OT: Ed Warinner leaving tOSU for Minnesota

Submitted by jimmyshi03 on

SI's Pete Thamel is reporting Ed Warinner, Ohio State OL coach and co-offensive coordinator, will be joining P.J. Fleck at Minnesota.

Seems like Minnesota may be making a pretty solid finanical commitment behind Fleck and improving their place in the B1G West.   

LDNfan

January 10th, 2017 at 4:53 PM ^

It to the point that they don't really try too hard to defend these characters...they've been hiring and/or coached by dirtbags for so long but winning big....its to the point they don't really care what anyone thinks. Now that will all change when they lose back to back games to UM.

True Blue Grit

January 10th, 2017 at 6:18 PM ^

OSU has always been about winning football games and nothing else.  If they thought it would give them some advantage over Michigan, they'd hire the son of Satan to run their offense.  As you alluded to, the best part is when they fail and they turn on themselves like rabid animals.  

buckeyejonross

January 10th, 2017 at 6:09 PM ^

Pretty much.

Warinner had HC aspirations when OSU promoted him from OL coach to OC after Herman left in 2014. Then he managed to do nothing to brighten his rising star in 2015 or 2016, and OSU already hired a new OL coach to fill the spot Warinner left to become OC. I doubt when OSU hired their new OL coach before the 2016 season either Meyer or Warinner expected Warinner to return to OSU in 2017 in any capacity. They were both expecting Warinner to get a HC gig somewhere after this season. Obviously Warinner's own poor performance at OC made him a tough sell anywhere as a HC and it forced him to take a downward move to rehab his image at Minnesota. It was unlikely OSU was gonna fire their new OL coach to demote Warinner back to his pre-2015 job. And it was also as unlikely OSU was going to run back the Warinner experiment at OC after he largely flopped in 2015 and 2016.

MI Expat NY

January 10th, 2017 at 4:26 PM ^

I guess he wasn't their OLine coach this past season.  

Hard not to view this as a firing.  Day was hired when it was announced Beck was leaving for Texas, with people swearing up and down Kevin Wilson was also being hired.  With two new OC level types and Warinner's position group job already gone, there was no place for him to go.  

AZBlue

January 10th, 2017 at 4:24 PM ^

I saw it was proposed for P5 schools but wasn't aware it was approved. Anyone have a guess where M would add if/when this happens? Maybe a full time ST coach again? Also, I wonder if Dan Tony Oh will stick with "no staff changes" even with this rule? (Some of my Sparty in-laws are still very salty regarding the coordinator/Asst. coaching situation at MSU.)

AZBlue

January 10th, 2017 at 4:30 PM ^

But that was to replace Tim Beck also Co-OC. I have seen others opine that given Urban's rep for offense it was hard to get upward-mobility/credibility as an OC under him - although it didn't seem to affect T Herman. Maybe Warriner figured this was a better way forward for him - but really it was because he was sick of covering up the numerous hooker killings in Columbus by OSU players and coaches (allegedly).

stephenrjking

January 10th, 2017 at 4:20 PM ^

Looks like it might be an odd-man-out situation. OSU was obviously going to clean house on offense, so perhaps Warriner was faced with going back to being just an OL coach, or just felt he couldn't work with Wilson.

It's a very good pickup for Minnesota. Fleck is a delegation guy and he has someone who has a solid history of position coaching and coordinating, exactly what Fleck needs. I'm really interested to see what Minnesota becomes here. 

EDIT: didn't catch that it is reported that he will just be the OL coach. If so (and I wonder if they're missing something here) that's definitely a firm handshake from OSU.

ak47

January 10th, 2017 at 4:18 PM ^

Man gotta somewhat respect Urb for cleaning house.  That offense has underperformed in big games for two years now and I can't imagine Kevin Wilson was brough in to share play calling duties so I guess Warinner preffered Minnesota to being a glorified OL coach at OSU.

stephenrjking

January 10th, 2017 at 5:04 PM ^

Open question to me. Are there rumblings confirming one way or another? I'm not sure one play hangs on Baxter or that it's a firing issue.

The question to me is what happens when one of Harbaugh's guys is, to him, clearly not cutting it. He has hired very good staff members so far, but when guys get promoted you have to replace them, and not every replacement is up to snuff.

Mr Miggle

January 10th, 2017 at 6:04 PM ^

None of the parties says anything concrete. There was never a peep about trying to keep him and it seemed clear they were looking for a way to keep Partridge around. Maybe Baxter just wanted to go back. Maybe there was some friction that prompted him to. The end of the MSU game had to be hard to take. The misalignment was a major blunder. Maybe Harbaugh just came to the conclusion that a dedicated ST coach wasn't needed, not after Jay had a year to learn under him, A lot of maybes, but it looked to me like he was pushed out.