I hate blaming a loss on play calling and officiating because the vast majority of games are won and lost as a result of what the players do on the field. Yet here I am this morning blaming both because both were so bad (at least at critical moments of the game).
1. For the umpteenth time on this website, the job of the replay official is NOT to get the call right. The job of the replay official is to overturn, and I quote, with emphasis in the original, "only those plays where the absolute standard of indisputable video evidence is met." If the replay official has to go frame-by-frame and draw a single pixel red line on the screen, then it should be obvious that the absolute standard of "indisputable video evidence" (again, their bold type, not mine) has emphatically not been met. The officials who are actually on the field are still supposed to make the tough calls; the replay official is there to make easy calls that the crew on the field obviously missed.
But no, not when Ohio State is involved in a playoff game. Then the replay officials are given free rein, with little or no video evidence to support their decisions; or worse yet, with clear video evidence that actually goes contrary to their decisions; to create phantom targeting calls, overturn obvious targeting calls, render scoop-and-score fumbles into incomplete passes, and turn fourth down failures into first down successes. Ah, the miracles of modern technology! Ah, the obvious conflict of interest having the video feeds controlled by the network that has a rooting interest in one of the teams! Now, I would never accuse ESPN of fixing games through the replay booth, but it is an undeniable fact that an inordinate amount of replay calls in playoff games have gone in favor of schools from conferences that have television deals with the folks in Bristol. Must be one of them coincidences....
2. In this game, the first of the replay shenanigans was the overturning of a targeting call on Georgia. Why did the official on the field call targeting? Perhaps because the Bulldog player lowered his helmet, ran full speed into a defenseless player who had already dropped the pass and was out-of-bounds, launched himself into said defenseless player, hit said defenseless player with forcible contact to the head and neck area using the crown of his lowered helmet, and in fact caused said defenseless player to suffer a concussion that prevented said defenseless player from returning to the game. Pretty clear case of targeting, no? Well, apparently not, because the replay official supposedly saw some angle at some slowed down speed with some pixel-thin red line added by some miraculous video technology, all provided courtesy of ESPN, which showed that the targetor actually hit the targetee a millimeter or two below the "head and neck area". The verdict from the star chamber: Clean hit, no ejection, no penalty, replay wins again! What we all saw was a dirty hit with intent to injure that is exactly the kind of bullshit play that the targeting rule was specifically designed to eliminate from the game:
What were the consequences of the replay official not only exceeding his authority (the absolute standard of indisputable video evidence), but actually using his authority to contradict the indisputable video evidence that we all saw, and can see again and again in the footage above? If the targeting call stands, then Ohio State has first-and-goal from the 3-yard line with a chance to go gain a nearly insurmountable 18-point lead in the fourth quarter. Instead, Ohio State has to settle for the field goal and a 14-point lead that obviously was not insurmountable. Now, it is quite possible that Ohio State would not have scored a touchdown with first-and-goal from the 3-yard line (anyone remember Clemson 2019?). Hell, CJ Stroud might have thrown a pick six on the very next play, so maybe the replay official did Buckeye Nation a huge solid by overturning that obvious targeting call. Maybe the Buckeye offense does score a touchdown to go up 18, but the Buckeye defense has shown that no lead is insurmountable. That's why one bad call, by a coach or referee, rarely changes the outcome of a game. With that being said, the replay official's overturning of this targeting call was pretty egregious and definitely had an impact on the outcome of the game.
The insult to injury? Said defenseless player was none other than Marvin Harrison, Jr, arguably Ohio State's best player. Of course, Harrison was out for the rest of the game regardless of the ultimate ruling on targeting, but a penalty with an ejection would have been a momentum builder for Ohio State and would have at least somewhat negatively impacted Georgia's defense - not exactly an eye for an eye, more like a tooth for an eye, but some retribution is still better than none.
