Vo. 1, No. 6
This week in Ohio State football, Ryan Day still wants a dominant offense.
Is that breaking news?
Not exactly, but it is a good snapshot of the program right now and makes for a good jumping off point for this week’s roundup of what to know about the Buckeyes before they face Minnesota on Saturday.
I have been writing about Day starting to resemble Jim Tressel in some ways over the last couple of years, a transformation that makes sense even if it was difficult to foresee coming when he arrived at Ohio State eight years ago.
Day joined a coaching staff with two of spread football’s originators — Urban Meyer and Kevin Wilson — to little fanfare.
Wilson was also hired that winter after Meyer’s version of the spread went stale in 2015-16 under offensive line coach Ed Warinner and quarterbacks coach Tim Beck, so that got much more attention.
Not only had Wilson been a head coach in his previous stop (Indiana), he was also long regarded as one of THE guys who helped develop the modern spread offense, melding the spread passing game coming out of Texas and The Plains with the traditional power running game beloved in the Midwest, first at Northwestern and then Oklahoma as offensive coordinator.
Day’s impact on the passing game quickly became the bigger story with the Buckeyes, though, as he coaxed a more efficient season out of fifth-year senior J.T. Barrett’s arm in 2017 then oversaw Dwayne Haskins rewriting Ohio State and Big Ten record books in 2018.
Fast forward three years and Day’s attack was the one starting to lose effectiveness, too.
Michigan ruined the 2021 season for the Buckeyes in a way that was shocking not only in that it happened but how. The Wolverines simply beat them up all afternoon, claimed a 42-27 victory then literally added insult to injury with the “Born on third base” comment from Jim Harbaugh directed at Day.
We later learned Harbaugh’s program was in year one of a massive cheating scandal it mostly got away with, but that’s beside the point.
Ohio State learned more than once in 2021 the running game still matters, and that loss seemed to put Day on a search for how to restore balance to a program that had won Big Ten titles both with three yards and a cloud of dust and 40 passes and a cloud of rubber particles but was left reeling by their first loss to Michigan in eight years.
The rushing attack continued to disappoint in 2022, got worse in ‘23 and wasn’t really all that great last year, but another funny thing happened at the same time.
The whole sport moved away from the fun ’n gun ways of the previous decade. Defense is back, and so is running the ball.
For a few years there, you really did have to have a powerful offense to win it all because eventually you were going to run into someone with just too many weapons to contain. Now balance has been restored to the force with new defensive tactics (primarily an emphasis on avoiding explosive pass plays even at the expense of allowing some yards on the ground), and Ohio State is at the forefront there both with Jim Knowles last year and now Matt Patricia.
While Patricia’s defense has been spectacular so far in 2025, Day’s offense (Sorry, Brian) has been pretty pedestrian.
Since the head coach has consistently talked about the need to win whatever way is necessary (That’s the Tresselball 101), the question posed this week was how he became comfortable having an offense that “isn’t on” all the time.
Turns out that is not the way he views it — at all.
OK, there’s a lot there, so let’s break that down into a few parts..
“Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but no, I mean, I feel stressed about being on every single play. I don't know…
“I know the defense is playing good, but that's not the way it is on a headset or how it is on Sundays after watching the film. We expect to execute at a high, high level. And when we don't, it doesn't go very well.”
Expectations haven’t changed no matter how it might look. This is consistent with Day’s insistence that every week they are more worried about themselves than the opponent, too, but anyway…
“So there are certain strategies that we're using for different reasons. I won't get into all of them on how we're attacking some of these games with, again, kind of what we were talking about before: the short-term goal of winning. And then you have to look at it from a wide lens of where do we need to be at the end of the season.
“It's such a balance. We don’t have to be right now. We have to take it game after game, day after day, putting one game in front of the other, all those things. But at some point, you've got to look out and say, ‘OK, this is a long run, a bunch of sprints, not a marathon.’ That's sort of how we look at it.”
