Ryan Day Disappointed Spring Shortchanged for Freshmen
Ohio State returns a starter from last season at quarterback, receiver, left tackle, center, right guard, defensive end, two at linebacker, and a cornerback.
As is the case every year, some spots are more veteran than others.
Coaches try to keep positions from being thinned out, but the recruiting gods (and transfer portal) don’t always cooperate.
This iteration of the Buckeye football team, however, has experience even among the players who will be stepping into starting roles.
While losing spring ball is never ideal, Buckeye head coach Ryan Day believes this team is well-equipped to handle the loss of a dozen practices.
“I don’t know if it’s a concern as much as it is just disappointing that they weren’t able to get those practices under their belt, and hopefully we can recoup those at some point,” Day said recently. “But it is what it is and it’s the same for everybody else throughout the country.”
Day is correct about this being the same for everybody. No one has gone unimpacted by the coronavirus outbreak and when it is time for everyone to return to some form of normalcy, everybody will be on the equal footing of virgin ground. Coaches will be doing everything they can to get their programs ready, hoping that what they’re doing is actually the absolute best way to go about things.
It will also help to have players who have seen a lot of action, such as the ones that will eventually return to Columbus.
“The good news for us is a lot of our young guys played, especially in those first 10 games,” Day said. “They got a lot of snaps. Some kids over 200, 250, 300 snaps last year. Our quarterback’s returning. So I feel like in terms of game readiness, we do have a fairly veteran team.”
There is, however, the small matter of 25 new freshmen being added to the team.
Fourteen of them enrolled early, so they took part in three practices before spring was canceled. The more beneficial part for those 14 is the fact that they got started way back in the winter. They were working out long before practice was started.
And even though Day isn’t necessarily concerned, he does realize that some of those 25 freshmen will need to have an impact on the field this coming season. That impact would have been made more likely with 15 spring practices for the 14 early enrollees.
At this point, however, if the worst thing to happen this season is having a few more inexperienced players on the field than normal, he’ll take it.
“But there are a lot of guys in there. I mean, 14 guys who we were counting on to get a bunch of reps to give us some depth coming into the preseason, so it is what it is,” he said.
Entire article:
https://theozone.net/2020/04/ryan-day-disappointed-spring-shortchanged-freshmen/