2. The second controversial replay overturn happened on Georgia's next drive. Facing 4th-and-6 from the Ohio State 13-yard line, the Bulldogs eschewed the field goal and went for the first down. Georgia completed the pass but the receiver was pushed out of bounds short of the first down marker, so Ohio State gets the ball back up 14 points with 11 minutes left in the 4th quarter and a chance to ice the game. Not so fast my friends.... The little scientists up in the replay booth have to review the play millimeter by millimeter, nanosecond by nanosecond, drawing pixel-thin red lines on super-zoomed images to create indisputable video evidence that the Bulldog receiver actually got the first down. Deus ex machina! Another replay miracle is born unto us! Although the point differential from the targeting call is purely speculative, we do know that this replay meddling did in fact give Georgia three points because the Bulldogs did in fact kick a field goal after the replay booth granted them a second chance on that drive, three points that turned out to be (but really should not have been) the difference in the game. Again, Ohio State might not have won the game if the original call had stood - I will never again underestimate Ryan Day's capacity for melting down in big games - but taking those three points off the board would have been huge both in terms of the actual score and the momentum of the contest.
3. With the replay officials so obviously affecting the outcome of the game, the on-field officials apparently believed that they had to make their presence felt as well, because on Ohio State's ensuing drive they made a call that cost the Buckeyes a first down and killed whatever momentum remained after the previous hosings. Facing 4th-and-1 from their own 34-yard line, Ryan Day (credit to him here) whipped out his big swinging dick and called for a fake punt, a fake punt that worked to perfection and gained a Buckeye first down. But wait! Did I hear something? Was it Kirby Smart calling a time out? Oh, it must have been! Let's blow the whistle and call the play dead ... three seconds after the Buckeyes gained the first down. Even SEC honk Chris Fowler (undoubtedly chortling under his breath) had to admit that Smart's time out was called "with a nanosecond to spare." Of course, that nanosecond could not be reviewed by the replay officials who'd already proved themselves so very adept at analyzing the game nanosecond by nanosecond. No, that call had to stand and Ohio State had to have its best play of the game - and possibly the deciding play of the game - negated by more official shenanigans.
Of course, the time out didn't prevent Ryan Day from trying another fake punt, or from lining up and going for it on fourth down, or from making a sensible defensive call on the very next play after the punt (a 76-yard TD pass by Georgia), so I can't really say with absolutely certainty that the officials cost Ohio State the game. But I know that they did.
4. The officiating crew definitely dealt Ryan Day a bad hand in the fourth quarter of yesterday's game, but the Buckeyes still had a 14-point lead after the first screw job (the targeting call), and an 11-point lead with under nine minutes left in the game after the third screw job (the phantom time out). Even after that gangbanging, the Buckeyes still should have won the game. So why didn't they? After the phantom time out, Ryan Day elected the conventional option and punted the ball away. While success on 4th-and-1 would have given the Buckeyes a huge and sorely needed momentum boost and could have sealed the victory, failure could have led to disaster. So punting was the sensible move, the move best designed to preserve the remaining momentum and avoid potential disaster. Except for one little thing - Ryan Day's hand-picked defensive coordinator doesn't make sensible calls and likes to flirt with disaster. After a decent but not great 42-yard punt was fair caught at the Georgia 24-yard line, the Bulldogs needed just one play and 10 seconds to go 76 yards for the touchdown; add in a 2-point conversion and it's a 3-point game with 8:41 left on the clock. The punt was the safe play, the Tresselball move. At that point of the game, your defense doesn't need a "stop", it just needs a "slow". Go prevent, play zone, keep everything in front of you, make them go 76 yards in 10 plays, increase their chances of a fumble, an interception, a sack, a holding penalty (LOL), or something negative that will kill their drive. At least make them chew up four or five minutes of clock to get their six or seven or eight points. But no, the Riverboat Gambler up in the booth wants to go man-free with his worst cover guy (Lathan Ransom) on their fastest receiver (Arian Smith), and it's yet another busted coverage leading to yet another huge scoring play for the opposition. As someone (I believe @NFBuck) said after the Michigan game, it seems like Ryan Day is calling offense for a Big Ten slugfest and Jim Knowles is calling defense for a Big Twelve shootout. It simply makes no sense to follow up a conservative and "correct" call (a punt) with a risky and "incorrect" call (man-free defense), especially against the defending national champion and current number one team in the country in their "home" stadium with a Heisman finalist quarterback when you've got the 11-point lead midway through the fourth quarter. It was a stupid call by Jim Knowles and it backfired in spectacular fashion, as many of his other similarly stupid calls have similarly backfired in similarly spectacular fashion. But I blame Ryan Day for that fiasco. Last time I checked, Day is the head coach of the entire team. In that situation, Day needs to call up to the booth and tell his DC that we're not taking any chances, we're going exclusively zone, and we're playing conservative at least until this becomes a one-score game.
