Skull Session: Reggie Wayne Praises Marvin Harrison Jr., PFF Ranks Ryan Day As the Seventh-Best Coach in College Football and C.J. Stroud is “The Gem of the Quarterback Class” in 2023

I hope you all had a wonderful Monday.

Let's “stack days” with a good Tuesday, shall we?

 LIKE FATHER LIKE SON. It's only natural that Ohio State wide receiver Marvin Harrison Jr., also known as Route Man Marv, Marvelous Marv and Super Marv, will forever draw comparisons to his father, Marvin Harrison Sr.

After all, how often do those comparisons happen to us ordinary folk? "You have your father's eyes," "You have your father's face," "You have your father's frame," and so on. We all have a great-aunt or someone who says that stuff to us – besides the "I remember when you were this small" card they love to play.

It will surely be often, then, that Harrison will receive comparison to his father, especially as he pursues a career in football, a sport his father championed as one of the best at his position for several years and later became a member of the NFL Hall of Fame.

The most recent example came last week from Reggie Wayne. A teammate of Harrison Sr. with the Indianapolis Colts, Wayne praised Harrison Jr. for his outstanding achievements to this point in his career, which he believes were made possible by his impressive frame and freakish athletic ability.

"He's bigger than Marvin," Wayne told the Indy Star. "He's tall. He's faster than Marv."

Whether in interviews with national media on ESPN or local media on ABC6, Harrison Sr. has made it well-known he takes no credit for Harrison Jr.'s athleticism and ability. Harrison Jr. became a self-made person and player from a young age, and his father understands it took tremendous work for him to become a standout at St. Joseph's Prep in Philadelphia and Ohio State.

"Everyone says, 'Why is he so good?' Well, it didn't happen yesterday. It happens over time," Harrison Sr. said. "The most credit goes to him. He could just be some guy who thinks he's better than everyone else and doesn't work, but it's the opposite. He's worked really hard to get to where he is."

There's no doubt Harrison Jr. has worked hard to get where he is today, but to get where Harrison Sr. is and reach that kind of legendary status? That's a whole different level. To be bigger, taller and faster than his father is only half the story.

It will take a lot of work, but Harrison Sr. believes his son can wait until another day to complete it. Right now, it's about Harrison Jr. performing to the best of his abilities for Ohio State as he attempts to win a national championship with his teammates and bring a trophy back to Columbus for the Buckeyes.

 RYAN DAY, THE NO. 7 COACH IN AMERICA. Pro Football Focus released its list of the top coaches in college football last week, with Ryan Day in the No. 7 spot behind the likes of Alabama's Nick Saban, Georgia's Kirby Smart and Michigan's Jim Harbaugh. Here are PFF's top 10 coaches:

Day possesses a 45-6 record in his four years with the Buckeyes. He won Big Ten Coach of the Year in 2019, and his team captured Big Ten titles in 2019 and 2020. Ohio State has also reached the College Football Playoff three times in Day's tenure, with one appearance in the CFP final.

Still, PFF's Max Chadwick believes those accomplishments fall short of the accolades of Saban and Smart (duh) and the rest of the bunch (huh?). Here is what Chadwick wrote about Day, who will enter his fifth season at Ohio State in 2023:

Even though Day has three Playoff appearances in four years as Ohio State’s head coach, he hasn’t quite lived up to the level of success that his predecessor, Urban Meyer, had. 

Ohio State has now lost to Michigan twice in a row, which hasn’t happened in 22 years. The Buckeyes have also gone two years without winning the Big Ten after winning the conference four-straight times. If Day doesn’t get either of those monkeys off his back this year, some uncomfortable conversations could happen in Columbus concerning his job security.

I agree that Day needs to beat Michigan in 2023 or there will be some uncomfortable conversations between the Board of Trustees and Gene Smith and, subsequently, Smith and Day. I also agree that Day is far behind Saban and Smart in terms of coaching prowess. However, I could argue that Day is better than the other four coaches Chadwick placed in front of him.

Yes, Harbaugh has had Day's number the past two seasons, but has the Khaki Man really done that much to be ranked four spots ahead of him on this list?

As for Swinney, Clemson has been irrelevant in his tenure without a generational quarterback leading the offense, so unless Cade Klubnik is the next Deshaun Watson or Trevor Lawrence, I anticipate another sad season for the Tigers. With Riley and Kelly, whatever team they coach will play well in the regular season but will be blown out on the national stage. Them’s the rules. Day has the same number of titles as them and always has Ohio State ready to compete in the postseason.

Ohio State fans know this. When Day is at his best, he's one of America's top college football coaches. Yeah, there are times Day can be at his worst, but even then, his worst has been one or two-loss seasons that end with bowl wins or CFP defeats. You take that nine times out of 10.

In 2023, if Day can “get the monkeys off his back” and beat Michigan, win a Big Ten Championship and compete for a national title, I expect his name to be much higher on the 2024 edition of Chadwick's rankings. If it's not, we must search for Chadwick's vendetta for the bearded man from New Hampshire.

