Were you paying attention? Almost certainly lost in the shuffle of low-scoring Saturday afternoon thrillers between #4 Ohio State Buckeyes and No. 3 Penn State Nittany Lions were the game plans of each team’s respected coordinators. While Tom Allen and Chip Kelly were Power Five head coaches last year, 2025 will be the year for Jim Knowles, but maybe not for Andy Kotelnicki.

Yes, Ohio State came into Happy Valley to win the signature game of the day over Penn State 20-13but it was how these teams won and lost that resonated with me the most. While Ryan Day is out of Columbus for now, James Franklin is definitely starting to feel the heat. How can you not win this critical game at home when you have two very well thought out coordinators?

Well, I think it might have had something to do with Knowles’ Ohio State defense completely shutting down Kotelnicki’s offense. Keep in mind that Day is an offensive-minded head coach, just like Franklin. Thus, he must rely on a sharp defensive mind like Knowles to ensure that side of the ball plays up to standard. Franklin continues to prove that he is just another snake oil sales trainer.

While I like the upside of Kotelinick as a future head coach, you couldn’t score an offensive touchdown at home? Penn State’s only drive to pay dirt in the game came on a Will Howard six.

Knowles was a finalist for lead job that eventually went to former Penn State defensive coordinator and Miami head coach Manny Diaz. Even with the Blue Devils losing to his former team in Miami Gardens, so what? This is his first year on the job in Durham and he is already bowling with Duke. It might have gone differently for Knowles, but he is finally ready for his big day in the sun as a coach.

In time, the Kotelnicki will be ready, but maybe I took the buns out of the oven a little too early. While he may be an ideal replacement for Mack Brown at North Carolinawe have to accept that if he gets such a job, he will learn on the go. What I think everyone forgets all the time, myself included, is that Knowles was already the head coach at his alma mater in Cornell.

He may have been a sub-.500 head coach at the helm of the Big Red, but that was well over a decade ago. Again, the right job needs to open up for him, but he has previously shown an ability to coach defenses at a very high level at three different places: Duke under David Cutcliffe, Oklahoma State under Mike Gundy and now under Ryan Day at Ohio State. . What if he returns to Stillwater in 2025?

Regardless, it looks like we’ve identified a coordinator who will be the head coach next season in Knowles.