5. Ryan Day deserves some blame for his offensive play calling as well. While Day did a beautiful job for most of the game, his play calling became questionable down the stretch. For some reason, in pressure situations Day seems to call plays that have the least chance of success, like he's countering his counters to his counter-tendencies in some 4-D chess game while the other team is simply playing checkers. For example: With about four minutes left in the game, Ohio State had the ball second-and-five at the Georgia 18-yard line nursing a three-point lead. CJ Stroud has been dissecting the Georgia defense all game with designed roll outs and quick throws, and he's uncharacteristically been gaining significant yardage on undesigned scrambles. So what does Ryan Day do? He calls a play that has already failed at least three times this game - he runs jet motion with the WR going behind the QB (maybe it should be called spaceship motion because the WR has taken himself so far out of the play), and Stroud then fakes to the RB and the WR which not only is slow developing but also causes him to take his eyes off the defense not once but twice before looking for his receivers downfield (one of whom, spaceman, is decidedly not downfield because he's still five yards behind the line of scrimmage). While the previous iterations of this unfortunate play resulted in little or no gain on outlet passes to the spaceman, this time Georgia sniffed out the play (pretty easy to do with that ridiculous pre-snap motion), blitzed Stroud, got a sack about a nanosecond (the vocab word of the day) after his second fake, and turned this "safe" play into a 12-yard loss. This turn of events put Ohio State into a difficult if not quite impossible 3rd-and-17, and the Buckeyes were actually pretty lucky to come away with three points on a 48-yard field goal.
But remember, Ohio State was "nursing" a three-point lead, which perhaps is the real problem here. Maybe Ryan Day in particular, and head coaches in general, should not look to nurse leads but to sweep legs. Maybe the smart call in that situation was to let your superstar quarterback, who has been spectacular all game with both his arms and his legs, make a career-defining play, perhaps even the potentially game-clinching touchdown. Is this contrary to what I just said about Riverboat Gambler Knowles calling a balls out blitz up 11-points? Maybe, but there is a fairly large grey area between too much risk and too little risk, and the two situations were entirely different. In the first, Ohio State was up eleven points with under nine minutes left in the game and Georgia needed a touchdown, a two-point conversion, and a field goal (essentially three scores) to tie the game; that's when you go conservative and make the other team work for their points. In the second, Ohio State was up only three points with four minutes left in the game, so a field goal was going to do little or no good, especially with the Buckeye defense leaking like a sieve; that's when you take the risk because both a field goal (good result) and an interception (bad result) leave you with a just a one-score lead, so why not try for the knockout blow by throwing into the end zone at least once? And who better to deliver that knockout blow than CJ Stroud?
Well, perhaps Stetson Bennett IV would be better to deliver that knockout blow. Because Ryan Day did make a low-risk, low-reward call that didn't let his Heisman finalist quarterback make a play with either his arm or his feet, that backfired spectacularly, and that resulted in an utterly meaningless three points, and that decision gave the other guy's Heisman finalist quarterback the chance to have his career-defining moment. And define that moment, he did. Down 41-35 with just 2:36 left in the game, Bennett drove his team 72 yards in 5 plays (all pass completions) for the go-ahead score.
