Arthur Smith is Ohio State’s offensive coordinator now, and the hire gives the Buckeyes a veteran coach whose career has mostly unfolded in the NFL. Ohio State turned to Smith after an offense that managed only three touchdowns in two December postseason losses needed a reset.
That is why his name is being searched now. Smith, 44, arrives with the kind of résumé Ryan Day wanted for a staff move that was meant to change the shape of the offense, not just fill a vacancy. Day said Smith has “a great understanding,” and added that the coaches he worked under were some of the best minds in the game.
Smith’s football instincts started long before any meeting in January. He grew up in Memphis, Tennessee, as the seventh of 10 children and organized games with siblings and neighborhood kids in the cove behind his family’s home. He put players in plastic helmets and shoulder pads for backyard games, and he even pulled his youngest sister, Samantha, in to help balance the teams. Family members saw the same pattern early. Richard Smith said, “Sometimes you have an all-time quarterback,” and, “He was an all-time coach.” Cannon Smith said he was “so into the mental aspect of the sport, the strategy and the schemes,” and added that he never had doubts Arthur would do anything besides coach football.
What makes the move notable is the path Smith took to get here. He chose football instead of following his father into the shipping empire built at FedEx, then spent nearly all of his coaching career at the NFL level before returning to college. His last college coaching job came in 2010, when he was an intern at Mississippi. That makes the Ohio State job a rare turn back to the college game for a coach hired as much for his pedigree as for his fit.
Day and Smith spent hours talking through the opportunity in January at Day’s home in Delaware County, and the outreach did not begin with a familiar name on the screen. The first text Smith received from Day came from an unknown number, and Will Howard had to confirm it was Day. Smith said, “I met him over the years” but “didn’t know him well,” while Day said, “He had a passion for coming to college.” Day added, “Sometimes when you interview quote-unquote NFL guys, you kind of have to talk them into coming to the college game.” “That wasn’t the case here,” he said. “He wanted this.”
The job now is straightforward and difficult at the same time: turn an offense that went silent in December into one that can carry Ohio State forward. Smith brings experience, structure and the reputation of a coach who has spent decades around high-level football. The first real answer, though, will come only when his offense takes the field and shows whether an NFL mind can solve a college problem quickly enough for a program that expects results immediately.
