Ohio State football has welcomed back a familiar face to its coaching staff as Taver Johnson has been hired as a defensive analyst. This will be his third stint as a coach for the Buckeyes as his first run was from 2007 through 2011 as the cornerbacks coach and his second run was in 2018 in that same role. In 2024 he will come back in a smaller role as an analyst.
Most recently, Johnson was an assistant coach for Tennessee this past season, but OSU fans may remember his first run in Columbus most fondly due to the talent being pumped out at the time including, All-Americans Chimdi Chekwa and Malcolm Jenkins. He replaced Kerry Coombs in 2018, but that was shortlived as Ryan Day took over the program as head coach the next season and decided not to retain the services of Johnson.
The Cincinnati native and Wittenberg graduate has an impressive résumé that includes multiple stops in the NFL and all across the college football landscape. Before Tennessee, Johnson was the assistant defensive backs coach for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2023, was the passing game coordinator and safeties coach for Eastern Michigan in 2022, and was on staff with the Las Vegas Raiders from 2019 through 2021 spending time as both an offensive analyst and assistant defensive backs coach. All of that was since his last stop at Ohio State in 2018. His body of work is even deeper before that including a stop at Temple as its defensive coordinator in 2017.
This article originally appeared on Buckeyes Wire: Ohio State football has re-hired a former assistant to the satff