The only problem with Bennett's drive is that he left too much time on the clock, and the Buckeyes still had 54 seconds and two time outs to gain the 50 or so yards necessary to get into field goal range. And CJ Stroud did what a Heisman finalist quarterback is supposed to do in such situations - he drove the team 44 yards in 30 seconds without using a single time out. Then Ryan Day got weird. Instead of letting his superstar quarterback do superstar things, he took the ball out of his hands and gave it to fourth-string running back Dallan Hayden on outside zone to the short side of the field and the weak side of the formation (Day's security blanket play, which he dialed up after a Georgia time out that gave him the chance to overthink his decision, but which he somehow make worse by running away from his strength); Hayden proceeded to lose one yard, Ohio State was forced to call a time out, and you could see the Buckeyes' momentum completely blowing away in the air conditioning of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Then a slant (nice call) to Xavier Johnson (not the best option) that fell incomplete, followed by some sort of abomination that had Stroud running for his life back to nearly midfield before heaving the ball out of bounds to save any chance for the game-winning 50-yard field goal attempt. As you might imagine, the attempt was missed because college kickers aren't really adept at kicking 50-yard field goals, especially with the game, the season, and the national championship on the line. If Ryan Day had called some better plays that had gained ten yards, would Noah Ruggles have necessarily connected and won the game? Of course, we have no way of knowing what would have happened, and I'm sure that we all remember Tyler Durbin missing from 37 and 21 yards in similar but not quite so high pressure situations against Michigan in 2016, but Day's play calling in those most crucial moments of the game did not give his kicker the best opportunity for success.
6. Let's talk about Ryan Day for a minute. His overall record at Ohio State is now 45-6 (.882 winning percentage). Those are great numbers, but I don't care. Day gets no credit for beating Arkansas State and Toledo and Tulsa and Akron and the bottom feeders of the Big Ten. Hell, I could beat those teams with Ryan Day's roster and Jim Bollman's playbook. In big games (that would be Michigan and bowl games, for those of you who might still be unaware), Ryan Day now has a record of 3-5 overall (.375 winning percentage), with a 1-2 record against Michigan, and a 2-3 record in bowl games. This is not John Cooper territory, at least not quite, at least not yet. It's more like post-1968 Woody Hayes territory, when the team went 88-20-3 (.806 winning percentage, with no MAC/Sunbelt patsies to fatten the record), but Hayes had losing records against Michigan (4-5-1) and in bowl games (2-6); went 0-5 in de facto national championship games (1969; 1970; 1972; 1974; and 1975); and got destroyed in back-to-back games against two of his legendary peers in the terminal phase of his career (Bear Bryant, 35-6, in the 1978 Sugar Bowl; Joe Paterno, 19-0, in the 1978 season opener). Where Day veers into Cooper territory is how he has lost his big games: Blowing a 16-point lead to Clemson in 2019; blowing a 14-point lead to Georgia in 2022; and getting outscored 56-17 in the second halves of the two Michigan losses.
Yesterday was Ryan Day's chance for redemption after his second straight Wolverine beat down - hang onto a 14-point fourth quarter lead, defeat the #1 team in the country, then head out to SoCal to play a heavy underdog TCU in the title game. It was easy money, a lock, a lead pipe cinch....
7. Now to end on a positive note. I have never been a particular fan of CJ Stroud, who has always seemed mechanical and robotic and lacking the dynamic "IT" factor that subjectively, almost irrationally, defines greatness (I know it when I see it). My particular complaints about Stroud have been his lack of pocket presence (with tendencies to retreat, turn his back to the defense, and bail out to his left) and his unwillingness to run (not on designed runs, at which he is not good, but on scrambles when he has a clear open field ahead on him). Well, yesterday Stroud exhibited (possibly for the first time in his career) consistently excellent pocket presence, stepping up or rolling to his right (strong hand) while keeping his eyes down field and ignoring pressure in his face. This allowed Stroud to keep several plays alive that could otherwise have died on the vine, and further it allowed him to see running lanes that opened up as the pocket collapsed. Stroud made several nice completions from an unclean pocket and when there were no open receivers he had the presence of mind (and yes, the moxie) to take off running (6 scrambles for 67 yards). Through the air, Stroud was 23 of 34 for 348 yards, 4 touchdowns, no interceptions, against a defense that had the reputation for being the best in college football. After two years of waiting, with a few glimpses and flashes along the way, Stroud finally looked like a potential #1 overall draft pick. Best of luck to him in The League.
Stroud's receiving corps did a fine job, as you might expect: Marvin Harrison Jr (5 receptions, 106 yards, 2 TDs); Emeka Egbuka (8 receptions, 112 yards, TD); Julian Fleming (5 receptions, 71 yards); and Xavier Johnson (3 receptions, 43 yards, TD; also 6 rushes, 28 yards).
