How Matt Patricia Silenced Ohio State’s Doubters in Year One

When Ryan Day hired Matt Patricia to replace Jim Knowles in February 2025, Ohio State’s own fan sites weren’t exactly celebrating. One prominent outlet later admitted that “the reaction from Ohio State writers and fans was mixed, at best,” a polite way of saying plenty of people thought the hire was a mistake.

It is easy to forget that now, but the skepticism made sense at the time. Patricia had never worked as a full-time college coordinator, and he was being asked to replace a coordinator who had just delivered a national championship. Betting on an NFL lifer with no recent college ties to fill that specific role looked, to a lot of reasonable people, like an unnecessary risk. It also broke from Day’s usual pattern, since his previous coordinator hires had generally come from within the college ranks, with a track record so strong that people around the program have pointed out there has really only been one Ryan Day coordinator hire that didn’t pan out.

What Actually Happened

Patricia’s first season answered the doubt about as decisively as possible. Ohio State’s defense finished first nationally in both scoring and total defense in 2025, doing it with a starting lineup that had lost its entire defensive line from the year before. The Buckeyes led the country in red zone defense and ranked inside the top 10 nationally in third-down defense as well, numbers that don’t happen by accident regardless of how much individual talent is on the roster.

Patricia was also named a finalist for the Broyles Award, given annually to the top assistant coach in all of college football, a level of individual recognition that rarely goes to a first-year coordinator at any program, let alone one making the jump from the NFL after a year away from coaching entirely.

Why the Doubt Made Sense, and Why It Disappeared

None of this is meant to embarrass the people who were skeptical in February 2025. Coaching hires from outside the college ranks fail often enough that caution was the reasonable default position, and Patricia’s unconventional path back to coaching after a year away gave critics a legitimate reason for pause. What actually changed the conversation was watching an almost entirely rebuilt defense play faster and more disguised than the unit it replaced, week after week, against Big Ten competition that had every incentive to expose any weaknesses in a new system.

By the time the season ended, the same fan community that had listed the hire as one of its biggest offseason concerns was writing pieces asking whether Patricia could possibly repeat the feat in year two. That is about as complete a reversal as a coaching hire can produce in 12 months.

A Full Season of Evidence

The biggest reason the doubt faded was simply time. A single hot start can be written off as scheme novelty before opponents adjust. A full season, against a Big Ten slate that saw every coordinator get a real look at Patricia’s tendencies, is a much harder thing to explain away. Ohio State’s defense didn’t just hold up early. It got more disguised and more aggressive as the year went on, which is usually the clearest sign that a new system has actually been absorbed by the players running it rather than just installed on a whiteboard.

Patricia’s own comments during his Broyles Award recognition added another layer to that shift. Speaking with Holly Rowe, he explained why the move back to college in the first place felt right to him, saying “I wanted to get back to teaching and mentoring and helping kids develop.” That isn’t the kind of quote that wins over a skeptical fan base by itself, but paired with a season of statistical proof, it reframed the original hire as something more than an NFL retread looking for a soft landing. It looked, in hindsight, like exactly what it was described as: a coach returning to the part of the job he said he missed most.

Trust Earned, Not Assumed

Ryan Day’s decision to sign Patricia to a three-year, record-setting contract extension this offseason reflects that same shift. It is one thing for a fan base to come around on a coordinator after a great season. It is another for the head coach who made the original hire to back it up with the richest coordinator contract in college football, especially with NFL teams reportedly showing real interest in bringing Patricia back to the league.

Heading into 2026, the doubt hasn’t fully disappeared, since replacing seven more starters is a legitimate challenge regardless of what happened a year ago. But it has changed shape. The question is no longer whether Matt Patricia can coach at the college level. It is whether he can do what he already did once, again, with almost nobody left from the group that proved it the first time. Fans who spent last summer bracing for a step backward are now, at minimum, willing to wait and see what he does with a defense built almost entirely around new faces.