Matt Tamanini
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Ohio State’s outcome against the Vols depends on which version of Ryan Day shows up
Matt Tamanini via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Will it be scared, turtle Ryan Day or aggressive, angry Ryan Day?
If you’ve seen “Avengers: Infinity War,” you know that there is a near-infinite set of outcomes for any given situation. Fortunately for the fate of the world, Dr. Strange was able to identify the only possible scenario in which Earth’s mightiest heroes were able to defeat Thanos, thus saving half of the known universe.
I am hoping that such an interdimensional effort is not needed in Ohio Stadium this evening for Ryan Day and the No. 6 Ohio State Buckeyes to defeat the No. 7 Tennessee Volunteers in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
However, there are two possible results that I see as the most likely outcomes for the win-or-go-home contest tonight under the lights in The Horseshoe. Both of them will break the hearts of certain segments of the Ohio State fanbase, but I know which one I am specifically rooting for.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25800710/2187648548.jpg "Michigan v Ohio State")
Photo by Aaron J. Thornton/Getty Images
This one doesn’t need much explaining, we’ve seen it before. Hell, we saw it the last time the Buckeyes were on the field when they lost what is almost certainly the worst loss in program history, falling 13-10 to the Michigan Wolverines. But we’ve also seen it in countless other big games as well; unfortunately, we are well acquainted with scared, timid, conservative Ryan Day.
All too often, Ohio State’s head coach becomes so singularly focused on trying to prove his team is tough and can win in a traditional three-yards-in-a-cloud-of-dust way, that it bites him in the ass. I understand why Day gets so hung up on this; Josh Gattis and Jim Harbaugh embarrassed him and challenged his manhood, and the Buckeye coach has never been able to get over that.
Day wants to prove the former Michigan coaches wrong and show that his team can bully opponents and run them over en route to a victory. I also understand why that would be an attractive game plan tonight when the temperatures in Columbus will feel like they are in the single digits.
But obviously, we know that would be an absolutely horrific and fireable decision from Ohio State’s head coach. Not only has Day not built his team to play bully ball, but they don’t even have a solidified starting offensive line, so you can’t simply line up and run between the tackles and expect to be successful.
You know that’s a recipe for disaster, I know that’s a recipe for disaster, and yet — time and again — Ryan Day not only doesn’t see the impending disaster but steers his team directly into it. So, despite the fact that there was reportedly a players-led meeting imploring the coaches to trust them, and Day has repeated the phrase “Whatever it takes” nearly every other sentence since the playoff matchup was announced, there is no real reason to trust that he will actually make the obvious changes necessary to put his team in the best possible position to win.
It also doesn’t help that Tennessee’s defense is excellent, especially up front, meaning that tif Ohio State does decide to try to run it up the middle repeatedly, it will undoubtedly fail as much as it ever has before. The Vols are fourth nationally in yards allowed per ground attempt, giving up only 2.83 per carry. They are also seventh in FBS averaging 7.75 tackles for loss per game, many of them coming by stopping running backs behind the line of scrimmage. If Ryan Day tries to force-feed TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkinsbetween the tackles, it will be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day across Buckeye Nation.
The one saving grace in this scenario is that I do not see a realistic situation in which Tennessee is able to score routinely against the Buckeye defense. The Vols are a ground-heavy team, and the Silver Bullets are incredibly stout against the run. Ohio State is fifth nationally, allowing only 2.85 yards per attempt — just slightly behind Tennessee. And while running back Dylan Sampson was the SEC Offensive Player of the Year, he was a high-volume back, averaging only 5.8 yards per carry, good for just 68th in the FBS this season.
So, while I expect he will get his fair share of yards thanks to the number of rushes he will accumulate via Tennessee’s high-octane offense, I don’t see a situation in which he will be a dominant force picking up huge chunks and scoring at will against the Buckeye defense.
That would mean that Tennessee redshirt freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava will have to make up the difference. The Vols have only thrown the ball on 39% of their offensive plays this season, and are 62nd nationally with just 230.9 ypg. Iamaleava is only completing 65.7% of his passes and has 19 touchdowns and five interceptions on the season. The team’s leading receiver Dont’e Thornton averages just 53.9 ypg.
So, in the potential outcome in which Ryan Day decides to once again handcuff his offense and play a style of offensive football that is not especially conducive to the players on his roster, I imagine that it will be a frustrating, hard-nosed, tedious ordeal to watch. Ohio State could potentially win a game like that, but Tennessee is far more adept at winning a grind-it-out type of game.
