According to a report from ESPN’s Adam Rittenberg, Ryan Day’s first big move after taking over for Urban Meyer is expected to be the hiring of Oklahoma State offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Mike Yurcich.
Day held both of those positions in 2018, so a replacement is necessary.
Yurcich (pronounced YER-sitch) is a lot like Day in many ways. At 43, he’s just four years older than Day, and like the head coach was a multi-year starting quarterback at a small college, California University in Pennsylvania.
Yurcich is a native of Euclid, Ohio and actually started his college career at Mount Union before transferring.
He started his coaching career at lower levels, serving as an offensive coordinator at Edinboro and Shippensburg from 2005-2012.
After that, he made a huge leap to take the offensive coordinator position at Oklahoma State. He spent six seasons working for Mike Gundy, and consistently produced some of the nation’s most explosive offenses.
The Cowboys put up 38.4 points per game this season, and were even better in 2017 with a 45.0 points per game average.
Those aren’t just fluffed up by playing bad defenses, either. By S&P+, an opponent-adjusted metric of offensive performance, his Cowboy teams were 20th, 78th, 19th, 9th, 3rd, and then 10th this season.
He was nominated for the Broyles Award for the nation’s top assistant coach in both 2016 and 2017.
This year, with former walk-on Tyler Cornelius as his starting quarterback, his offense put up 38 points against Texas, 47 against Oklahoma and 45 against West Virginia.
It’s not hard to draw a parallel to Meyer’s first offensive coordinator hire in Columbus. Like Yurcich, he was a young up-and-comer who had put up impressive numbers with so-so talent at a Big 12 school, Iowa State’s Tom Herman.
Yurcich’s offense is not too different from what the Buckeyes have run recently in a number of ways. It’s a spread attack that leans on a lot of zone read in the running game.
It’s not yet clear exactly how the play-calling would work between Yurcich, Day, and co-offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson.
Yurcich is also reportedly a candidate for the offensive coordinator position at Tennessee this offseason.
You can get a little sense of Yurcich and some of his offensive philosophies in the video below.
[Header photo courtesy: Oklahoma State football]