Back in the winter, the most common player brought up early in the transfer portal and even before for the Ohio State Buckeyes was Tennessee EDGE Chaz Coleman. 

Coleman ended up choosing Tennessee and everything that’s happened since then makes it easy to think that Ohio State not getting the Buckeyes state native was for the best. There’s never been an exact detail on why it’s happened, but Coleman was absent from the majority of spring for the Vols and even showed up late to summer workouts. 

Hardly anyone thinks Coleman ends up suiting up for Tennessee this fall, and it’s a bad look for a program that’s had plenty of them in the past with players like Boo Carter and Nico Iamaleava. Former Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles has been brought up for a lot of the blame for the entire situation. 

Jim Knowles is getting some blame in Tennessee for the Chaz Coleman situation 

Following along with the Coleman story has been a bit of a roller coaster. Tennessee insider Austin Price appeared on 104.5 The Zone’s Ramon and Will this week and was asked if Knowles should be taking some of the blame for how things have gone with the former Penn State player. 

“I think that’s been the natural reaction,” Price stated. “You have so many coaches that came from Penn State, ‘How could you not know this?’ That’s what everybody says. In talking to people, the kid was not like this at Penn State. 

“Now, the only thing I can compartmentalize here is that he did not get to Penn State until the summer last year and went straight into football stuff. There was no offseason. And then, of course, he had the concussion last year late in the year. I don’t know where things went amiss for him. You wish him all the best, but you’ve gotta move on and figure out what Tennessee is going to be along the edge.”

Knowles spent one season with Coleman at Penn State following his three-year run as the defensive coordinator of the Buckeyes. Surely the veteran DC didn’t see any major red flags with the sophomore, or he would have passed that along to the higher-ups at Tennessee like head coach Josh Heupel. 

The biggest part of this is that we truly don’t know what’s even going on with Coleman, and why he’s not been with his team a whole lot preparing to get ready for the season. I have a hard time seeing a lot of the blame deserving to be on Knowles. 

Tennessee paying up a premium dollar, or at least agreeing to when there was minimal proven production looks like it’s come back to beat them. Sometimes big swings are big misses and this feels like what’s happening. Would things be going differently for Coleman at Ohio State? Maybe. But no one can really say so for sure. 

Ohio State wouldn’t have gotten Alabama EDGE Qua Russaw and DT James Smith theoretically if they had landed Smith. Say this same duration plays out in Columbus, the Buckeyes would be in a bad spot with none of the three players in the picture. Ryan Day’s staff has to be just fine with how the portal played out.