Urban Meyer Watched Alex Grinch Throughout 2017 Season
Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer always keeps a running list of possible assistant coaching hires because he knows that his current assistant coaches aren’t going to stick around forever.
When the NCAA announced last year that a 10th assistant coach was going to be permitted, Meyer had to decide how he was going to use that new slot. With five assistants on offense and only four on defense, he saw it as an opportunity to even up the sides a bit. Pretty soon after that, he began to zero in on Washington State defensive coordinator Alex Grinch.
“I started studying Alex back in the summertime,” Meyer said last week. “You always try to have an on-call. We found out that we were going to be able to add a 10th position. And I believe that he should probably have, like most, I imagine are going to have five each, five offense, five defense, and I wanted to add someone on defense. I wanted to have a high — I need high-energy guys in our program. When you start losing guys like Luke Fickell and Kerry Coombs, who are energy, energy people, great recruiters, great people, they get their units to perform, he fit that mold.
“And then what he did at Washington State, I think was outstanding. I really studied him throughout the year. I checked their scores all the time, I checked they’re statistics, I’ve been watching film on him. Then on top of that, he’s an Ohio guy that wanted to be here. The minute we offered him the job, he had a handful of job offers right on top of it. Obviously he picked the right one.”
Grinch’s performance in turning a traditionally defensively-indifferent Washington State program into one that became very productive defensively impressed Meyer. The Cougar defense hadn’t held opponents under 30 points per game since the 2006 season, and yet upon Grinch’s arrival in 2015, Washington State was able to hold opponents under 30 points per game in each of his three seasons. He also helped to triple the number of turnovers forced per season from the year before he arrived.
The season before he arrived, Washington State had the No. 97 defense in the nation. They finished with the No. 16 defense this past season. They were No. 7 in pass efficiency defense, No. 9 in turnovers forced (28), and No. 5 in fewest touchdown passes allowed (11).
A native of Central Ohio, Grinch’s background didn’t hurt either.
“Huge part of it,” Meyer said. “Yeah, he played at Mount Union, which I have great respect for all those guys that come from that program, they’re usually excellent football people. And him and his wife — his wife is from Alliance, Ohio and he’s from right down the street, so, yeah, that was a perfect fit.”
Entire article:
https://theozone.net/2018/02/ohio-state-football-urban-meyer-watched-alex-grinch/