8 potential Ohio State football defensive coordinator candidates to replace Jim Knowles

Posted by author January 27, 2025 Football

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Ohio State is in the market for a defensive coordinator.

A week after the Buckeyes captured their first national championship in a decade, they saw Jim Knowles leave to become the defensive coordinator at Penn State.

The departure of Knowles brought them fully into the offseason, leaving coach Ryan Day to retool his staff.

As Day looks to hire his fourth defensive coordinator in seven seasons, here are potential candidates to replace Knowles.

Potential candidates to replace Jim Knowles

Matt Guerrieri

Among in-house candidates, no one is as familiar with Knowles’ defense as Guerrieri, the Buckeyes’ safeties coach who began working with him as a graduate assistant. He was also the co-defensive coordinator at Duke in 2018-21 and Indiana in 2023. During a championship celebration on Sunday, Day described the 35-year-old assistant as “one of the brightest minds in college football and a star in the making.” His elevation would offer continuity, allowing them to keep a system Knowles installed three years ago.

Tim Walton

Another assistant with coordinator experience is Walton, the secondary coach who has coached the Buckeyes’ cornerbacks since 2022. It’s been more than a decade since he ran a defense, though. Walton was last a defensive coordinator in the NFL in 2013 with the St. Louis Rams and also at Memphis in 2008 and Miami in 2007. He’s been a position coach for 26 out of his last 29 years in coaching.

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Randy Bates

For the last seven seasons, Bates has been the defensive coordinator at Pittsburgh. While the Panthers are coming off their worst statistical season since he joined Pat Narduzzi’s staff in 2018, they have ranked in the top 25 in total defense in three seasons, including as high as 15^th in 2019. Bates is also an Ohio State alum who grew up in New Concord.

Bryant Haines

A reworked deal that was reached Sunday could make Haines more difficult for Ohio State to pry out of Bloomington, but there is reason he would be an attractive candidate. As Indiana’s defensive coordinator, he played a vital role in Curt Cignetti’s immediate turnaround with the Hoosiers last fall and was a finalist for the Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant. He’s also a native of Piqua and was a graduate assistant with the Buckeyes in 2013.

Mike Tressel

Tressel is the nephew of former Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel and was a graduate assistant when they won a BCS national championship in 2002. He has spent the past two decades on staffs for Mark Dantonio and Luke Fickell, who brought him to Wisconsin in 2023 as his defensive coordinator. The Badgers have ranked only in the middle of the pack in the Big Ten in total defense in recent seasons, but he helped both Cincinnati and Michigan State reach the College Football Playoff in previous stops.

Chris Hampton

The Buckeyes hired away another assistant from Oregon last year in running backs coach Carlos Locklyn, and Hampton is also seen as a coordinator on the rise. He was the defensive coordinator at Tulane in 2022 during the Green Wave’s historic 12-win season and coordinated the Ducks’ defense with Tosh Lupoi the last two seasons. Only 15 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision allowed fewer points per game this past season than Oregon.

Pete Kwiatkowski

It would be a splashy hire to poach Kwiatkowski from Texas, where he has been the defensive coordinator since Steve Sarkisian arrived in Austin in 2021. As a former Boise State defensive lineman, he lacks ties to the Midwest. Most of the 58-year-old’s coaching career has been in the Pacific Northwest. But the Buckeyes know firsthand the strength of his unit as the Longhorns held them to their fewest points in the playoff. He was a Broyles Award finalist as well.

Jeff Hafley

When Day constructed his first staff in 2019, he hired Hafley to call the defense as a co-coordinator with Greg Mattison, and the Buckeyes ended up leading the FBS in total defense. Hafley returned to the NFL last year as the Green Bay Packers’ defensive coordinator, but he has a history with Day that spans back to their time as up-and-coming assistants in the Northeast.

Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Follow him on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @joeyrkaufman or email him at jkaufman@dispatch.com.