1. For the umpteenth time on this website, the job of the replay official is NOT to get the call right. The job of the replay official is to overturn, and I quote, with emphasis in the original, "only those plays where the absolute standard of indisputable video evidence is met." If the replay official has to go frame-by-frame and draw a single pixel red line on the screen, then it should be obvious that the absolute standard of "indisputable video evidence" (again, their bold type, not mine) has emphatically not been met. The officials who are actually on the field are still supposed to make the tough calls; the replay official is there to make easy calls that the crew on the field obviously missed.
But no, not when Ohio State is involved in a playoff game. Then the replay officials are given free rein, with little or no video evidence to support their decisions; or worse yet, with clear video evidence that actually goes contrary to their decisions; to create phantom targeting calls, overturn obvious targeting calls, render scoop-and-score fumbles into incomplete passes, and turn fourth down failures into first down successes. Ah, the miracles of modern technology! Ah, the obvious conflict of interest having the video feeds controlled by the network that has a rooting interest in one of the teams! Now, I would never accuse ESPN of fixing games through the replay booth, but it is an undeniable fact that an inordinate amount of replay calls in playoff games have gone in favor of schools from conferences that have television deals with the folks in Bristol. Must be one of them coincidences....
2. In this game, the first of the replay shenanigans was the overturning of a targeting call on Georgia. Why did the official on the field call targeting? Perhaps because the Bulldog player lowered his helmet, ran full speed into a defenseless player who had already dropped the pass and was out-of-bounds, launched himself into said defenseless player, hit said defenseless player with forcible contact to the head and neck area using the crown of his lowered helmet, and in fact caused said defenseless player to suffer a concussion that prevented said defenseless player from returning to the game. Pretty clear case of targeting, no? Well, apparently not, because the replay official supposedly saw some angle at some slowed down speed with some pixel-thin red line added by some miraculous video technology, all provided courtesy of ESPN, which showed that the targetor actually hit the targetee a millimeter or two below the "head and neck area". The verdict from the star chamber: Clean hit, no ejection, no penalty, replay wins again! What we all saw was a dirty hit with intent to injure that is exactly the kind of bullshit play that the targeting rule was specifically designed to eliminate from the game:
What were the consequences of the replay official not only exceeding his authority (the absolute standard of indisputable video evidence), but actually using his authority to contradict the indisputable video evidence that we all saw, and can see again and again in the footage above? If the targeting call stands, then Ohio State has first-and-goal from the 3-yard line with a chance to go gain a nearly insurmountable 18-point lead in the fourth quarter. Instead, Ohio State has to settle for the field goal and a 14-point lead that obviously was not insurmountable. Now, it is quite possible that Ohio State would not have scored a touchdown with first-and-goal from the 3-yard line (anyone remember Clemson 2019?). Hell, CJ Stroud might have thrown a pick six on the very next play, so maybe the replay official did Buckeye Nation a huge solid by overturning that obvious targeting call. Maybe the Buckeye offense does score a touchdown to go up 18, but the Buckeye defense has shown that no lead is insurmountable. That's why one bad call, by a coach or referee, rarely changes the outcome of a game. With that being said, the replay official's overturning of this targeting call was pretty egregious and definitely had an impact on the outcome of the game.
The insult to injury? Said defenseless player was none other than Marvin Harrison, Jr, arguably Ohio State's best player. Of course, Harrison was out for the rest of the game regardless of the ultimate ruling on targeting, but a penalty with an ejection would have been a momentum builder for Ohio State and would have at least somewhat negatively impacted Georgia's defense - not exactly an eye for an eye, more like a tooth for an eye, but some retribution is still better than none.
