In addition to hiring former Lions head coach Matt Patricia as the team’s defensive coordinator, Ohio State also promoted cornerbacks coach Tim Walton to co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach Matt Guerrieri to pass-game coordinator, according to reports on Wednesday.
The adjustment to the defensive staff comes a couple of weeks after former defensive coordinator Jim Knowles was hired by Penn State for the same position he occupied with the Buckeyes.
At 53 years old, Walton has accumulated over 25 years of coaching experience, which includes a stop at LSU in 2003 as the team’s defensive backs coach, he then held the same position at Miami from 2004-06, before taking over as the Hurricanes’ defensive coordinator in 2007.
Walton was the defensive coordinator at Memphis in 2008 and then spent 11 seasons coaching in the NFL from 2009-21. In 2013, Walton was the St. Louis Rams’ defensive coordinator and after spending three seasons as a cornerbacks coach with the Giants from 2015-17 and the Jaguars from 2019-21, he accepted a position on Ohio State’s coaching staff in 2022.
As the Buckeyes’ associate head coach, secondary coach and cornerbacks coach, Walton helped the Buckeyes rank inside the top five in college football in passing defense in each of the last two seasons.
Walton, a former Ohio State cornerback from 1990-93, has helped the Buckeyes sign five-star talent at the cornerback position like Devin Sanchez and Aaron Scott Jr. since he arrived in 2022.
Guerrieri is not as experienced as Walton, but Ohio State head coach Ryan Day expressed his optimism about his potential during the program’s championship celebration at Ohio Stadium on Jan. 26.
“One of the brightest minds in college football, and I’m telling you, a star in the making,” Day said of Guerrieri.
Guerrieri got his FBS coaching start at Duke, where he was a graduate assistant from 2012-14, safeties coach from 2015-17 and co-defensive coordinator from 2018-21.
The Willoughby, Ohio native left Duke to become a senior advisor/ senior analyst at Ohio State in 2022. He was then a co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach at Indiana, before returning to Ohio State ahead of the 2024 season as the team’s safeties coach.
Lathan Ransom and Caleb Downs both received first-team All-Big Ten honors under Guerrieri’s leadership, and Downs specifically became a Unanimous All-American.