This isn’t too hard to figure out. They’ve tried not to overwhelm their redshirt freshman quarterback in games against then-No. 1 Texas and in a hostile environment at Washington. They let themselves get into a track meet with young C.J. Stroud against Oregon in 2021, and eventually they couldn’t keep up.
Stroud came out of that OK, but the team never really learned to play defense or run the ball that season, and Day wants to avoid both ruining Sayin’s confidence now and being one-dimensional in November, December and hopefully January.
“But when you look at it from a wide lens, we have to have a plan on what we're doing. And there's a lot of different things that go into that. But one thing that isn't compromised is the execution. That has to be at a high level. So we're chasing that, and we need to.”
I think here it is also important to point out “conservative play calling” is not all that has detracted from the effectiveness of the offense. The offensive line and running backs have also had their ups and downs, perhaps more of the latter, but it’s all of one piece in the end.
Throwing the ball can set up the run as much as vice versa, and that is what ended up happening at Washington…
Of course, Jim Tressel was not born Mr. Conservative (talking football here, not politics). He was a pass-happy quarterback once upon a time from what I’m told, and he grew into his eventual style as a head coach mostly because it was practical.
I’ve also always felt Tressel got somewhat of a bad rap. He was happy to open up the offense if he felt A) the offense could handle it, and/or B) the game called for it1.
The best example of that would be the Rose Bowl against Oregon following the 2009 season.
They kind of protected Terrelle Pryor most of the year but opened things up against the Ducks. Why? Because Chip Kelly’s Oregon had too good an offense to expect to win 10-7 or 12-10.
I certainly don’t think Ohio State fans are going to have to wait until January to see more aggression from the passing game, but what about this week?
What would it take to bring the fullback back to Ohio State's offense? buff.ly/NB7jwV2
— #Marcus Hartman (#@marcushartman)
12:20 PM • Oct 2, 2025
Let’s take a closer look at Minnesota
Coach P.J. Fleck’s team is 3-1 with wins over two overmatched teams (Buffalo and Northwestern State), a loss at Cal and a comeback win over Rutgers last week.
In his nine seasons as Minnesota, Fleck has tried to craft a run-first, play defense program, but this season he’s leaning hard on redshirt freshman quarterback Drake Lindsey, who certainly looks the part at 6-5 and was great for the Gophers against the Scarlet Knights.
He doesn’t have much in terms of weapons, though, and so far Minnesota is 50th in the nation in scoring (33.5 points per game) and 62nd in total offense (405.3 yards per game).
Defensively, the Gophers have been better, ranking ninth in yards allowed per game (230) but 25th in points allowed (16.3).
I didn’t get around to doing a full post on the advanced stats this week because I had another assignment for Wednesday, some technological glitches and a mishap in the kitchen trying to process some of the harvest from my garden, so here is a cliff notes version:
Strictly looking at Minnesota from an advanced stats point of view, you see a team that cannot run the ball (95th in success rate, 125th in explosiveness).
If you look at why, it’s because their top two running backs have been out. The backup is lost for the season, but game-changer Darius Taylor should be back at some point (maybe this week?).
Regardless of the back, the offensive line has been a little below average blocking in the run game, checking in 72nd in line yards.
With Lindsey being allowed to sling the ball around a bit, the Gophers have made up for the run game struggles by having a very efficient passing game, though they have struggled to create big plays.
The defense has been pretty good against the run and really bad against the pass, though they have done a decent job preventing big plays.
What does it all mean?
Styles makes fights, and this one could set up very well for an Ohio State team that wants to continue to develop on offense.
Minnesota hasn’t won at Ohio State since I was a senior in high school, and I don’t expect that to change.
Fleck’s team will challenge the Buckeyes on both sides of the ball, though, perhaps coaxing the OSU passing game to take another step forward out of necessity.
1 This is also why the 2006 team was so different from all of Tressel’s others: That was one season the offense was far ahead of the defense, and he called games to protect the defense as a result.