Ohio State announced two more coaching staff moves Wednesday.
Parking Fleming is out after three years as special teams coordinator, and Matt Guerrieri will be the team’s new safeties coach.
Guerrieri replaces Perry Eliano, whose contract was not renewed after he mentored the OSU safeties the past two seasons.
Guerrieri is an Ohio native who was a three-time All-Pioneer Football League safety at Davidson in North Carolina after graduating from Notre Dame-Cathedral Latin High School in Willoughby, Ohio.
He was the co-defensive coordinator at Indiana last season after spending the 2022 season as a senior advisor and analyst at Ohio State.
Prior to that, he spent seven years at Duke, where he worked with current Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles.
While at Duke, Guerrieri was one of three finalists for the 2020 American Football Coaches Association Assistant Coach of the Year award, a nominee for the 2018 Broyles Award as the nation’s top assistant coach and one of 247Sports’ Top 30 Coaches Under 30 in both 2018 and 2019.
According to a news release, he will have additional duties assigned later.
Guerrieri will work under Knowles and Tim Walton, who returned to his alma mater as cornerbacks coach in 2022 then was promoted to secondary coach last season.
Fleming had one year left on his contract, but his exit did not come as a surprise after Ohio State suffered seemingly weekly breakdowns on special teams this year and last.
Most notably, Ohio State botched fake punt attempts in losses to Michigan and Georgia in 2022 and regularly had issues getting lined up when trying to punt last season.
Ohio State was last in the Big Ten in punt return defense, 11th in punt returns, ninth in kickoff returns and fifth in net punting.
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