The most interesting thing I heard Tuesday at Ohio State was Ryan Day explaining how he evaluates his team in blowout games.
Or, more accurately, what he is looking for in lopsided matchups like Ohio State-Grambling State because if it doesn’t become a blowout, well, that is a whole different situation.
That one last weekend got out of hand quickly, but there were still lots of plays to grade, players to praise and teachable moments to suss out.
How do they do it?
“I think you try to do it based on your experience of seeing things. You know, take the passing game, for example. I mean, the spacing, the timing, location of the ball, like all those things you're looking at to see, does this look right?”
“Or, you know, are we getting away with things right here? Same thing up front, how's our footwork? How's our hand placement? How's the communication? How's the pad level? How are we getting off to the second level? Are we getting movement?”
“All those things you try to do the best you can, and you expect a very, very high level of execution.”
Then he channeled Urban Meyer, brining back a series of phrases (in bold below) his old boss used to use not after easy wins like Saturday but when he was answering questions about what went wrong in a loss or closer-than-expected win.
“And when you don't have that [execution], you've got to figure out why that is.
“And so it's the same thing you're trying to identify — Is it coaching? Is it scheme? Or is it personnel? — the best you can.”
Maybe this is mundane.
Perhaps it’s just coach-speak, but I saw it as a useful window into the thought process of a coach who nearly took his team to the top of the mountain in his first two seasons then had to regroup.
His team not only lost its spot atop the Big Ten, Day had to endure the indignity of being labeled “born on third base” by a coach who it turned out was running a rogue program bent on winning by any means necessary while claiming to be righteous and pure.
Day still has to slay the current incarnation of that particular dragon in November, but he’s been to the summit and sounds like a someone with a good idea of how to get there again.
“I will say it's not always easy coming out of those games to identify those [sources of problems], but the more you watch it, the more you work at it, the more experience you get as a coach, you try to project the best you can on those things.”
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You can find more of the things I found interesting from Ohio State press conferences at my YouTube channel, and be sure to check out PressProsMagazine.com for more on the Buckeyes plus high school football coverage from Western Ohio, Central Ohio and now the Northeast as well.
I’ve also begun posting on the BuckeyeSports.com premium message board (getting back to my roots), so feel free to check out the community there.
I’ve also written a couple of high school football notebooks, and I really am going to start dumping some Bengals and maybe even Reds thoughts on you one of these days.
The boys of summer are a bit difficult to get a read on right now as their chances to make Rob Manfred’s franken-playoffs are waning, but the future should be bright.
I also happen to have missed all of Sunday’s Battle of Ohio because of fourth grade volleyball, but anyway I thought maybe it was too soon to risk alienating my Browns fan subscribers, too :)
All in good time…
Thanks for reading! Be sure to look out for This Week in Ohio State Football on Friday if you don’t get anything else from me in the meantime.
