Sources tell FootballScoop that Ohio State is making a coordinator change, with special teams coordinator Robby Discher having been fired.
Other outlets have reported the same this morning.
Discher was hired by Ryan Day in February 2026 after three seasons as special teams coordinator (and tight ends coach) at Illinois. He arrived in Columbus with a strong reputation as one of the better special teams coaches in the country, tasked with upgrading a unit that had been a persistent issue for the Buckeyes.
He is well-regarded and well-respected coach in the profession. Discher is a previous winner of the FootballScoop Special Teams Coordinator of the Year award (2014, while a graduate assistant at Oklahoma State), selected by prior winners of the award. He was the first graduate assistant to win any FootballScoop Coach of the Year honor.
His career also includes stops as special teams coordinator at Tulane (where he helped the Green Wave win the AAC and Cotton Bowl in 2022), Louisiana, Toledo, and Sam Houston State, plus a significant special teams role on Georgia’s 2021 national championship staff.
Ohio State had not employed a dedicated special teams coordinator for the two seasons prior to Discher’s arrival. Despite the addition of portal specialists and Discher’s track record of producing strong units at Illinois (top-30 nationally in ESPN’s special teams efficiency metric in each of his final two seasons there), the Buckeyes’ third phase has remained a problem in 2026. Ryan Day publicly acknowledged in October that he could not say the unit had improved.
The move comes amid a 6-3 season for Ohio State that has included losses to Texas, USC, and Oregon. A midseason firing of a coordinator underscores the program’s urgency to address the special teams issues heading into the final stretch of the regular season.
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