Unless you’ve been away on a lunar mission, by now you know that Ohio State co-defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley is headed to Boston College to be its next head coach. It’s a big loss for sure. Hafley helped turn around an Ohio State defense in one short year, but with success comes opportunity.
It’s been a year of firsts for head coach Ryan Day, and now the next first will come in the way of searching for a replacement to one of the assistant coaches on his staff.
But, never fear Buckeye fans, because there’s a name from the past that has surfaced that everyone should get excited about. Former defensive backs coach Kerry Coombs appears to be the main target to fill the hole Hafley’s departure leaves, at least according to sources that have spoken to Lettermen Row.
As a reminder, Coombs is a long-time, well-respected Cincinnati area high school coach that was lured to Columbus to work under Urban Meyer at Ohio State. His secondaries included the likes of Marshon Lattimore and Denzel Ward. He was on staff in Columbus from 2012-2017 and has a hands on coaching style with a ton of energy.
And I do mean a ton. His guys often fed off what he brought in practice and on game days. It would definitely be a hire that would not only get the OSU fans excited, but a quality one to replace a quality departure.
With Kerry Coombs name being floated around to take over for Jeff Hafley, I made this edit. pic.twitter.com/N8EBSUuRGh
— EG (@EGreenyyy) December 14, 2019
The only question is if Coombs would want to come back to the college game after leaving OSU in the first place to be an assistant coach on Mike Vrabel’s staff with the Houston Texans.
We’ll have more on this as the story develops.