Deciding which 74 players will make the trip to each road game will be a more difficult process for Ohio State this season than it’s ever been before, especially for night games like the one the Buckeyes will be playing in their first road game of the season against Penn State on Saturday.
Because Ohio State will undergo its final round of pregame COVID-19 testing on Saturday morning after it has already arrived in State College, the Buckeyes must prepare for the possibility that any of those players could test positive before the game and be unable to play, decreasing the number of players they’ll have available for Saturday night’s game.
That possibility, Ryan Day admitted Thursday, is “kind of terrifying.”
“If it was a noon game, we would test here at 8:00 (the night before), and you would know before you got on the plane who had issues,” Day said. “But now that it’s a night game, we’re doing it Saturday once we’re there, so we have to make sure the depth is really accounted for.”
Day said Ohio State needs to have “a pair and a spare at every position,” which means the Buckeyes want to have at least two players they feel good about each position along with at least one other player who can fill in at that position if necessary. While the Buckeyes would typically carry that many players on its travel roster at most positions anyway, they will bring more specialists on the road than they normally would, as they need to have backup kickers, punters and long snappers available just in case they lose any of their starters at those spots.
