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The most interesting thing I heard Monday at Ohio State was easy to identify.
Maybe it was the easiest one yet, to be honest: Ryan Day is going to call plays for the Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff with Brian Hartline preparing to become head coach at South Florida.
Yes, that is kind of a big deal, isn’t it?
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While I didn’t go into the press conference expecting Day to say that was happening, it dawned on me right as he started into his first answer about how things are going to work in lead-up to the Cotton Bowl against Miami next week.
“First off, we’re just really happy for Brian and the opportunity he's getting. It's such a strange calendar and the timing is brutal. But he's handled it great, as you can imagine.”
(Hmmm… that’s interesting.)
“And so right now, as we move forward, he's coaching the receivers. It's a lot on his plate. It's a lot to manage so we're kind of taking it day-to-day right now, just in terms of as we move forward.”
OK, what are you getting at here, man?
“Going into the game, it'll be a group effort. [Tight ends coach] Keenan [Bailey] will be very much involved — everybody will be involved with the play calling. Ultimately, it will be my decision what calls go into the game in this game.”
Ah, there it is.
The offense is now back fully in Ryan Day’s hands.
He is raising the baby again now that school is out and the head nurse is going south for the winter (and not coming back).
“Kind of want to take that off of Brian's plate as we head into the playoffs because he has so much going on with what he's trying to do, but he's working hard towards it. And we're going to keep evaluating it every day to see what's best for the group.”
This news was met with exuberance from fans online, including at least one Xs and Os guru — and I can obviously see why.
Even before the drab showing against Indiana, the offense was a bit wonky all year.
I tend to put a lot of that on execution, but the plays are the plays. They either work or they don’t. And truth be told, I want the multi-tight end stuff to work. I’m not a fan of offenses that operate in 11 personnel (three receivers) all the time like Ohio State did for most of the last dozen or so years.
I also don’t think that was necessarily Hartline’s idea. I suspect it came from the head man, but maybe new offensive line coach Tyler Bowen brought it.
Day has said he sends his assistants out to find new strategies and things they can implement, so it could have been someone else as well.
Whatever the case, Day certainly signs off on everything.
This is what he wants the offense to look like, but the bottom line is it needs to work.
Better to do what works than what only works in theory, a lesson that came out of last year’s playoff when Ohio State opened up the offense and roasted Tennessee and Oregon.
The sledding was tougher against Texas and Notre Dame — two elite defenses — but it would have been worse if all they tried to do was run it down the throats of those teams or play a dink-and-dunk passing game.
Day becoming the OC again could have a wrinkle effect on game management, something he acknowledge, but, hey, if you’re up by two touchdowns in the fourth quarter because they couldn’t keep up with your receivers, the game is a lot easier to manage.
Speaking of receivers, here is an addendum:
Jeremiah Smith met with reporters Monday and went into some detail about the injury he was dealing with in November.
Turns out he had a quad strain suffered in practice prior to the UCLA game. After taking himself out of that game, he never felt like he would be out for the season, but he was worried he wouldn’t be able to play against Michigan.
I wrote more about it for the Associated Press, which you can find here.
The biggest takeaway from this is Smith’s buy-in to the Ohio State program. He could have shut it down to make sure he was all healed up — it’s usually a 3-4 week injury, he said — but he really wanted to play.
And, hey, it’s a good thing he did!
OK, that’s all for now, but as always — thanks for reading!
I’m planning to have something else later this week, but we’ll see how the workflow flows, right?
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