2. The second controversial replay overturn happened on Georgia's next drive. Facing 4th-and-6 from the Ohio State 13-yard line, the Bulldogs eschewed the field goal and went for the first down. Georgia completed the pass but the receiver was pushed out of bounds short of the first down marker, so Ohio State gets the ball back up 14 points with 11 minutes left in the 4th quarter and a chance to ice the game. Not so fast my friends.... The little scientists up in the replay booth have to review the play millimeter by millimeter, nanosecond by nanosecond, drawing pixel-thin red lines on super-zoomed images to create indisputable video evidence that the Bulldog receiver actually got the first down. Deus ex machina! Another replay miracle is born unto us! Although the point differential from the targeting call is purely speculative, we do know that this replay meddling did in fact give Georgia three points because the Bulldogs did in fact kick a field goal after the replay booth granted them a second chance on that drive, three points that turned out to be (but really should not have been) the difference in the game. Again, Ohio State might not have won the game if the original call had stood - I will never again underestimate Ryan Day's capacity for melting down in big games - but taking those three points off the board would have been huge both in terms of the actual score and the momentum of the contest.
3. With the replay officials so obviously affecting the outcome of the game, the on-field officials apparently believed that they had to make their presence felt as well, because on Ohio State's ensuing drive they made a call that cost the Buckeyes a first down and killed whatever momentum remained after the previous hosings. Facing 4th-and-1 from their own 34-yard line, Ryan Day (credit to him here) whipped out his big swinging dick and called for a fake punt, a fake punt that worked to perfection and gained a Buckeye first down. But wait! Did I hear something? Was it Kirby Smart calling a time out? Oh, it must have been! Let's blow the whistle and call the play dead ... three seconds after the Buckeyes gained the first down. Even SEC honk Chris Fowler (undoubtedly chortling under his breath) had to admit that Smart's time out was called "with a nanosecond to spare." Of course, that nanosecond could not be reviewed by the replay officials who'd already proved themselves so very adept at analyzing the game nanosecond by nanosecond. No, that call had to stand and Ohio State had to have its best play of the game - and possibly the deciding play of the game - negated by more official shenanigans.
Of course, the time out didn't prevent Ryan Day from trying another fake punt, or from lining up and going for it on fourth down, or from making a sensible defensive call on the very next play after the punt (a 76-yard TD pass by Georgia), so I can't really say with absolutely certainty that the officials cost Ohio State the game. But I know that they did.
4. The officiating crew definitely dealt Ryan Day a bad hand in the fourth quarter of yesterday's game, but the Buckeyes still had a 14-point lead after the first screw job (the targeting call), and an 11-point lead with under nine minutes left in the game after the third screw job (the phantom time out). Even after that gangbanging, the Buckeyes still should have won the game. So why didn't they? After the phantom time out, Ryan Day elected the conventional option and punted the ball away. While success on 4th-and-1 would have given the Buckeyes a huge and sorely needed momentum boost and could have sealed the victory, failure could have led to disaster. So punting was the sensible move, the move best designed to preserve the remaining momentum and avoid potential disaster. Except for one little thing - Ryan Day's hand-picked defensive coordinator doesn't make sensible calls and likes to flirt with disaster. After a decent but not great 42-yard punt was fair caught at the Georgia 24-yard line, the Bulldogs needed just one play and 10 seconds to go 76 yards for the touchdown; add in a 2-point conversion and it's a 3-point game with 8:41 left on the clock. The punt was the safe play, the Tresselball move. At that point of the game, your defense doesn't need a "stop", it just needs a "slow". Go prevent, play zone, keep everything in front of you, make them go 76 yards in 10 plays, increase their chances of a fumble, an interception, a sack, a holding penalty (LOL), or something negative that will kill their drive. At least make them chew up four or five minutes of clock to get their six or seven or eight points. But no, the Riverboat Gambler up in the booth wants to go man-free with his worst cover guy (Lathan Ransom) on their fastest receiver (Arian Smith), and it's yet another busted coverage leading to yet another huge scoring play for the opposition. As someone (I believe @NFBuck) said after the Michigan game, it seems like Ryan Day is calling offense for a Big Ten slugfest and Jim Knowles is calling defense for a Big Twelve shootout. It simply makes no sense to follow up a conservative and "correct" call (a punt) with a risky and "incorrect" call (man-free defense), especially against the defending national champion and current number one team in the country in their "home" stadium with a Heisman finalist quarterback when you've got the 11-point lead midway through the fourth quarter. It was a stupid call by Jim Knowles and it backfired in spectacular fashion, as many of his other similarly stupid calls have similarly backfired in similarly spectacular fashion. But I blame Ryan Day for that fiasco. Last time I checked, Day is the head coach of the entire team. In that situation, Day needs to call up to the booth and tell his DC that we're not taking any chances, we're going exclusively zone, and we're playing conservative at least until this becomes a one-score game.
