http://www.cleveland.com/osu/2017/09/tyquan_lewis_is_why_larry_john.html
Tyquan Lewis is why Larry Johnson kept coaching - he just didn't know it: Ohio State in-depth
Updated on September 4, 2017 at 7:09 AM
Posted on September 4, 2017 at 7:00 AM
By
Doug Lesmerises, cleveland.com
[email protected]
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- It was a speech that changed many lives, but two in particular, a coach's daughter this time turning the tables on her father.
"I was the coach in that moment," Teresa Johnson said recently. "My dad was the player."
Larry Johnson, her father and Ohio State's defensive line coach, remembers Teresa's advice from more than three years ago. When a coach for 35 years recalls other's words of wisdom, you know they mattered. They came at a moment of turmoil and emotion, at the end of her father's career at Penn State, at the potential start of a new career at Ohio State in early 2014.
"It was a hard breakup, and it was something he was really having a hard time with," said Teresa, now 35 and the manager of a retail company in Atlanta. "I can remember that conversation."
What a few honest words can do.
Soon after, Larry Johnson met Tyquan Lewis for the first time.
That relationship is one of the reasons Ohio State is the No. 2 team in the nation heading into Saturday's home game with No. 7 Oklahoma. That relationship is why Lewis led the Buckeyes in sacks the last two years and had two more sacks in the opener against Indiana. That relationship is why Johnson, now 66, knows he made the right decision to keep coaching four seasons ago.
Cont'd ...
