Ohio State head coach Ryan Day confirmed Tuesday that senior analyst Rob Keys will oversee special teams for the rest of the 2026 season following the firing of coordinator Robby Discher. Day described the move as a collaborative effort among multiple staff members, while noting he has not yet decided whether the program will hire a dedicated special teams coordinator for 2027.
Day said he fired Discher because “there’s just been too many detrimental plays” on special teams this season.
The Buckeyes rank No. 86 nationally in net punting (38.7 yards), No. 113 in punt return average (5.9 yards), and No. 118 in kick return average (17.4 yards). The unit has also been plagued by penalties—at least one in every game this year—and costly miscues, including a fake punt conversion by Oregon in Saturday’s 41-28 loss that helped spark 38 unanswered points from the Ducks. Ohio State (6-3, 4-2 Big Ten) has lost to Texas, USC, and Oregon, with special teams issues factoring into each defeat.
Ryan Day called Ohio State allowing Oregon to convert a fake punt “embarrassing.” “We were not — I'm not gonna get into all the details of it at this point — but to me, that was a breakdown in a big way. And to me, embarrassing.”
— Chase Brown (@chaseabrown__) November 10, 2026
Under the new structure for the remainder of the season, Keys will coordinate the overall unit and lead the punt return team. Safeties coach/pass game coordinator Matt Guerrieri will lead the punt team, linebackers coach James Laurinaitis will lead the kickoff team, and multiple coaches will share responsibilities for the kickoff return unit. This marks a return to the collaborative model Ohio State used in 2024 and 2025, when it operated without a full-time special teams coordinator.
Keys joined the Buckeyes’ extended staff in 2022 after 11 seasons as head coach at Division II Findlay, where he compiled a 75-42 record, won a conference title in 2021, and earned G-MAC and NCAA Division II Region 3 Coach of the Year honors. He previously served as Findlay’s co-defensive coordinator and special teams coordinator (2000-04) and has worked primarily with Ohio State’s special teams throughout his five years in Columbus, most recently as a senior analyst. He was the de facto leader of the unit in the two seasons before Discher’s arrival.
Discher, hired in January from Illinois as the program’s first dedicated special teams coordinator since Parker Fleming was dismissed after the 2023 season, lasted just nine games. At Illinois, his units ranked among the nation’s better special teams groups (No. 16 and No. 30 in ESPN’s efficiency metric in his final two seasons there), and he previously won the FootballScoop Special Teams Coordinator of the Year award in 2014 as a graduate assistant at Oklahoma State. He signed a two-year deal paying $400,000 in 2026 and $450,000 in 2027; reports indicate a buyout exceeding $500,000.
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