5. Ryan Day deserves some blame for his offensive play calling as well. While Day did a beautiful job for most of the game, his play calling became questionable down the stretch. For some reason, in pressure situations Day seems to call plays that have the least chance of success, like he's countering his counters to his counter-tendencies in some 4-D chess game while the other team is simply playing checkers. For example: With about four minutes left in the game, Ohio State had the ball second-and-five at the Georgia 18-yard line nursing a three-point lead. CJ Stroud has been dissecting the Georgia defense all game with designed roll outs and quick throws, and he's uncharacteristically been gaining significant yardage on undesigned scrambles. So what does Ryan Day do? He calls a play that has already failed at least three times this game - he runs jet motion with the WR going behind the QB (maybe it should be called spaceship motion because the WR has taken himself so far out of the play), and Stroud then fakes to the RB and the WR which not only is slow developing but also causes him to take his eyes off the defense not once but twice before looking for his receivers downfield (one of whom, spaceman, is decidedly not downfield because he's still five yards behind the line of scrimmage). While the previous iterations of this unfortunate play resulted in little or no gain on outlet passes to the spaceman, this time Georgia sniffed out the play (pretty easy to do with that ridiculous pre-snap motion), blitzed Stroud, got a sack about a nanosecond (the vocab word of the day) after his second fake, and turned this "safe" play into a 12-yard loss. This turn of events put Ohio State into a difficult if not quite impossible 3rd-and-17, and the Buckeyes were actually pretty lucky to come away with three points on a 48-yard field goal.
But remember, Ohio State was "nursing" a three-point lead, which perhaps is the real problem here. Maybe Ryan Day in particular, and head coaches in general, should not look to nurse leads but to sweep legs. Maybe the smart call in that situation was to let your superstar quarterback, who has been spectacular all game with both his arms and his legs, make a career-defining play, perhaps even the potentially game-clinching touchdown. Is this contrary to what I just said about Riverboat Gambler Knowles calling a balls out blitz up 11-points? Maybe, but there is a fairly large grey area between too much risk and too little risk, and the two situations were entirely different. In the first, Ohio State was up eleven points with under nine minutes left in the game and Georgia needed a touchdown, a two-point conversion, and a field goal (essentially three scores) to tie the game; that's when you go conservative and make the other team work for their points. In the second, Ohio State was up only three points with four minutes left in the game, so a field goal was going to do little or no good, especially with the Buckeye defense leaking like a sieve; that's when you take the risk because both a field goal (good result) and an interception (bad result) leave you with a just a one-score lead, so why not try for the knockout blow by throwing into the end zone at least once? And who better to deliver that knockout blow than CJ Stroud?
Well, perhaps Stetson Bennett IV would be better to deliver that knockout blow. Because Ryan Day did make a low-risk, low-reward call that didn't let his Heisman finalist quarterback make a play with either his arm or his feet, that backfired spectacularly, and that resulted in an utterly meaningless three points, and that decision gave the other guy's Heisman finalist quarterback the chance to have his career-defining moment. And define that moment, he did. Down 41-35 with just 2:36 left in the game, Bennett drove his team 72 yards in 5 plays (all pass completions) for the go-ahead score.
