Don’t get me wrong, both sucked, but I think they might help get OSU back to the top of the college football mountain.
If you clicked on this article because you wanted to rage-read it and write in the comments about how I wasn’t a real Ohio State fan for even suggesting that TTUN winning the national title or the Buckeyes losing the biggest game of the regular season were great for OSU, settle down.
Obviously, those weren’t the great things for the Buckeyes in a vacuum; never losing a game would be great, but, as we know, losses are inevitable, even for the bluest blood programs. But what makes putting these two specific losses — one literal, on-field loss and one metaphorical punch-to-the-gut loss — into some sort of “best” context is that it seems to me that something has flipped with this team, program, and coaching staff because of both.
In the offseason, fresh off of a third-straight loss to their archrivals and a humiliating performance in the Cotton Bowl, head coach Ryan Day seemed to finally take a step back and reassess the program from a 30,000-foot view, taking in the full scope of the evolving college football landscape, rather than being tied to his sometimes myopic, provincial perspective that has seemingly stunted the program’s growth in recent years.
This offseason, Day further take advantage of the new opportunities afforded him by the NIL era to find ways to keep the most experienced and talented returning lineup in college football together. Guys like Jack Sawyer, Tyleik Williams, Denzel Burke, Emeka Egbuka, TreVeyon Henderson, J.T. Tuimoloau, Lathan Ransom, Jordan Hancock, and more could have opted to head to the NFL and nobody could have blamed them. The program felt like it was heading in the wrong direction, ceding ground to Michigan and falling further behind the likes of Georgia and Alabama.
So, with the potential of life-changing money on the other side of the NFL Draft, it would have been easy to understand why any number of those guys would have left… but they didn’t, they all stayed.
Yes, they are all back — to some degree — because they want to avenge their recent losses in The Game, and they want to “finish the job” that they have fallen short of thus far in their Buckeye careers, but would they have been willing to come back to Columbus and chase a pair of gold pants and a national title had they not also gotten a bit of extra financial incentive? There’s no way to know, but it certainly couldn’t have hurt that Day and the collective OSU collectives stepped up and made it worth the players’ whiles to stay.
Then, of course, we saw the Buckeyes embrace the transfer portal in ways that they have never done before. Obviously, this is not the first time that Ryan Day has gone out and brought in major contributors via the portal — Justin Fields, Jonah Jackson, Trey Sermon to name a few — but there was a different feel about this process, a more focused ruthlessness than Day has often shown. By securing Will Howard, Quinshon Judkins, and Seth McLoughlin, it was clear that Day and company understood that the way that they had been doing things wasn’t the optimal way to build a championship team.
Yes, OSU continues to be one of the predominant recruiting powers in the country, but, for various reasons, sometimes you miss on guys, and when you stack two or three of those misses on top of each other, that can ruin a position group and potentially an entire team. In the past, there has been a sense around the program that Day would be loyal to his guys no matter the circumstance — and that is commendable — but he saw holes in his offseason roster and he filled them with the best players available, even if it might ruffle some feathers inside the Woody.
That more cut-throat portal approach became even more evident when Nick Saban announced that he was retiring and Caleb Downs and Julian Sayin became available. Ohio State’s safeties were not one of the team’s weaknesses in 2023, and there was reason to believe that there was plenty of young talent waiting to step up. But, when the No. 1 defensive player in the country became available, Day went and got him.
The circumstances around Sayin’s transfer to Columbus were even more un-Day-like, in my estimation. Yes, the former Crimson Tide signee was the No. 3 quarterback in the 2024 recruiting cycle and the No. 6 player overall, but it’s not like the Buckeyes were hurting for a QB in the class. Day had already signed Air Noland who was the No. 4 quarterback in 2024 and the No. 56 player nationally.
In years gone by, I find it impossible to believe that Day would have risked upsetting Noland by bringing in a player at the same position and in the same class who had initially spurned the Buckeyes. Noland committed to the Buckeyes in April 2023 and never once wavered from his commitment. As I said before, Day is admirably loyal to his guys, and he has historically rewarded guys who were loyal in return. So, it was honestly a bit surprising when Noland’s commitment to the program didn’t make bringing in Sayin out of the question.
Would Day have made all of those moves had Jim Harbaugh and the Wolverines not turned the tables on the rivalry and increased the temperature on his seat to nearly scalding levels? I highly doubt it.
Whatever you think about Day, he’s no fool. He knows that he has already lost a portion of the fanbase and another season without some combination of a win over Michigan, a Big Ten title, and/or a College Football Playoff national championship very well could have him looking for a new job. So, he did what he needed to do and — even though it was probably uncomfortable for him in many ways — he embraced a more aggressive, Saban-style approach to leading his program.
