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HC Ryan Day (B1G Coach of Year, B1G Champion, National Champion)

The defensive line is generating pressure on the QB 3.6% of the time. that's second worst in all of college football.

NFL average is around 35%. The Vikings are generating pressure with their D Line 50% of the time.

Hard to garner a pass rush when everybody only bull rushes and hand fights. There hasn’t been a single pass rush move executed in a few years.
 
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I'm willing to admit it.

The only gripe I genuinely have with the new setup (that's not just an aging man yelling at the sky take) is the lack of player development, and how that might effect the sport as a whole going forward.

Otherwise...yes. it feels like my lollipop has been taken away. And I hate it.
Hand up, willing to admit it too. Watching IU and UCLA and Kentucky have success in this era…and really any worthwhile program that will match the 40-50M payroll going forward can be on instant footing now.

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I’ve got a list of a few things, and in no particular order, but the biggest areas of this seasons downfall:

-Player load management expectations and resulting fall-out (NFL mentality). This is a pro and con. OSU leans HEAVILY on the side of player safety and treats even minor injuries more in line like an NFL team. They’ve done this for years and it actually caters to former NFL or professional athletes who recognize the care their kids will get. This all fantastic and well…..but it will bite you at times. In a 17 week NFL season, teams routinely sit players out on Sunday with the larger goal in mind and helping players shed minor, lingering injuries. In college, it may make sense where you’re at in season, but overall, you’re playing with fire and the season, on any given weekend. I think Jay Timmons is a good example against USC. Had that been a post-season playoff game, he’s starting. Had Jay been playing for 99% other schools, he’s starting. That loss is back-breaking and possibly season defining. You can take that same example and use it countless times over the last few seasons. OSU operates like an NFL team in regular season, but without the benefit of a 17 game schedule. 1 loss in college is significantly more damaging than in the NFL.

-Roster mismanagement….you could see this around the corner from last year. Listen, it’s a tough road to travel in today’s era of NIL. But when you lose the likes of Arvell Reese, Caleb Downs, Sonny Styles, etc, and you have seen their backups at practice and in clean-up time, it’s hard to feel sympathy when you decided to ride with some of these guys into 2026. Nothing against Payton Pierce, Beau Atkinson, even Kenyatta Jackson who is a handful at times……we needed to replenish the cupboard with urgency, and they decided to play it “safe”. Our defense has turned very soft and our athleticism is down pretty much across the board. We played it safe at RB as well (I know Jakobi was playing well prior to injury but OSU intentionally avoided bringing in a RB that would be seen on par with Bo, which was also way too nice.

-Urgency…..I think an overall theme I’m kinda coming around to, is an overall complacency within the program and an expectation that as Ohio State, we can just “turn it on”. Yeah, well, it’s not easy this year and we’re likely missing playoffs. The time for urgency was after Texas, and playing it “cool” cost us a game at USC. Then one play throws Oregon game in its head and we’re a deer in lights. This team is stuck right now, and it just doesn’t seem Day has a lever to pull.

-I’ve hammered it too many times, so I’ll just end with Ryan Day’s transformation from a Chip Kelly protege who was gonna put 70+ on you to Ryan Day, who wants to keep it close and win in the 4th quarter. Whether it’s coach speak or not, his teams play exactly like this. A strange evolution that seems inexplicably hard for him to course correct. Yes, he had bad moments of being over-aggressive early in his career. But the transition to Marty Schottenheimer with an inability to utilize basic clock management is really difficult to overcome for a team in desperate need of some luck.
 
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I’ve got a list of a few things, and in no particular order, but the biggest areas of this seasons downfall:

-Player load management expectations and resulting fall-out (NFL mentality). This is a pro and con. OSU leans HEAVILY on the side of player safety and treats even minor injuries more in line like an NFL team. They’ve done this for years and it actually caters to former NFL or professional athletes who recognize the care their kids will get. This all fantastic and well…..but it will bite you at times. In a 17 week NFL season, teams routinely sit players out on Sunday with the larger goal in mind and helping players shed minor, lingering injuries. In college, it may make sense where you’re at in season, but overall, you’re playing with fire and the season, on any given weekend. I think Jay Timmons is a good example against USC. Had that been a post-season playoff game, he’s starting. Had Jay been playing for 99% other schools, he’s starting. That loss is back-breaking and possibly season defining. You can take that same example and use it countless times over the last few seasons. OSU operates like an NFL team in regular season, but without the benefit of a 17 game schedule. 1 loss in college is significantly more damaging than in the NFL.

-Roster mismanagement….you could see this around the corner from last year. Listen, it’s a tough road to travel in today’s era of NIL. But when you lose the likes of Arvell Reese, Caleb Downs, Sonny Styles, etc, and you have seen their backups at practice and in clean-up time, it’s hard to feel sympathy when you decided to ride with some of these guys into 2026. Nothing against Payton Pierce, Beau Atkinson, even Kenyatta Jackson who is a handful at times……we needed to replenish the cupboard with urgency, and they decided to play it “safe”. Our defense has turned very soft and our athleticism is down pretty much across the board. We played it safe at RB as well (I know Jakobi was playing well prior to injury but OSU intentionally avoided bringing in a RB that would be seen on par with Bo, which was also way too nice.

