What led new Ohio State defensive coordinator Matt Patricia to return to college football

The yellow pencil was tucked behind his ear, resting underneath a gray baseball hat.

As Matt Patricia met with reporters as Ohio State’s newly hired defensive coordinator on Friday, he cast a familiar look.

Over two decades in the NFL, he kept the instrument in his right ear, a placement that offered convenience for frequent note taking.

“It’s kind of just a habit,” Patricia said.

The custom continued as the Buckeyes went through workouts at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center earlier in the morning, allowing Patricia to observe a new group of players in the weight room.

“I got some good notes for sure,” he said.

The sight is now ubiquitous to college football. After Patricia spent last year out of coaching, he returned to this level of the sport for the first time in 22 years.

Patricia last coached in college as a graduate assistant at Syracuse in 2003.

His move to Columbus mirrored his mentor, as Bill Belichick, the legendary coach with the New England Patriots, took a head coaching job at North Carolina earlier this offseason.

As Patricia co-hosted a podcast with Belichick last year, they grew curious about the evolving nature of college sports. They discussed how teams were putting together their rosters. After decades in which schools largely recruited high school players, the creation of the transfer portal has allowed them to add more experienced talent.

“We really get fascinated with roster builds,” Patricia said.

While working in media instead of the sideline in 2024, the 50-year-old Patricia found opportunity for introspection.

“That year off really gave me a good chance to look at the whole landscape of football,” he said. “When you’re in that grind and going all the time, you’re playing a lot of games, and as the season goes later, you just go into the next mode. It was a great opportunity to step back and say, ‘OK, what’s changed?’ ”

Along with changes to roster construction between the prevalence of the portal and NIL compensation, the College Football Playoff expanded from four to 12 teams last season.

Patricia appreciated the postseason’s new format, an enlarged bracket that put more teams in contention for a national championship.

“That’s what I loved about the NFL,” Patricia said. “Just get in the playoffs, and we have a chance to make a run and get going. I thought that was so cool. I was excited to see it. And obviously, it was great for Ohio State.”

If college football has looked more like the NFL in recent years, it was a shift that Patricia did not mind.

“It’s going to be familiar in certain things for me,” he said, “the playoffs, the competition, all of that, it just called to me.”

Patricia was once one of the fastest-rising assistant coaches in the NFL, serving as Belichick’s right-hand man during two Super Bowl titles about a decade ago.

But he left New England after 2017, and his reputation took a hit. He flopped as a head coach, going 13-29-1 with the Detroit Lions and was fired 11 games into his third season in 2020.

Months after his hiring in Detroit, a sexual assault allegation also surfaced. As a 21-year-old on spring break in Texas in 1996, he was accused of sexually assaulting a woman and later charged and indicted by a grand jury. The case was ultimately dismissed.

Patricia told reporters in 2018 that he was “falsely accused.” Buckeyes coach Ryan Day told The Dispatch last week that the school was aware of the indictment.

“We vetted everything and looked into it,” Day said. “We certainly did our homework on it and asked the hard questions.”

Day added in a news conference that athletic director Ross Bjork was also involved in conservations with Patricia about the allegation.

“We feel really good about the hire,” Day said. “Our program has great values and standards of how we handle ourselves, and that's not going to change

Patricia replaces Jim Knowles, who left after three years to become the defensive coordinator at Penn State .

Knowles was often described as a mad scientist , devising an intricate scheme that helped to get Ohio State over the hump last season.

As he looked for his next defensive coordinator, Day admired similar a trait in Patricia, who studied aeronautical engineering at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York and was on a path to be a rocket scientist before he dove into coaching.

“He’s one of the best minds in the game,” Day said.

Patricia is paired with secondary coach Tim Walton, who will also be a co-coordinator. They were on staff together at Syracuse in 2002.

With other assistants returning on defense, the Buckeyes are not overhauling their system. Day expressed a desire for their identity to remain intact.

The arrival of Patricia, who has shown flexibility with his schemes, is seen as an opportunity to enhance their defense.

Patricia said the multiple approach is rooted in his time in New England. As the Patriots often picked later in the NFL draft, they would seek to select the best available players, then tailor their scheme around the personnel.

“It became much more difficult to find pieces to fit the scheme,” Patricia said, “so we had to take the reverse effect. Let’s just get the best players we can, bring them in, and figure out how to use them.”

As Patricia discussed his path to Ohio State, he was full of pep. Even if the college game has taken tenets of a professional league, it still has a family environment he found appealing, a chance to work with 18- to 22-year-olds.

“I’m so excited to be here,” Patricia said. “I know I’m going probably going to say it a thousand times, but it’s really the truth.”

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 .

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: New Ohio State DC Matt Patricia details return to college football