NIL and the Transfer Portal Were Supposed to Help Offenses. Matt Patricia Found the Defensive Advantage.
By Carter Quinn
Last Updated on July 7, 2026
When name, image, and likeness rules arrived and the transfer portal opened wide, the conventional wisdom formed quickly and with some justification. Offensive skill positions would consolidate at the programs with the most money and the best facilities. Wide receivers, quarterbacks, running backs with proven production would follow the NIL dollars to the programs best positioned to feature them. Defenses, which are harder to evaluate from a highlight reel and slower to produce the kind of individual statistics that drive name recognition, would scramble to keep pace.
Three years in, the evidence is more complicated. Ohio State defensive coordinator Matt Patricia has been making the case, one depth chart at a time, that the portal era is just as useful to a smart defensive coordinator as it is to an offensive one. Maybe more so.
Build Around What You Have
Patricia’s foundational coaching philosophy has always centered on identifying what each player does well and building the scheme around those strengths rather than forcing players into a predetermined system. In the NFL, that approach was born of necessity. The New England Patriots consistently picked late in the draft because of their sustained success, which meant they couldn’t simply stockpile the ideal bodies for a specific scheme. They had to take the best available players and figure out how to use them. Patricia spent years doing exactly that, adapting defensive fronts, coverage concepts, and personnel groupings to fit whoever walked through the door.
Ohio State brought in 18 transfers ahead of the 2026 season, 8 of them on defense, all from Power 4 programs. Patricia’s ability to cross-train players across multiple positions and deploy them in varied packages means each portal addition isn’t just a body filling a gap. It’s a piece the system can use in multiple ways. A safety who can play nickel. A cornerback with the athleticism to rotate into coverage concepts designed for a different body type. A linebacker with the frame to rush from the edge in specific packages. Versatility, in Patricia’s system, is the most valuable attribute a transfer can bring, and Patricia is specifically looking for it.
The Recruiting Pitch the Portal Created
Patricia’s NFL background provides a recruiting pitch that the portal era made dramatically more powerful. Defensive prospects with professional aspirations aren’t just evaluating a program’s track record of sending players to the draft. They’re evaluating whether the coordinator coaching them actually understands what NFL teams are looking for when they sit across from a prospect in a pre-draft interview. Patricia has a specific answer for that question, grounded in nearly two decades of sitting on the other side of that table.
At the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine, Arvell Reese described what playing in Patricia’s system did for his draft preparation: with Patricia’s defense, he told reporters, he could explain all 11 positions with 80 to 90 percent of the calls. NFL teams noticed. The football intelligence Patricia installs, the conceptual understanding of the whole defense rather than just a single position’s responsibilities, separated Ohio State’s defenders in draft room conversations from players running comparable schemes at other programs. That story travels in recruiting.
The 2026 NFL Draft results closed the argument. Four defenders in the top 36 picks, three of whom were not projected as first-round picks when the season started. Reese, Styles, and McDonald all elevated their stock through coaching and development. A coordinator who can make that case with a draft board is a coordinator who can win portal battles against programs offering more NIL and a shinier facility.
Day Built the Infrastructure, Patricia Used It
None of this works without Ryan Day constructing the environment that makes it possible. Ohio State’s NIL resources, portal strategy, staff continuity, and access to the College Football Playoff give Patricia a platform that most defensive coordinators operating at this level don’t have. The combination of Patricia’s coaching philosophy and Day’s program infrastructure is what produced a defense that, as Land-Grant Holy Land noted, improved on Jim Knowles’ already elite 254.6 yards allowed per game down to 219.1 in Year One, with eight new starters and a roster built substantially through the portal.
The conventional wisdom when NIL arrived was that it would tilt college football further toward offense. Patricia is building the counterargument one recruiting class at a time, and the 2026 draft results gave him the strongest evidence yet.