The only problem with Bennett's drive is that he left too much time on the clock, and the Buckeyes still had 54 seconds and two time outs to gain the 50 or so yards necessary to get into field goal range. And CJ Stroud did what a Heisman finalist quarterback is supposed to do in such situations - he drove the team 44 yards in 30 seconds without using a single time out. Then Ryan Day got weird. Instead of letting his superstar quarterback do superstar things, he took the ball out of his hands and gave it to fourth-string running back Dallan Hayden on outside zone to the short side of the field and the weak side of the formation (Day's security blanket play, which he dialed up after a Georgia time out that gave him the chance to overthink his decision, but which he somehow make worse by running away from his strength); Hayden proceeded to lose one yard, Ohio State was forced to call a time out, and you could see the Buckeyes' momentum completely blowing away in the air conditioning of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Then a slant (nice call) to Xavier Johnson (not the best option) that fell incomplete, followed by some sort of abomination that had Stroud running for his life back to nearly midfield before heaving the ball out of bounds to save any chance for the game-winning 50-yard field goal attempt. As you might imagine, the attempt was missed because college kickers aren't really adept at kicking 50-yard field goals, especially with the game, the season, and the national championship on the line. If Ryan Day had called some better plays that had gained ten yards, would Noah Ruggles have necessarily connected and won the game? Of course, we have no way of knowing what would have happened, and I'm sure that we all remember Tyler Durbin missing from 37 and 21 yards in similar but not quite so high pressure situations against Michigan in 2016, but Day's play calling in those most crucial moments of the game did not give his kicker the best opportunity for success.
6. Let's talk about Ryan Day for a minute. His overall record at Ohio State is now 45-6 (.882 winning percentage). Those are great numbers, but I don't care. Day gets no credit for beating Arkansas State and Toledo and Tulsa and Akron and the bottom feeders of the Big Ten. Hell, I could beat those teams with Ryan Day's roster and Jim Bollman's playbook. In big games (that would be Michigan and bowl games, for those of you who might still be unaware), Ryan Day now has a record of 3-5 overall (.375 winning percentage), with a 1-2 record against Michigan, and a 2-3 record in bowl games. This is not John Cooper territory, at least not quite, at least not yet. It's more like post-1968 Woody Hayes territory, when the team went 88-20-3 (.806 winning percentage, with no MAC/Sunbelt patsies to fatten the record), but Hayes had losing records against Michigan (4-5-1) and in bowl games (2-6); went 0-5 in de facto national championship games (1969; 1970; 1972; 1974; and 1975); and got destroyed in back-to-back games against two of his legendary peers in the terminal phase of his career (Bear Bryant, 35-6, in the 1978 Sugar Bowl; Joe Paterno, 19-0, in the 1978 season opener). Where Day veers into Cooper territory is how he has lost his big games: Blowing a 16-point lead to Clemson in 2019; blowing a 14-point lead to Georgia in 2022; and getting outscored 56-17 in the second halves of the two Michigan losses.
Yesterday was Ryan Day's chance for redemption after his second straight Wolverine beat down - hang onto a 14-point fourth quarter lead, defeat the #1 team in the country, then head out to SoCal to play a heavy underdog TCU in the title game. It was easy money, a lock, a lead pipe cinch....
7. Now to end on a positive note. I have never been a particular fan of CJ Stroud, who has always seemed mechanical and robotic and lacking the dynamic "IT" factor that subjectively, almost irrationally, defines greatness (I know it when I see it). My particular complaints about Stroud have been his lack of pocket presence (with tendencies to retreat, turn his back to the defense, and bail out to his left) and his unwillingness to run (not on designed runs, at which he is not good, but on scrambles when he has a clear open field ahead on him). Well, yesterday Stroud exhibited (possibly for the first time in his career) consistently excellent pocket presence, stepping up or rolling to his right (strong hand) while keeping his eyes down field and ignoring pressure in his face. This allowed Stroud to keep several plays alive that could otherwise have died on the vine, and further it allowed him to see running lanes that opened up as the pocket collapsed. Stroud made several nice completions from an unclean pocket and when there were no open receivers he had the presence of mind (and yes, the moxie) to take off running (6 scrambles for 67 yards). Through the air, Stroud was 23 of 34 for 348 yards, 4 touchdowns, no interceptions, against a defense that had the reputation for being the best in college football. After two years of waiting, with a few glimpses and flashes along the way, Stroud finally looked like a potential #1 overall draft pick. Best of luck to him in The League.
Stroud's receiving corps did a fine job, as you might expect: Marvin Harrison Jr (5 receptions, 106 yards, 2 TDs); Emeka Egbuka (8 receptions, 112 yards, TD); Julian Fleming (5 receptions, 71 yards); and Xavier Johnson (3 receptions, 43 yards, TD; also 6 rushes, 28 yards).