And, since this is the worst-case scenario, obviously Tennessee would have come out on top for it to be that bad. So, in this imagined reality where Ohio State clearly does not defeat Thanos (is Ryan Day Thanos in this analogy?), I would foresee the Volunteers advancing to the Rose Bowl against the Oregon Ducks thanks to a 17-10 victory over the beleaguered Buckeyes in Day’s final game as OSU’s head coach.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/25800717/2186523145.jpg "Indiana v Ohio State")
Photo by Jason Mowry/Getty Images
For me, the struggles of Ohio State’s football team over the past few seasons have been all the more frustrating because, in large part, they have not been because the Buckeye players weren’t good enough to meet the team’s goals. Instead, they have been because the head coach has been routinely incapable of trusting himself, his staff, and his players in the biggest moments.
Ohio State’s roster is arguably the best in all of college football, and it has been for well over a decade. That should be the hard part; if a team’s issue is that it just simply doesn’t have the horses to compete at the highest levels, then that takes time to fix. While that calculus has changed a bit in the Transfer Portal Era, it is still usually not an instantaneous switch; it’s tough to make that type of improvement in-season, let alone in-game.
But that has not been Ohio State’s problem. They have the blue-chip players to beat anyone they play. They have the future NFL stars to win conference and national titles. Instead, it is been the head coach’s mental blocks that have gotten in their way.
However, what is so mind-numbingly maddening is that at any moment, Ryan Day could theoretically wake up, realize he is being an idiot, and go back to the version of himself that we saw as Urban Meyer’s play-caller, in his first few seasons as head coach, and in a small number of big games including against Georgia in the 2022-23 playoff.
We know he’s capable of it (or at least once was). So the potential for a creative, up-tempo game plan that gets the ball to the Buckeyes’ best weapons and catches an opponent off-guard is possible.
But is it likely for this game? Hell, man, I don’t know.
I want to believe that it is. In every big situation and following every bad loss, Day and company say all of the right things. So I convince myself, “This is it! They finally got it all figured out. We are back, baby!”
I get myself excited thinking about all of the explosive possibilities that Jeremiah Smith, Emeka Egbuka, Carnell Tate, Henderson, Judkins, et. al could bring to the game. But, just like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, I get myself all revved up, and just as I’m racing toward the ball, ready to kick it through the uprights,Ryan Day Lucy snatches it away from me, and I land on my ass — hurt, embarrassed, and confused.
While I can be mad at Lucy, ultimately it is my fault for believing that she would ever let me kick the ball. Lucy is who Lucy is, and it is foolish for me to expect her to change.
Yet, here I am. In the multiverse in which the Avengers pull it off and the Buckeyes play their best possible game tonight against Tennessee, Day absolutely has to be true to his word and do “whatever it takes to win.”
I still don’t imagine a scenario in which the Vols are able to put up a ton of points against Ohio State. But if Day really does pull out all of the stops, the Buckeyes should be able to core more than Tennessee has allowed so far this year. Currently, the Georgia Bulldogs have that high-water mark, having scored 31 in mid-November.
To do so, the Buckeyes’ game plan tonight — regardless of weather — should be to pass to set up the run. If the Ohio State offense is able to execute a scheme that gets the ball out of Will Howard’s hands quickly with screens, slants, crossing routes, mesh routes, etc. it should be able to move the ball well against Tennessee. The Vols’ edge rusher James Pearce Jr. is a menace and Ohio State needs to avoid giving him too many opportunities to hit Howard.
Then, once the passing game loosens up the Vols' defense, you can run the ball to the outside. Get Henderson and Judkins in space and allow them to make guys miss rather than having to rely on the offensive linemen to create holes for them to run through.
There is no reason why Smith and Egbuka aren’t targetted a dozen times apiece tonight, nor is there any reason that Howard isn’t a bigger part of the running game. Of course, I don’t want to see him taking hits like he did against Michigan, but in intelligently designed plays — RPOs, traditional options, even some delayed draws — his legs can be a game-changing weapon, and Day and Kelly should use them.
If Ryan Day and company read this article and decide to take all of my advice, that could absolutely lead to the best possible outcome in tonight’s game, and I think it would lead to a score along the lines of 38-10 in favor of the Buckeyes, setting up a rematch with the No. 1 Oregon Ducks on New Year’s Day.