-Urgency…..I think an overall theme I’m kinda coming around to, is an overall complacency within the program and an expectation that as Ohio State, we can just “turn it on”. Yeah, well, it’s not easy this year and we’re likely missing playoffs. The time for urgency was after Texas, and playing it “cool” cost us a game at USC. Then one play throws Oregon game in its head and we’re a deer in lights. This team is stuck right now, and it just doesn’t seem Day has a lever to pull.

-I’ve hammered it too many times, so I’ll just end with Ryan Day’s transformation from a Chip Kelly protege who was gonna put 70+ on you to Ryan Day, who wants to keep it close and win in the 4th quarter. Whether it’s coach speak or not, his teams play exactly like this. A strange evolution that seems inexplicably hard for him to course correct. Yes, he had bad moments of being over-aggressive early in his career. But the transition to Marty Schottenheimer with an inability to utilize basic clock management is really difficult to overcome for a team in desperate need of some luck.
The roster mismanagement issue hit hard this year. Our portal acquisitions last year have proven to be awful. We paid heavy for a bunch of JAGs.
 
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That’s kind of what I’m trying to point out.

It’s ok to hit a rough patch-it happens. How do you come out of it?

Here is what happened when Tress hit a similar patch.
Was talking with my dad last night about this 'rough patch' idea. How many times did someone call for Woody's (RIP) neck? The Dispatch sports writers held no punches back then... and certainly there were letters to the editor too.

It's not really different than those days other than EVERYONE having a platform... be it the beat or us keyboard warriors.

As I alluded to earlier, I'm for giving Day a pass... and it would be a LOT easier to stomach this mess if we saw greater development among the pups. Sadly, only a few of them look ready and willing to bite. I believe that he's doing a great job of creating a program that develops players as well as young men. But as even Day would admit, the first job of that position is to win games.

That said, as an administrator and candidly, the face of the brand, I'm largely pleased with most of what he's done. But he absolutely needs to be working double time to determine the issues -- be they personnel and / or coaching -- and un-fuck them in a hurry. I personally don't think that wins are the end-all-be-all of how Day should be evaluated, however... he will be evaluated on how he goes about unfucking things.
 
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Remember when a redshirt freshman came off the bench in Ann Arbor and “played ball”?

View attachment 97520
I was about 50-rows below where this was filmed. Their DBs laying each other out was glorious. I had to fake concern as I was explaining to one of their fans that DH was decidedly a different QB than JTB right as that play started.

Good times.
 
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Hand up, willing to admit it too. Watching IU and UCLA and Kentucky have success in this era…and really any worthwhile program that will match the 40-50M payroll going forward can be on instant footing now.

View attachment 97543

Couldn't have said it better.

As someone who grew up in New England from 01-19 WITHOUT being a Pats fan, the Buckeyes were always a safe, easy crutch, even the "bad" years were typically good.

I'm still gonna watch, I'm not going anywhere (nor do I expect the program to fall off a cliff), just might need to pick up another hobby during football season. The games simply don't hold the individual weight they used to. How college football used to feel is dead and gone, I used to love waking up on Saturdays, knowing the entire season was hanging in the balance every week. And yes, the elite position we held made all that extremely enjoyable, win or loss.

A 24 team playoff means OSU is gonna qualify basically 90 percent of the time, so the regular season will likely be much less stressful going forward, which is great for some. But that's the thing, that "stress" is what made it fun and unique. That's what I'm gonna miss the most.
 
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I think people complaining about how college football isn't as much fun as it used to be need to ask themselves....am I just upset that the sport was set up for a couple Haves to dominate the Have Nots, and we were one of the Haves?
For me, no that's not why. I was a huge college football fan in general, not just Ohio State. And I started to become a fan during the end of Cooper's tenure, so it wasn't like I was swayed by their success. I enjoyed the emphasis on recruiting kids who fully bought in and committed to the program for 3-5 years . There was a stronger, more genuine connection between player and school which made it easy to invest emotionally into. More pride was at stake and you had more regional rivalries that felt personal. Now it's just about the bag, half the team transfers every year, and we get games like USC-Rutgers carrying Big-10 implications. The corporate rot is festering in the sport now. Its soul is dying
 
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Hard to garner a pass rush when everybody only bull rushes and hand fights. There hasn’t been a single pass rush move executed in a few years.
We went from Joey to Nick to Young. 7 years of having the best player on the field at end every week. ( I am aware of the core injury to Nick, and Haskins had to outscored everyone as a result)

JTT and Jack were supposed to be the next great ones, and they stuck around long enough to full fill that prophecy.

Since Young we haven't had a player that requires a double team.

I think the DL coach needs to retire. Hes done so much for OSU, no one has the balls to fire him. Hopefully he quits on his terms at the end of the year. Your 74 coach, ride off into the sunset.
 
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