Ohio State's New Odyssey: Ryan Day (Part 1 of 3)

December 4, 2018 started out as a strange day and it only became stranger as the day progressed. However, the strangest part of my day wasn’t the fact that I woke up sixty-three minutes past my usual wake up time, or that I have been assigned to a task force at work which relies on a lot of corporate jingoism to ultimately prove to my coworkers how meaningless our time at work truly is.  The strangest part of my day was Urban Meyer’s announcement that he would be stepping down as the head football coach at The Ohio State University after the Rose Bowl game.

There are three installment of this blog:

1. Ryan Day
2. Urban Meyer Going to USC
3. Urban’s Legacy

Sitting next to Urban Meyer during his retirement announcement was the next Ohio State head football coach in thirty-nine-year-old Ryan Day. As many are aware, Day was the co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach during both the 2017 and 2018 Ohio State football campaigns. He also became well known leading the Buckeyes to a 3-0 start as the OSU interim head coach, while Meyer went through his 2018 three game suspension due to his mismanagement of former assistant coach, Zach Smith’s domestic violence allegations. So it goes without saying that Day is well qualified for the job, even though he has no prior fulltime head coaching experience.

Although Day does not have fulltime head coaching experience, he does have football coaching experience. Day has a 15-year football coaching career, which includes both stops in the NFL and college. He has coached under both Chip Kelley (with the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers) and Urban Meyer (as a graduate assistant at University of Florida and at Ohio State University). Day is well acquainted with Urban’s high-tempo offense, not only due to his experience with the Kelly and Meyer offenses, but also due to the fact that he coached under Urban’s former assistant, Steve Addazio at Boston College, who used the same terminology Urban used in his coaching schemes.

Day has always coached on the offensive side of the ball, mainly coaching quarterbacks prior to his hiring as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator. As a quarterback coach he has successfully coached the likes of Sam Bradford (2015), Colin Kaepernick (2016), J.T. Barrett (2017), and most recently Dwayne Haskins (2018). What is more impressive is each of these quarterbacks excelled in terms of their completion percentage and touchdown/interception ratio while under Day’s tutelage. Furthermore, Day’s ability to mold the offense around each diverse quarterback, rather than force the quarterback to mold around the offense, is reassuring. Finally, it appears that Day is a skilled college football recruiter, as that is a primary part of the head coaching position, in terms of immediately maintaining high priority commitments for the 2019 class, following Urban’s announcement.

This is also a smart move by Ohio State in terms of Urban’s successor. Day fits the trend of modern coaching – a young, quarterback minded, offensively focused coach. In other words, Ohio State is following in the footsteps of the L.A. Rams with Sean McVay, 49ers with Kyle Shanahan, Oklahoma Sooners with Lincoln Riley, and even what was Kliff Kingsbury at Texas Tech. It is further reassuring that Ohio State and its fans have seen Day act as the OSU head coach and be successful at it, albeit against lackluster opponents. Lastly, Day’s reputation, having a “chill” like personality and not being a “screaming” coach, has received praise from many players and allows him to communicate better with young recruits and even college seniors. This trait is similar to the traits that the aforementioned coaches possess.

I don’t think that Urban’s retirement was a shock towards Urban, but more importantly I don’t think Day was shocked about the retirement or being named the next head coach. This reason is twofold. First, the lack of time, as in no time at all, between Urban’s announcement and Day’s promotion would have been mind blowing if this wasn’t premeditated.  Considering football is a form of religion in Columbus, Ohio, it goes without saying that Ohio State is expected to conduct its upmost due diligence in terms of seeking out what very well may be the highest paid public employee in the state of Ohio – in Ohio State’s head football coach. Therefore, it would appear that Day was well aware that he would be the next head coach and that Meyer would be retiring at the end of the year.

Just how aware was Day in terms of knowing he would be the next Ohio State head coach? I’m talking the day he was hired as the Ohio State offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2017.

This is where my second point comes into play. Day was offered, at the end of the 2017 college football season, to be the next head football coach at Mississippi State and he was subsequently asked to be the offensive coordinator for the Tennessee Titans. Day turned both offers down. This hints that he either loved being a college assistant more than an NFL assistant (which would pay more and not have to worry about recruitment) and also more than a head college football coach.

I believe Day was a party to a “coach-in-waiting” agreement with Ohio State.  In other words, everyone knew, including Meyer, that Day would be the next in line to take the reins at Ohio State. However, as a 2010 Washington Post article mentions, coach-in-waiting arrangements are only credible if there is predetermined endpoint for the current head coach. For instance, Will Muschamp was the University of Texas defensive coordinator (2007-2010) and put together one of the nation’s top college football defenses. Due to his youth and success both Mack Brown, Texas’ head coach, and the University of Texas made an effort to have Muschamp be the coach-in-waiting for Brown.  However, due to Brown’s reluctance to step down, and provided no endpoint for when he would, Muschamp grew impatient and left to become the head coach of the University of Florida, in December of 2010 (this same dilemma occurred at Maryland when James Franklin was named the coach-in-waiting but eventually became impatient “waiting” and so left to become the head coach at Vanderbilt). In turn, it seems pretty likely that Ohio State was under pressure to name Day as the head coach, as Day was being offered high positions at both the NFL and collegiate levels. Combine this with the fact that Ohio State was most likely aware of Urban’s deteriorating health, specifically the increasingly worsening brain cysts, caused Ohio State to put a succession plan in place sooner rather than later.

My only one concern about Day was whether he would have the “Ohio Spirit” that only the great OSU coaches encompass. John Cooper, a good OSU coach and a great recruiter, did not have this spirit and it was well measured as he failed to effectively defeat Michigan. It appears that although Day is not a native Ohioan that he may, under the guise of Urban and being in two battles against Michigan already, inherited this spirit. Ultimately, Ryan Day’s measure of success will be gauged the same way that all OSU football coaches are measured – at noon, on a Saturday in late November, against “The Team Up North.”