Ryan Day’s decision to give up offensive play calling came full circle at the Cotton Bowl head coaches press conference.
During the pregame press conference for last year’s Cotton Bowl, Ryan Day sat next to Eliah Drinkwitz as the Missouri coach explained why he decided to give up offensive play calling in 2023. As Drinkwitz spoke about how he wasn’t embracing his role as the head coach because he was trying to hold on to his ego of being the play caller, one couldn’t help but draw parallels to Day, whose decision to hold on to play calling drew scrutiny all season as Ohio State’s 2023 offense had its worst season of his head coaching tenure by far.
It proved to be foreshadowing for the decision Day would ultimately make just a few weeks later when he hired Bill O’Brien to be Ohio State’s new offensive play caller. O’Brien’s time in Columbus didn’t last long, as he left after just three weeks to become the head coach at Boston College, but Day promptly replaced O’Brien with another experienced offensive play caller in Chip Kelly.
With Day ceding direct control of offensive play calling for the first time in his six years as Ohio State’s head coach, the Buckeyes’ offense has resurged with Kelly’s leadership. While Ohio State hasn’t played with the same offensive pace as it has in some past seasons, the Buckeyes’ offense has been highly efficient, ranking third in the FBS in yards per play (6.96). The offense had one disastrous game against Michigan, in which the Buckeyes scored 10 points while gaining only 4.3 yards per play, but has roared back to life in the College Football Playoff, averaging more than eight yards per play as the Buckeyes scored 83 combined points against Tennessee and Oregon.
With that, Day found himself on the other side of the equation at this year’s Cotton Bowl coaches’ press conference. This time, a reporter asked Day to talk about why he gave up offensive play calling immediately after Steve Sarkisian talked about why he’s still calling plays as Texas’ head coach – though Day gave Sarkisian nothing but praise in his response.
“There's something about that aspect of the game that I love. As long as I'm decent at it, I'll probably continue to do it,” Sarkisian said at the end of his answer.
“You're definitely decent at it, Coach,” Day replied with a laugh. “I've got so much respect for how Coach (Sarkisian) and his offense and staff – first off, they have a tremendous amount of weapons. But the way that they come after you, they're very aggressive. And for years, I've always studied Steve's stuff and what he does on offense. And he and I have had conversations about things that we do. And so he's a tremendous offensive mind. A lot of respect there.”
Ohio State learned the hard way how good a play caller Sarkisian is when it last faced one of his offenses. Sarkisian was Alabama’s offensive coordinator in 2020 when the Crimson Tide diced up the Buckeyes to hand OSU a 52-24 loss in the national championship game. With a different defensive philosophy in place now led by third-year coordinator Jim Knowles, Ohio State expects to be better prepared this time around, though the Buckeyes know Sarkisian and Texas’ offense will throw plenty of challenges their way in Friday’s College Football Playoff semifinal (7:30 p.m., ESPN).
“There's a lot of motions and shifts and all kinds of things that stretch you horizontally and vertically, and he does a great job with mixing it up and scripting the game to keep you off-balance,” Knowles said Wednesday. “He's really good at that.”
As for Day and Ohio State’s offense, though, Day says he has no regrets about the decision he made to delegate play-calling duties to Kelly, saying it has allowed him to spend more time with the entire team rather than focusing most of his energy on one side of the ball.
“I love that part of it as well, but I felt like it was time for me to just spend a little bit more time of my thoughts and resources with the team, defense, special teams,” Day said. “I felt like late in the week, coming up in your mind with what’s the call on 4th-and-3 on the left hash on the 21-yard line in the fourth quarter, it consumes your mind. And I think that's what makes great play callers great play callers, but it allowed me to step away a little bit, and Chip's been a huge help there. But it's also everybody on that offensive side of the ball. Justin Frye, Brian Hartline, Keenan Bailey, Carlos Locklyn all do a wonderful job, and our support staff as well. It's a team effort.”
Day’s decision to step back from offensive play-calling was partially driven by the increased demands that head coaches now face with having to manage NIL budgets and the transfer portal, though he said last week that he’s been able to spend more time focusing solely on football during Ohio State’s College Football Playoff run than he did during the regular season.
Any notion that Day was less involved in football matters than he should have been during the regular season, however, was firmly dismissed by Kelly on Wednesday.
“He coaches ball 24/7. I don't know if he can coach ball any more, because there's not more than 24 hours in a day. So he's been heavily involved in offense, defense, special teams since the day I walked in the building in February,” Kelly said. “Now we may be in our offices getting ready for a meeting and getting ready for third down and he's got to do something that a head coach has to do, but very rarely was he taken out of the times we had to meet and be together.
“There's things that come up for a head coach that sometimes are different than being prepared for third down. But I think he's done an unbelievable job of managing all the responsibilities that come with being the head coach. … I would say he's probably more involved in offense, defense and special teams game plan than any other head coach in the country because of how he's done it.”