That was also evident when it came to molding his coaching staff. Gone were erstwhile quarterback coach and special teams coordinator Corey Dennis and Parker Fleming; in was Bill O’Brien and then Chip Kelly. When Tony Alford bolted for Ann Arbor, Day got a significant upgrade in Carlos Locklyn from Oregon. While there are still one or two moves that I would have liked to see Day make with his staff, every single personnel decision he made was an improvement in my estimation, especially when coupled with the fact that he finally gave up play calling.
While I have no doubt that he is still more involved in the down-to-down offensive decisions than I would prefer, the fact that he has turned the reins over to his mentor Chip Kelly is about as perfect as I could have imagined when I first started arguing that he needed to pass those sticks nearly three years ago.
Had Michigan not become the Big Ten’s dominant program over the past three years, capped with a CFP title last season, I remain unconvinced that Day would have made all of these moves. Sure, Dennis and Fleming might have still been gone, but would Day have turned play calling over to O’Brien — and then in turn Kelly — had the pendulum not swung so far to the other side in the rivalry? Honestly, I don’t think so.
So, while watching those cheating Weasels from Ann Arbor stand atop the college football world this past January was stomach-turning and something that I hope to never again experience in the course of my natural life, I do believe that it might have given the Ohio State football program the swift kick in the pants that it so obviously needed in order to get back to the level of performance and aggression required to succeed at the highest levels.
However, because nothing is ever easy in college football — or with Ryan Day — the expected turnaround has been neither immediate nor seamless. On Oct. 12, the Buckeyes went to Eugene, Oregon for the first of what will almost certainly be three top-five matchups during this regular season. Despite being road favorites, OSU lost to the Oregon Ducks 32-31 in a game that felt frustratingly similar to nearly every other marquee matchup that Day has coached in recent years.
Miscues abounded, play calling was overly conservative on both sides of the ball, and personnel usage seemed off. Nonetheless, it still led to a one-point loss on the road against the team now universally considered to be at the top of the sport. After their trip out west, the Buckeyes had a bye week before hosting the Nebraska Cornhuskers. Speaking for myself, I had assumed that OSU would get back on the field, fiery and focused on getting back to its winning ways. However, that did not happen, instead, the team looked asleep at the wheel and, again, the offensive playcalling was maddeningly unsuccessful.
That being typed, there were clear positives from that game on the defensive side of the ball. Coming out of the bye, we started to see evidence that Jim Knowles was gradually turning up the aggressiveness — and more importantly creativity — especially when it came to getting after the passer.
Day also openly discussed the fact that he was becoming more active in the defensive game plan and rotation, and regularly sitting in on meetings throughout the week. This has led to fairly noticable variations from defensive line coach Larry Johnson’s traditional rotations as guys like Caden Curry, Eddrick Houston, Kenyatta Jackson, and others getting more snaps. And, for the first time in Woody knows how long, the Buckeyes deployed the Jack against Purdue last weekend, going to a three-down-lineman front. Granted, it was done with the second-team line, but they did roll it out in the first half, which is saying something.
Admittedly, it did not go particularly well, but just the willingness to allow Knowles to run his actual defense for a drive, coupled with the renewed creativity and aggression, makes me cautiously optimistic that we won’t see the Silver Bullets revert to a dull, rusty pewter in the biggest moments.
In fairness to the offense, which was the major issue against Nebraksa, that unit was dealing with the loss of its best offensive lineman in Josh Simmons, who was injured against Oregon and is out for the rest of the season. So, we knew going in that there were going to be some growing pains that needed to be worked through.
And while Simmons’ original replacement Zen Michalski suffered his own multi-game injury against the Huskers, it appears that Day, Kelly, o-line coach Justin Frye, and the offense have stumbled into a fairly high-functioning offensive line by moving starting left guard to tackle and putting last year’s starting center Carson Hinzman in his vacated spot. Will this reformed unit be as good as the one with Simmons on the blind side? Probably not, but so far, it has been pretty good.
That semi-stability up front has proven effective over the past two weeks, especially in the running game. Against Penn State and Purdue, the Buckeyes have averaged 4.82 non-sack adjusted yards per carry, and have not appeared to be afraid to run to the left side.
Now, I realize that I might be setting myself up to have Lucy snatch the ball away from me yet again, but following the Oregon loss — and the Nebraska stumble — I feel like Day, his staff, and his team have made nearly all of the right moves to not only get back on track but to also improve their paths to both B1G and CFP glory.
Ultimately, if the Buckeyes again fall short of their rivalry, conference, and national goals, all of the suffering from Michigan’s success and the disappointment in Eugene will have been for naught, but if Ryan Day can learn the lessons of those losses to make the painful but necessary changes to get his program back to the pinnacle of the college football mountaintop, then all of the heartache will have been worth it.