Michael Cohen
College Football and College Basketball Writer
LOS ANGELES — A throng of reporters descended on Ohio State cornerback Denzel Burke from the moment his team’s designated interview period began in a crowded meeting room two floors below ground at the Sheraton Grand, a downtown hotel outfitted from top to bottom with decals, signage and bouquets in anticipation of the Rose Bowl. So prominent and ubiquitous are the floral displays around the property that any guests unfamiliar with this year’s College Football Playoff, which pits the Buckeyes against Oregon in a highly anticipated quarterfinal, could certainly be forgiven for thinking Valentine’s Day arrived early.
For all the wrong reasons, Burke had developed into a central figure ahead of Wednesday’s rematch between two of the Big Ten’s best programs. He endured the worst game of his career when these teams first met at Autzen Stadium on Oct. 12, a gut-wrenching evening that changed the trajectory of Ohio State’s defense. The Ducks exploited Burke, who was named first-team All-Big Ten by the league’s coaches in 2023, with one deep pass after another in a ruthless undressing that produced 162 yards, two touchdowns and a perfect NFL passer rating of 158.3 for quarterback Dillon Gabriel on passes thrown in Burke’s direction. That Burke had been the player who coined the team’s lofty “natty or bust” slogan in early March only sharpened the discomfort. He took a week’s reprieve from social media to distance himself from online slander.
“I kind of went dark,” Burke said on Monday morning.
The pained introspection radiated from Burke to all corners of Ohio State’s defense, a unit that had only surrendered 34 points over its first five games combined, before the Ducks racked up 32 points and 496 yards of total offense by themselves in a stunning message to the rest of the league. Gabriel, who finished the season as a Heisman Trophy finalist, completed better than 67% of his passes for 341 yards and two touchdowns — all without being sacked. Oregon’s two leading receivers, Tez Johnson and Evan Stewart, victimized Burke and the rest of the Buckeyes’ secondary for 14 catches and 224 yards.
Such a disillusioning performance sparked wide-ranging schematic changes at Ohio State that would eventually lead head coach Ryan Day to describe his team’s defense as “reengineered,” the consequence of a humbling bye week spent dissecting everything the Buckeyes had put on film to start the season. What followed from mid-October through the present was a renaissance of sorts that saw defensive coordinator Jim Knowles find ways to catalyze his team’s pass rush while also solidifying coverage in the secondary, the totality of which enlivened a unit that is now leading the country in both total defense (242.2 yards per game) and scoring defense (11.4 points per game) after smothering Tennessee in the opening round of the playoff. Suddenly, morale is so high for Ohio State that Burke has taken his “natty or bust” proclamation to a new level, more or less guaranteeing his team will win the national championship.
“Now I know how to handle everything,” Burke said, “and especially as we’re going through these playoffs and as I take the next chapter of my life after we win the natty. … I’m confident in this team, I’m confident in my head coach, I’m confident in the scheme that we have, and I’m confident in my brothers.”
So what exactly changed? While coaches and players have been reticent to disclose the specifics of their defensive alterations since that loss to Oregon, some of the tweaks are discernible by analyzing Ohio State’s pressure rates and personnel alignments on Pro Football Focus, both of which suggest an uptick in overall aggression from Knowles, reminiscent of his stint as the defensive coordinator at Oklahoma State (2018-21). The Cowboys ranked among the top 12 nationally for sacks three times in four years during that stretch, including a stunning tally of 56 sacks during Knowles’ final season to set a new program record. His group also finished second in the country in tackles for loss that year with 117, a number that would have led college football each of the last two seasons.
But the Buckeyes were far more cautious to begin the 2024 campaign and maintained a blitz rate of just 39% across their opening three Big Ten contests against Michigan State, Iowa and Oregon, which averaged out to 10.7 blitzes per game. The nadir arrived when Gabriel was only blitzed on 36.1% of his dropbacks during the Ducks’ 32-31 win over Ohio State — the low point for Knowles in conference play to that point — and completed 12 of 13 passes for 103 yards and a touchdown on those snaps. Gabriel’s sky-high completion percentage of 92.3% on plays when the Buckeyes blitzed far outpaced his eventual season-long clip of 69.8%, though that still serves as the highest mark of his career for a non-injury-shortened campaign. Burke had never surrendered more than 74 yards in a game against power-conference opposition until the Ducks shredded him for 23.1 yards per completion on seven catches.
“Denzel has been a strong-minded individual,” fellow cornerback Davison Igbinosun told FOX Sports. “But I feel like that Oregon game could have definitely broke him down and put him into a shell, and he could have started acting different. But I didn’t see him act different at all. The very next day in film, he was a man about the whole situation. I respect that a lot about him.”
From that point forward, Knowles unearthed more of the attacking mindset that prompted Day to make him one of the highest-paid coordinators in the country prior to the 2022 season. His blitz rate jumped to 62.5% in the win over Purdue and reached at least 50% in subsequent games against Northwestern and Michigan. A narrow victory against then-No. 3 Penn State (37.5%) was the only time Knowles’ blitz calls dipped below the lower-water mark he’d set at Oregon when facing Big Ten opponents. He blitzed on an average of 45.2% of quarterback dropbacks in the six conference games following Ohio State’s loss to the Ducks, an increase of more than 9% from that fateful night in Eugene.
Ohio State Buckeyes: Will they get their revenge on Oregon?
The uptick coincided with some fairly noteworthy role changes for several individuals within Knowles’ defense. For safety Caleb Downs, a consensus All-American in his first season since transferring from Alabama, the number of snaps when he aligned in the box increased from 14 per game before the loss at Oregon to nearly 26 per game in a six-week stretch from late October through late November, which aided the Buckeyes’ run defense. For nickelback Jordan Hancock, who played almost exclusively slot corner during the first half of the season, his revised job description included more than 13 snaps per game at free safety during that same six-week window and then a season-high 39 snaps at free safety against Tennessee. For inside linebacker Cody Simon, the pass-rushing opportunities increased from 4.4 per game through the loss against Oregon to 7.8 per game in the second half of conference play.
“I think we’re getting lined up faster,” Knowles told FOX Sports. “We’re reacting to different formations or things that come up during the game. There’s always what I call ‘unscouted plays’ because [the other teams] are practicing, too, all week, and you don’t know what they’re doing. So I just see us reacting to those types of things that happen during a game. We’re doing it at a faster, more efficient rate.”
All of which has coalesced to produce some gaudy team stats entering the Rose Bowl: zero passing touchdowns conceded after losing to Oregon, at least four sacks per game in five of Ohio State’s last six outings; at least one takeaway in six straight games entering the postseason; only one opponent above a 37% conversion rate on third down over the second half of the year; an allowance of just 3.5 yards per play in the last five games; 22 receiving yards charged to Burke against the last three opponents combined.
But what the Buckeyes haven’t faced since their trip to Autzen Stadium is a receiving corps like the one that tormented them 10 weeks ago, when the blazing pace of Stewart, the precision route running from Johnson and the pinpoint accuracy from Gabriel sent Ohio State into a self-reflection spiral that may or may not have saved the season. We’ll find out when Burke and his rejuvenated defense take the field this week.
“I think he has a real vision for himself and a deep-seated confidence in himself that he found out he’s stronger than he even thought he was [by bouncing back from that game],” Knowles said of Burke. “But it’s also kind of come to the realization that if you play that position at this level, or the next level where he’s gonna go, you’re gonna have some bad days. If I’m one of the best corners in the country and I’m gonna go in the NFL and be a great corner, you better figure it out and not take it personally.”
Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.
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