One day before Missouri handed Ohio State an embarrassing 14-3 loss in the Cotton Bowl, Ryan Day and Tigers head coach Eliah Drinkwitz sat beside each other, simultaneously addressing the media.
They shared more than just a stage that day. Both head coaches have something else in common: Experience designing their offenses and calling plays on top of being a program’s head coach.
The difference is, after pulling double duty in that regard for four seasons, including three at Missouri – he got his first head coaching job at Appalachian State the same year as Day in 2019 – Drinkwitz gave playcalling up in 2023.
“I wasn't doing the best that I could for our football team,” Drinkwitz said on Dec. 28. “We have a sign in our building that says, ‘Do your job. Put the team first. Embrace your role. Put the team first.’ And I wasn't doing that. I wasn't embracing my role as the head coach. I was trying to hold on to my ego of being the play caller.”
Having never won more than six games in any of his previous three seasons in Columbia, Drinkwitz went 11-2 with a New Year’s Six bowl win in 2023, Missouri’s best season since it lost the SEC Championship Game but also won the Cotton Bowl to go 12-2 in 2013.
The time has come for Day to embrace the same thing. Ohio State’s game plans in 2023 were not up to the typical Day standard, and that was especially reflected in the Buckeyes’ three-point, 203-yard Cotton Bowl performance, both new lows for OSU under Day.
There’s never been more demand on a head coach’s time than there is right now in college football. The transfer portal, NIL and an unrelenting recruiting cycle have all added to the head coach’s typical duties of maintaining relationships, leading the coaching staff, motivating the team, donor meetings and a laundry list of other behind-the-scenes tasks. It becomes too much to manage everything effectively.
By trying to do it all, Day is coming up short in multiple areas. He needs to step back and embrace his role as a true program CEO. He needs someone who can take the offense off his plate, at least a large chunk of it.
Day needs his offensive version of Jim Knowles.
It may seem like a distant memory to some, but the Ohio State defense was in dire straits just two years ago.
After the Buckeyes lost co-defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley following the 2019 season, their next two years under Kerry Coombs’ coordination went southward expeditiously. Coombs had great success at Ohio State as a cornerbacks coach but his defenses were far from Silver Bullet standards.
In 2020, Ohio State had the No. 60 total defense in college football and was 122nd against the pass, even if there was a smaller eight-game sample size that year. Ryan Day gave Coombs an offseason to figure things out, but when Oregon came to Columbus and dismantled the Buckeyes 35-28 on the back of a 161-yard rushing performance from running back CJ Verdell – plenty of those runs having very similar concepts – Coombs was relieved of playcalling duties in favor of defensive backs coach Matt Barnes.
Ohio State lacked a true defensive identity. It tried to stick to Hafley’s scheme, featuring three corners and one deep safety, in 2020 before fiddling around with a two-safety defense in 2021. There was a lack of vision, and Day had to meddle in the affairs of that side of the ball as a result of Coombs being a first-time coordinator.
Enter Knowles, who’d turned around Duke’s defense in the mid-2010s before heading to Oklahoma State and putting the Cowboys among the nation’s elite in 2021. Ohio State improved in each of the major team defensive statistics in 2022 before becoming the nation’s No. 2 scoring and No. 3 total defense in 2023.
Day needs his offensive version of Jim Knowles.
Knowles, for all intents and purposes, is the head coach of the Buckeyes defense. Scheming, implementing the scheme and teaching his players how to play within the scheme comprises the bulk of his responsibilities. Particularly if he’s promoted to a full-time assistant, James Laurinaitis even mitigates some of Knowles’ recruiting and development objectives at the linebacker position.
Former offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson had a role in schematics before he departed for Tulsa’s head coaching job a year ago. Wide receivers coach Brian Hartline was promoted to offensive coordinator in his place, but it's clear Day still oversees the playcalling on Saturdays and there’s been no indication that Hartline’s taken full charge of game planning.
The first indication Day might step back from playcalling came in the immediate aftermath of Ohio State’s College Football Playoff Semifinal loss to Georgia that closed last season. ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said Day mentioned to him in a production meeting that he was considering a change entering 2023.
“When you’re prepping the game plan, there’s a lot more that goes into it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to be ready to call those plays on Saturday,” Herbstreit said on ESPN’s College GameDay last January. “So he’s thinking about relinquishing those (duties), which would be the first time ever (for him).”
Here are Kirk Herbstreits full comments on Ryan Day potentially giving up play calling next season. https://t.co/0pxLXCoumb pic.twitter.com/EEzK86a8j6
— Paul Harvey (@HammerHarvey) January 2, 2023
Day was making those considerations at a time when Ohio State's offense was prolific. The Buckeyes finished No. 2 in scoring and No. 9 in total offense last year, but the hardship of juggling his offensive responsibilities with the ever-growing mess of college football in the NIL and transfer portal era was enough to make him consider stepping back.
Day didn’t end up making that change then, but the offense’s performance in 2023 should make him move forward with that change now.
Ohio State had a top-three scoring offense in college football during 2019, 2021 and 2022, Day’s three seasons as head coach that weren’t shortened by COVID-19. In 2023, the Buckeyes were 46th in scoring offense (30.5 points per game) and 48th in total offense (407.9 yards per game).
Some of Day’s best game plans have come in bowl games. He put Georgia’s elite defense in a schematic blender during last year’s Peach Bowl, even if the Buckeyes ultimately lost 42-41. His scheme against Utah in the 2021 Rose Bowl allowed C.J. Stroud to throw for a program-record 573 yards with Jaxon Smith-Njigba catching a program-record 347 of them.
In the 2020 CFP semifinals against Clemson, Day got his tight ends involved for what felt like the first time all season, mixed tempos with some sugar huddles to throw off the pre-snap adjustments of then-Clemson defensive coordinator Brent Venables and the Buckeyes smoked the Tigers, 49-28.
Normally, when Day is given a month to prepare, he comes out with a deadly plan of attack.
Whatever the opposite of that is, it happened against Missouri.
Yes, Ohio State suffered from porous offensive line play and was down to its third-string quarterback by the second quarter. But trying to force feed passes downfield when both of those things are true seems like an unsound strategy.
This is god awful pic.twitter.com/jwWNkcqS9i
— Jordan Potts (@PottsAndPans23) December 30, 2023
Generally, the offense just felt unprepared. Almost as if the top man in charge of getting Ohio State's offense ready was pulled in a million different directions the entire month of December.
There were some attempts to mix things up, sure. But when a program is bringing in offensively loaded top-five recruiting classes year after year, a breakdown like what happened in the Cotton Bowl is unacceptable. Ohio State couldn’t so much as move the chains for large sections of the game.
Frankly, this isn't even an indictment on Day’s coaching ability, at least not directly. It’s just an unrealistic expectation for coaches to manage both schematics and all the other aspects of a program in December in the modern era of college football.
This past December might have been the most hectic of any Ohio State has seen, with massive Early Signing Day drama involving Eddrick Houston and Jeremiah Smith, the first transfer portal window seeing more movement from the Buckeyes’ program than ever before, the emotions still reeling after a third-straight loss to Michigan, Christmas, all of it.
Day needs someone to take over the game plans. If it isn’t Hartline, then someone needs to be hired to do so.
College football has evolved. It’s time for Day to take a page from Drinkwitz’s book and evolve, too.
