Ohio State coaches Brian Hartline and Jim Knowles spoke to the media on Tuesday to discuss team progress through Spring practices.
On removing Carnell Tate’s black stripe:
“Any time a guy comes in and handles his business off the field, he gets all straight A’s right now, he’s never missed a workout, he’s always on time, he’s doing his job on the field. The combination of all of that. It’s well deserved.”
On the depth of his wide receivers:
“We are a good 6, 7 deep right now. That’s really good… It’s much better than it was this time last year. Everyone’s being pushed, everyone’s growing, and having these extra reps with a couple of guys out has been awesome.”
On preparing players for a career after college:
“We’re playing football at a really high level because we’re trying to reach a goal. I think that not only are we reaching that goal, but we’re doing a great job at operating at that goal. I’m not just becoming a CEO, I’m like a really good CEO.”
On developing the safeties:
“When you start out you have to establish depth. You’ve got to establish competition. We need to be better as a defense and I think everybody needs to feel that competition. Having Sonny [Styles] there right now establishes a competition between him and Lathan [Ransom].”
On how his defense has adjusted to playing since last year:
“We’re getting more hands on, more balls, we’re competing, this is a great offense and we did not do our job in those match up games that we needed to. In order to get better, we have to win against our offense. We have to compete, we have to fight.”
On his process for awarding playing time to younger players:
“In base defense, you have to take that young, promising player and he’s got to win with the twos… You show us you can dominate with the twos, now we can start to mix you with the ones. You show you hold your own with the ones, now it’s up to me to create more positions and more opportunities for you.”