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Matt Tamanini via our friends at Land-Grant Holy Land
Visit their fantastic blog and read the full article (and so much more) here
Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Will it be scared, turtle Ryan Day or aggressive, angry Ryan Day?
If you’ve seen “Avengers: Infinity War,” you know that there is a near-infinite set of outcomes for any given situation. Fortunately for the fate of the world, Dr. Strange was able to identify the only possible scenario in which Earth’s mightiest heroes were able to defeat Thanos, thus saving half of the known universe.
I am hoping that such an interdimensional effort is not needed in Ohio Stadium this evening for Ryan Day and the No. 6 Ohio State Buckeyes to defeat the No. 7 Tennessee Volunteers in the first round of the College Football Playoff.
However, there are two possible results that I see as the most likely outcomes for the win-or-go-home contest tonight under the lights in The Horseshoe. Both of them will break the hearts of certain segments of the Ohio State fanbase, but I know which one I am specifically rooting for.
Worst Case Scenario:
This one doesn’t need much explaining, we’ve seen it before. Hell, we saw it the last time the Buckeyes were on the field when they lost what is almost certainly the worst loss in program history, falling 13-10 to the Michigan Wolverines. But we’ve also seen it in countless other big games as well; unfortunately, we are well acquainted with scared, timid, conservative Ryan Day.
All too often, Ohio State’s head coach becomes so singularly focused on trying to prove his team is tough and can win in a traditional three-yards-in-a-cloud-of-dust way, that it bites him in the ass. I understand why Day gets so hung up on this; Josh Gattis and Jim Harbaugh embarrassed him and challenged his manhood, and the Buckeye coach has never been able to get over that.
Day wants to prove the former Michigan coaches wrong and show that his team can bully opponents and run them over en route to a victory. I also understand why that would be an attractive game plan tonight when the temperatures in Columbus will feel like they are in the single digits.
But obviously, we know that would be an absolutely horrific and fireable decision from Ohio State’s head coach. Not only has Day not built his team to play bully ball, but they don’t even have a solidified starting offensive line, so you can’t simply line up and run between the tackles and expect to be successful.
You know that’s a recipe for disaster, I know that’s a recipe for disaster, and yet — time and again — Ryan Day not only doesn’t see the impending disaster but steers his team directly into it. So, despite the fact that there was reportedly a players-led meeting imploring the coaches to trust them, and Day has repeated the phrase “Whatever it takes” nearly every other sentence since the playoff matchup was announced, there is no real reason to trust that he will actually make the obvious changes necessary to put his team in the best possible position to win.
It also doesn’t help that Tennessee’s defense is excellent, especially up front, meaning that tif Ohio State does decide to try to run it up the middle repeatedly, it will undoubtedly fail as much as it ever has before. The Vols are fourth nationally in yards allowed per ground attempt, giving up only 2.83 per carry. They are also seventh in FBS averaging 7.75 tackles for loss per game, many of them coming by stopping running backs behind the line of scrimmage. If Ryan Day tries to force-feed TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkinsbetween the tackles, it will be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day across Buckeye Nation.
The one saving grace in this scenario is that I do not see a realistic situation in which Tennessee is able to score routinely against the Buckeye defense. The Vols are a ground-heavy team, and the Silver Bullets are incredibly stout against the run. Ohio State is fifth nationally, allowing only 2.85 yards per attempt — just slightly behind Tennessee. And while running back Dylan Sampson was the SEC Offensive Player of the Year, he was a high-volume back, averaging only 5.8 yards per carry, good for just 68th in the FBS this season.
So, while I expect he will get his fair share of yards thanks to the number of rushes he will accumulate via Tennessee’s high-octane offense, I don’t see a situation in which he will be a dominant force picking up huge chunks and scoring at will against the Buckeye defense.
That would mean that Tennessee redshirt freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava will have to make up the difference. The Vols have only thrown the ball on 39% of their offensive plays this season, and are 62nd nationally with just 230.9 ypg. Iamaleava is only completing 65.7% of his passes and has 19 touchdowns and five interceptions on the season. The team’s leading receiver Dont’e Thornton averages just 53.9 ypg.
