Former Penn State head coach Bill O’Brien is set to become Ohio State’s offensive coordinator, according to a report by ESPN on Thursday night. This would mark O’Brien’s fourth stop since leaving Penn State for the NFL late on Dec. 31, 2013.
After leaving Penn State, O’Brien was with the Houston Texans until 2020, when he was fired as both head coach and general manager. From there, O’Brien was hired to work with now former head coach Nick Saban at Alabama as the Crimson Tide’s offensive coordinator from 2021-22 before returning to New England to become the Patriots’ OC and quarterbacks coach up until the recent departure of longtime head coach Bill Belichick. Prior to his time at Penn State, O’Brien had spent the span of 2007 until 2011 in various offensive roles with the Patriots as well.
Penn State will host Ohio State on Nov. 2, a date that will mark the first time that O’Brien has made a public appearance at Beaver Stadium since leaving the program. O’Brien — who worked with current Penn State head coach James Franklin at Maryland when both were assistants under Ralph Friedgen from 2003-04 — spoke at a Penn State Coaches Clinic in 2018.
“I just told the high school coaches, I said relative to college football this is football heaven,” O’Brien said at the time. ‘You come through this building, you see the lettermen wall, you see the guys coming out of meetings, all the changes that James [Franklin] has made in the building are incredible. … This is what it’s all about. I have great memories here.”
“The other thing I learned here was about character,” he said. “I learned about if you have guys who have great character who are mentally tough, who are physically tough that love the game, love to practice, you’re going to win games. I think that’s something that I’ve tried to carry into Houston. Having guys with high character and maybe a guy runs a 4.2 and this guy over here runs a 4.4, but this guy who runs a 4.2 is always in trouble, but this guy who runs a 4.4 is a guy that works hard, wants to try and get better every day, that’s what we had here. That’s what we had here. We had a bunch of guys that loved to practice, that loved Penn State.”
Time will tell if Penn State will plan to recognize O’Brien in any capacity, a semi-complicated endeavor as O’Brien works the sidelines of one of the Nittany Lions’ biggest foes.
