young and redshirt freshman Jonathon Cooper also found their way onto the field at times during the season.

Holmes led all of the defensive ends with 542 snaps that year, while Hubbard and Lewis brought up the rear with 534 snaps. Bosa checked in with 537 snaps. It’s hard to create a more even distribution than what the Buckeyes managed in 2017.

Defensive line coach Larry Johnson has shown that if the drop off between players is minimal — or non-existent — a rotation can be a 50/50 proposition. New defensive coordinator Matt Patricia has also specialized in finding roles that can utilize a player’s specific set of skills.

It remains to be seen how even this rotation will be, but Day is prepared to find out.

“I’m sure Larry wants to be able to do that, so that’ll be important,” he said. “I also think there are different skill sets of those guys that we can try to be creative. That’s one of the reasons why Matt’s here, is to find out what they do best and then get them on the field and do that. I think that’s exciting as we head into the summer to figure out what that looks like.”

One of the additional reasons the snaps were so even among the defensive ends in 2017 is because they also played quite a bit of defensive tackle on passing downs. There is a possibility the Buckeyes may need to do something similar in 2025 to help round out their defensive line depth chart.

But given the increased numbers at defensive end, Ryan Day is optimistic productive roles will be found for those players who earn them.

“Just like on offense, you try to put the guys in the right position to be successful,” he said. “It’s our job to do that now, because numbers-wise, when you look at the guys on the defensive line, I think we’re now at 18, so that’s a big number. We’ve got plenty of guys to work with, so now we’ve got to figure out what they can do well, and that’s coaching.”