Something was taken from Ohio State head coach Ryan Day by college football.
Columbus, Ohio In order to obtain what you desire, you may occasionally have to give up something you love. As the head coach of the Ohio State football team for the past year, Ryan Day has been learning that.
He was excited about the future but also a little mocking of the path that needs to be taken to get there as he stood at a stage on Wednesday morning to talk about a busy offseason. In 2019, when he was the fresh new face on the block, eager to usher in a new era for the Buckeyes, he was a different coach.
He appears to have accepted the realities of his life as a coach, is older, and has a beard. Furthermore, he doesn’t appear to be having fun.
Day remarked, I wouldn’t call anything fun right now. Next year, victory will be enjoyable. You adjust. You must adapt.
Day has finally accepted something that was probably always going to happen as we approach 2024. After spending the last seven years building the offense into a formidable machine, he was brought in to save it in 2017.
Now, he has appointed an offensive coordinator and ceded command of the unit. This entails giving up the play-calling responsibilities, which are what make this job so enjoyable.
His initial inspiration for doing this came after the 2022 season concluded with defeats to Georgia and Michigan.
However, he and the coaching staff were unprepared for a move this size. Furthermore, he showed his resilience in a defeat at the Peach Bowl.
The sense, the expertise, the passion, and every other adjective used to characterize the qualities of a skilled playcaller.
It’s not as though Day isn’t skilled at it anymore. He no longer has the time to provide it with the daily care it requires. He discovered last season that doing that is risky and can come back to haunt you in the most crucial situations in the most crucial games.
Day remarked, I know that it has to happen. There’s a lot going on in college football right now. Would I like to? No. I adore the portion about football. I adore making plays. I adore being inside that place.
However, I’m growing tired of thinking about calls on third downs and fours from the 21-yard line in the third quarter of a game on a Wednesday night. All of those are mental rehearsals that require a great deal of effort.
The definition of head coach of a collegiate football team at the highest level has evolved. In order to concentrate on all the new components that have been added over the past five years and seem to be happening on top of each other, what is happening on the field is frequently neglected.
To name a few issues that Day must handle, these are the staffing changes, the recruiting calendar that is completely nonsensical, the transfer portal, and NIL.
He has too much going on to spend his Wednesday night sitting through every play that was practiced earlier in the day in an offensive meeting.
But that’s the current state of college football. If coaches hope to achieve any kind of success, they must never take their foot off the throttle in this chaotic engine. That’s what sets it apart from the NFL.
Day stated that there are many guys who call it and make those decisions while playing, especially in the NFL. I believe they perform admirably.
You feel like you understand the game better and have a bit more influence over the action. It’s possible to become a little too fixated on the play-call rather than the overall scenario at times. These are the benefits and drawbacks of something.
Day enjoys making play calls. He enjoys having the last say over what happens. He enjoys watching the Saturday chess games between the opposing defensive coordinators and the Xs and Os involved in formulating a strategy.
He adores what the Madden video game effectively brought to reality, albeit one that is obviously a little more sophisticated.
Few things are more satisfying than planning a play, putting in countless hours of work on it, and then witnessing its success in real time during a college football playoff game. Then let your feelings run wild before quickly locking back in and starting over.
Day is giving up that because playing collegiate football won’t let him continue to enjoy himself.
Day stated, I understand why I was given this opportunity because of what happened on the offensive side of the ball. I don’t play that position any longer. I have to change like that. Understand and accept that, for sure.
Day, who has only been a head coach for five years, has spent the past year transitioning from a person who understood what his next move needed to be.
All he needed was a little more time to come to terms with the fact that he was giving up the thing he loved most to someone he could fully rely on.
Even if Bill O’Brien decides to enroll at Boston College two weeks after arriving in Columbus, that idea won’t alter.
Day stated that you can’t just decide to do something when you wake up one day. It requires some time, but you are aware of what is correct. However, we also won’t just place someone in that situation and tell them to go take the offensive.
That will not be successful. We took our time and were very meticulous because it had to be the perfect fit. Bill fulfilled every requirement for us.
In 2017, Day arrived as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator, eager to usher in a new era for the team’s attack. That began in Year 1 with modest gains and moved full force into the record book in Year 2. After that, he became the head coach in 2019 and set a new benchmark for the next four years.
That came to an end last season in part because Day was no longer the play-caller he once was because the sport was always changing and tugging him in different directions.
As a result, he starts the program in Year 8, having changed from Year 6 as head coach.
For Day, this has not been a fun offseason. It’s produced thrilling moments and given him access to what may be the best roster he’s had in Columbus. However, fun is not the point here.
This is about taking the necessary steps to enable him to enjoy the greatest happiness this sport has to offer in a year.
In order to achieve your goals in life, you may need to make some sacrifices. For Day, that meant letting go of the offense he created in the hopes that a trophy would be waiting for him on the other side.
According to Day, just because a part is different doesn’t imply it’s any more or less enjoyable. Everyone must accept their job because it’s simply a different one.
If you can’t do it here, you can’t do it anywhere, which is a constant challenge I issue to our coaches. We need a group of guys who are experts in their respective positions for that, which is why my role as head coach has changed slightly from a few years ago.
