Ryan Day taking 'a hard look' at relinquishing play-calling duties next season
COLUMBUS — Ohio State coach Ryan Day confirmed to Lettermen Row on Monday he is considering giving up play-calling duties next season to devote more attention to managing the team.
“I am definitely going to take a hard look at that this offseason but won’t make any decisions on play calling for a little while,” Day told Lettermen Row two days after his No. 4 Buckeyes lost a shoot out to No. 1 Georgia 42-41 in a College Football Playoff Peach Bowl semifinal. “It would definitely allow me to be much more involved with other aspects of the program, especially in season.”
He was queried after ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said during College GameDay on Monday at the Rose Bowl that Day had told him and other ESPN staffers during a pre-Peach production meeting last week that “he’s going to stop calling plays next year” to indeed spend more time with the team as a whole.
Of course, it begs the question about who might ascend to the Ohio State play-calling duty, since Kevin Wilson, offensive coordinator the past four seasons under Day, has left to become the head coach at Tulsa. Day has yet to say how he will realign his staff, though he already has filled the offensive vacancy with long-time assistant Keenan Bailey.
Speculation is that passing game coordinator Brian Hartline, considered one of the bright young rising assistant coaches in the country, could gain an even larger role with the offense, but that has not been announced.
Offensive line coach Justin Frye, who just spent his first season with Ohio State, was the offensive coordinator the previous three seasons at UCLA under head coach Chip Kelly, who long has been Day’s mentor in the profession.
Interestingly, at the end of the post-game press conference Saturday at the Peach Bowl, Day was asked whether “it bugs you to your core” that the Ohio State defense again was bitten several times by big plays, something he thought he’d addressed by bringing in new coordinator Jim Knowles — paid $1.9 million — and two other new defensive assistants this time a year ago.
“It’s a team loss, and I thought the defense played gritty at times” against Georgia, Day started the answers. But he ended with “We did give up some explosive plays again. … And it was something that we spent a lot of time talking about is avoiding the big play. I think the difference was, in this game, it didn’t demoralize us in this game. We kept swinging and fighting, and we just kept going at it.
“But call it for what it is. If we’re going to win these games, we can’t give up those big explosive plays. They’re hard to come back from, but there was still a lot of positive things out there.”
Perhaps now he will spend more time on that side of the ball, at least in an overseer role, while someone else does the offensive play-calling. The timing of his statement to Herbstreit indicates he was thinking that well before the Ohio State loss to Georgia.