 “THE GEM OF THE QUARTERBACK CLASS.” More than any other prospect in the 2023 NFL draft, ESPN's Louis Riddick loves C.J. Stroud, calling the Ohio State product “the gem of the quarterback class” because of his frame, accuracy and leadership.

Riddick continued his assessment of Stroud in a recent article in which he listed his favorite prospects and sleeper picks with less than three weeks until the NFL draft:

In my opinion, Stroud is the gem of the quarterback class. At 6-foot-3 and 214 pounds, he was one of the most accurate passers in college football over the past two seasons, and he makes good decisions with the ball. He can win throwing the ball from the pocket, but he also shows the mobility to escape the pass rush, get outside the pocket and win with his legs or his arm. A lot of people will say we saw that ability to create outside the pocket in only one game last season -- Ohio State's loss to Georgia in the College Football Playoff -- but I think we'll see it regularly at the next level. Don't underestimate what Stroud can do there.

Give me a QB like Stroud, who has the respect of his teammates, the motivation to be great and the tools to play at the highest levels. If he lands in the right place, he's going to prove a lot of people right. I think he can quickly become one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL.

That's some high praise for Stroud, but it's completely deserved. After two seasons as the starting quarterback for the Buckeyes, the Inland Empire, California, native wrote his name in the Ohio State record book with the best passer rating (182.4), second-best completion percentage (69.3%) and second-most yards (8,123) and touchdowns (85) in program history with only 27 appearances and 25 starts in the scarlet and gray.

If he lands in the right place, and that's always a huge question mark at the top of the draft, Stroud will have as good a chance as anyone to succeed in the draft class, and – as Riddick said in the video and wrote in his article – have the opportunity to become one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL in a short time.

With Justin Fields shining for the Chicago Bears, that would be quite the run for Ohio State quarterbacks to have success at the next level. It would only be a matter of time before Kyle McCord, Devin Brown, Lincoln Kienholz and Air Noland are expected to follow suit. Re: The second section – say what you want about Day as a head coach, but this dude is a quarterback whisperer. He always has been and always will be.

 WHAT'S NEXT FOR BRONNY JAMES? Now let's talk about everyone's favorite person, LeBron James... Jr. According to a report from The Athletic, Bronny James is nearing a decision on where he will continue his basketball career in college. The latest intel is that James' top three schools are Ohio State, USC and Oregon, with the Trojans marked as a frontrunner in the three-school race.

Still, there’s a case for James to choose Chris Holtmann and the Buckeyes. After all, the young core of Bruce Thornton, Felix Okpara and Roddy Gayle Jr., plus the 2023 recruiting class of Taison Chatman, Devin Royal, Scotty Middleton and Austin Parks, could become even better with the addition of another top-50 prospect in this year's class.

Here is what The Athletic wrote about Ohio State's chances:

In 2013, LeBron said that if he had chosen to attend college instead of entering the NBA straight out of high school, he would have picked Ohio State. “I promise — I say this all the time — if I had one year of college, I would have ended up down here in Columbus at Ohio State,” James said. “No matter where I go in the world, no matter where it lands me, I will always rock Ohio State colors.”

The Buckeyes are expected to have a breakout season next year with a few key pieces likely returning to Columbus and with the addition of a top-8 recruiting class. Bronny could do the one thing his father hasn’t done as a basketball player and that is play at Ohio State.

If Ohio State does land James, what could the Buckeyes expect to receive out of him in terms of on-court production?

In total, Bronny looks like a very good prospect. I think he would be a genuine NBA prospect worth tracking even if he was not LeBron’s son. He’s a good athlete and can really shoot the ball off the catch. Defensively, he has strong anticipation and plays hard. Where he’s going to run into some trouble is that he is essentially a 3-and-D guard right now at 6-foot-3, projecting forward toward an NBA that prefers those types of players to be more in the 6-foot-6-plus ballpark. For Bronny to take the next strides in his game, he needs to improve off the bounce and become more confident as a combo-type guard who can consistently create his own shot and be more threatening with his own offensive game. He has a high basketball IQ, but at that size, he also needs to be able to consistently create pull-ups or pressure the paint.

With his size, I don’t quite know that I’d project Bronny as a typical one-and-done at this stage in a perfect world. ... Given those factors, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for someone to have Bronny as a first-round projection right now in that class. I don’t think that I’m quite there yet, but Bronny does have real talent and is worth tracking.

The Los Angeles Times previously reported James would announce his college commitment after the high school basketball season this spring. At the Hoop Summit last week, a reporter was cut off when they asked for a more specific date, which murkied the timeline a little bit.

Whenever James plans his commitment, the Buckeyes will eagerly await his decision. While I don't believe Holtmann and his staff are SOL without him, I believe they would view him as a nice addition to an already-talented class and another piece that can help take Ohio State to the next level in year seven of the Holtmann Era.

 SONG OF THE DAY. “It's Called: Freefall” by Rainbow Kitten Surprise.

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