So, in the potential outcome in which Ryan Day decides to once again handcuff his offense and play a style of offensive football that is not especially conducive to the players on his roster, I imagine that it will be a frustrating, hard-nosed, tedious ordeal to watch. Ohio State could potentially win a game like that, but Tennessee is far more adept at winning a grind-it-out type of game.
And, since this is the worst-case scenario, obviously Tennessee would have come out on top for it to be that bad. So, in this imagined reality where Ohio State clearly does not defeat Thanos (is Ryan Day Thanos in this analogy?), I would foresee the Volunteers advancing to the Rose Bowl against the Oregon Ducks thanks to a 17-10 victory over the beleaguered Buckeyes in Day’s final game as OSU’s head coach.
Best Case Scenario:
For me, the struggles of Ohio State’s football team over the past few seasons have been all the more frustrating because, in large part, they have not been because the Buckeye players weren’t good enough to meet the team’s goals. Instead, they have been because the head coach has been routinely incapable of trusting himself, his staff, and his players in the biggest moments.
Ohio State’s roster is arguably the best in all of college football, and it has been for well over a decade. That should be the hard part; if a team’s issue is that it just simply doesn’t have the horses to compete at the highest levels, then that takes time to fix. While that calculus has changed a bit in the Transfer Portal Era, it is still usually not an instantaneous switch; it’s tough to make that type of improvement in-season, let alone in-game.
But that has not been Ohio State’s problem. They have the blue-chip players to beat anyone they play. They have the future NFL stars to win conference and national titles. Instead, it is been the head coach’s mental blocks that have gotten in their way.
However, what is so mind-numbingly maddening is that at any moment, Ryan Day could theoretically wake up, realize he is being an idiot, and go back to the version of himself that we saw as Urban Meyer’s play-caller, in his first few seasons as head coach, and in a small number of big games including against Georgia in the 2022-23 playoff.
We know he’s capable of it (or at least once was). So the potential for a creative, up-tempo game plan that gets the ball to the Buckeyes’ best weapons and catches an opponent off-guard is possible.
But is it likely for this game? Hell, man, I don’t know.
I want to believe that it is. In every big situation and following every bad loss, Day and company say all of the right things. So I convince myself, “This is it! They finally got it all figured out. We are back, baby!”
I get myself excited thinking about all of the explosive possibilities that Jeremiah Smith, Emeka Egbuka, Carnell Tate, Henderson, Judkins, et. al could bring to the game. But, just like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football, I get myself all revved up, and just as I’m racing toward the ball, ready to kick it through the uprights,
While I can be mad at Lucy, ultimately it is my fault for believing that she would ever let me kick the ball. Lucy is who Lucy is, and it is foolish for me to expect her to change.
Yet, here I am. In the multiverse in which the Avengers pull it off and the Buckeyes play their best possible game tonight against Tennessee, Day absolutely has to be true to his word and do “whatever it takes to win.”
I still don’t imagine a scenario in which the Vols are able to put up a ton of points against Ohio State. But if Day really does pull out all of the stops, the Buckeyes should be able to core more than Tennessee has allowed so far this year. Currently, the Georgia Bulldogs have that high-water mark, having scored 31 in mid-November.
To do so, the Buckeyes’ game plan tonight — regardless of weather — should be to pass to set up the run. If the Ohio State offense is able to execute a scheme that gets the ball out of Will Howard’s hands quickly with screens, slants, crossing routes, mesh routes, etc. it should be able to move the ball well against Tennessee. The Vols’ edge rusher James Pearce Jr. is a menace and Ohio State needs to avoid giving him too many opportunities to hit Howard.
Then, once the passing game loosens up the Vols' defense, you can run the ball to the outside. Get Henderson and Judkins in space and allow them to make guys miss rather than having to rely on the offensive linemen to create holes for them to run through.
There is no reason why Smith and Egbuka aren’t targetted a dozen times apiece tonight, nor is there any reason that Howard isn’t a bigger part of the running game. Of course, I don’t want to see him taking hits like he did against Michigan, but in intelligently designed plays — RPOs, traditional options, even some delayed draws — his legs can be a game-changing weapon, and Day and Kelly should use them.
If Ryan Day and company read this article and decide to take all of my advice, that could absolutely lead to the best possible outcome in tonight’s game, and I think it would lead to a score along the lines of 38-10 in favor of the Buckeyes, setting up a rematch with the No. 1 Oregon Ducks on New Year’s Day.
Continue reading...