Ryan Day’s demeanor these days is right in line with a head coach who doesn’t have all the answers he wants with the season opener less than two weeks away. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Ryan Day carries strong opinions about the ever-changing college football landscape and how he feels about his team’s August progress.
Columbus, OH – The sorting and sifting of who starts, who plays as a backup and who will wait for next year (or enter the portal when the time comes) runs at full speed this week.
What’s been a fast-moving shell game is gearing down to slow motion.
Because Ryan Day and his staff want to enter game week on Monday with a clear plan of who plays when and how much. Doesn’t matter that it’s Ball State. Every game is a chance to get better and learn stuff about your team.
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As expected, 12 days before the season opener, Day fielded many questions Monday about who’s winning certain jobs, how many players will rotate in certain position groups and who is the backup quarterback.
A final plan and continuity make head coaches happier people. Day wants to be happy. And his players want him to be happy. Is any head coach ever happy?
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And then, with no sense of timing, a judge in a Louisiana state court granted a temporary restraining order to permit players from the 2022-23 class to pursue a fifth year. Just how temporary we don’t know. Just how unhappy most coaches are about this, we can guess almost all of them.
What it all means is this: If a player, trying to be an NFL rookie, is cut, he can go back to his school, or probably another one, and play a fifth year.
Some in the 22-23 class want the same opportunity as players who came after them, and a judge agrees. That opportunity – another new rule in college sports – came recently when the NCAA got rid of redshirts and gave every player five years of eligibility from the 23-24 class forward. Apparently, it’s just not fair to the 22-23s to have a cutoff season of 23-24.
Day always talks about the mandatory ability to adapt to change and embrace change. He’s done it well with the transfer portal, NIL and the expanded playoff. But even he is weary of hitting so many moving targets to stay relevant.
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“Do I like anything about it?” Day said. “Absolutely not. But we got to do what’s right for Ohio State. So it’s sort of a day-to-day thing right now.”
Ain’t it always anymore with the NCAA and the courts.
What Day is saying, is if players are coming back and other contenders are enriching their roster, well, then, he will just have to do it, too, if it will help his team’s chances of winning a championship. Can’t get left behind like Clemson has in this new age.
“In my opinion, the conferences have to decide if there’s a point where their rosters have to be locked in,” Day said.
Austin Siereveld returns to lead an offensive line that will be monitored for improvement by everyone. He most likely is moving from left tackle to right guard.
Agreed. We need in-season waiver pickups like we need the ill-conceived idea of a future 24-team playoff. How would that work anyway? The fifth-years still have to be a student. Classes have started or soon will on campuses nationwide.
Enough of the unknown.
Let’s look at some of the knowns and sort-of-knowns Day discussed Monday. And what better place to start than last year’s most often discussed position group: the offensive line.
The current trend at practice involves moving Austin Siereveld from left tackle to right guard and inserting Ian Moore at left tackle as a first-time starter. That puts an experienced trio on the inside of Siereveld and Luke Montgomery as the guards and Carson Hinzman at center. That’s a strong leadership group with Siereveld at the forefront as a second-year captain.
“When you look at Luke, Carson and Austin inside, that’s a lot of beef in there,” Day said. “There’s a certain level of chemistry that has given us a lot of reason to like that as long as the tackle play is really good. We’ll keep evaluating, but that has the momentum right now.”
To move Siereveld from tackle to his more natural position at guard required a strong push from Moore.
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“He’s always been athletic, strong in the weight room, great mentality, intelligent,” Day said. “A lot of it is just experience. Usually in that third year you start to grow into your own, and that’s what he’s doing.”
Phillip Daniels is back at right tackle. Day said Josh Padilla can play guard and center. He also mentioned Gabe Van Sickle, Carter Lowe and Deontae Armstrong. Improvement all along the line and improved depth have been an offseason talking point.
Kenyatta Jackson returns to anchor the defensive line under the leadership of longtime coach Larry Johnson.
Depth is apparently a virtue of the defensive line as well, led by returning end starter Kenyatta Jackson. Plenty of others have experience including starter experience from transfers.
“We have a bunch of guys who can start,” Day said. “That’s good for the length of the season, the health of that group.”
The wide receiver group employs the best player in the country in Jeremiah Smith. Apparently, his supporting cast is much deeper than last year even with the loss of first-round draft pick Carnell Tate. We’ve been hearing this, and Day confirmed it.
“Six could play,” he said. “Our depth at wide receiver is way better than it was last year, in my opinion.”
In addition to Smith, the six include captain and Block O jersey winner Brandon Inniss, true freshmen Chris Henry Jr. and Brock Boyd, transfer Devin McCuin and maybe redshirt freshmen Phillip Bell or De’Zie Jones.
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Tavien St. Clair, the second-year quarterback from Bellefontaine, is the assumed backup. But more than any other position, Day takes his time at quarterback assigning places on the depth chart. Two years ago we didn’t know Julian Sayin was the backup until he was the first one off the bench to take late-game snaps.
The “competition” for St. Clair is freshman Luke Fahey from Mission Viejo, California, a place that sounds like place where QBs come from.
Brandon Inniss’ return to the starting lineup is part of the depth Ryan Day likes from his corps of receivers.
“Those guys are still competing, and we want another week of work to see how these guys continue to evolve, and we’ll go from there,” Day said. “Both have shown bright spots for sure.”
There are many other decisions to be made at every position group. But lest you think Ryan Day is happy with where the decision-making and execution is for a roster with 51 new players, think hard and long about that assumption.
Day was asked: “You seem pretty happy with almost everything. Is there anything …”
And Day cut that notion off.
“I’m not happy with anything,” he said. “Don’t you put those words in my mouth. … Let me change my total tune if that’s what you got out of this. Pissed off about everybody.
“I think we’re working. I think we have a monster schedule, and we have 51 new guys. So there’s a lot of unknown … a lot of unknown.”
No coach likes the unknown. But this is the age of unknowns in college sports.
And Ryan Day and every head coach in the nation gets to deal with it, figure it out and embrace it, or slip into irrelevance.
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