Today’s Topic: What To Expect From Ohio State Spring Practice This Week?
It will be about 30 degrees on the outdoor practice fields Tuesday morning when the Buckeyes resume spring practice. They, of course, will be practicing inside, but the temperatures are an indicator that even though spring practice is back underway, it is still winter in the city of Columbus.
Practice will eventually move outside, but probably not until next week.
Tuesday is the first of three practices this week for the Buckeyes. It will be spent getting back into the swing of things and installing more offense and more defense. Evaluations will continue. There will be no media access before, during, or after.
Thursday, however, business will start to pick up. As the fourth practice of spring camp, the Buckeyes can finally put the pads on and start playing some football.
Whenever you ask coaches early on in camp how things are going, they’ll hem and haw and tell you it’s early and “we haven’t even put the pads on yet.”
Well, once those pads go on, the coaches will start learning much more about their team. The competitions will ramp up and the data will begin to roll in.
After Thursday’s practice — which is closed, the Buckeye linebackers and running backs will meet with the media, as will assistant coaches Al Washington and Tony Alford. This will be only our second opportunity to talk with Washington, and first since the late signing day in February.
Considering everything going on with the linebackers over the last 12 months — and the change in scheme among the linebackers — there should be plenty to talk about with Washington. The only question is whether or not he’ll answer any of the questions.
Saturday will be the third practice of the week, which also happens to be the annual Student Appreciation Day, which means the practice will be open to the media and OSU students. (If you want to refer to it as “Media Appreciation Day,” that would also be fitting.)
There was no Student Appreciation Day last year, but in the past it has been an opportunity to watch an entire practice — including some scrimmaging. Much of the practice takes place with the onlookers allowed to be on one half of the field, which makes the confines cramped for the team, but it also creates a fun and unique environment.
This is when everyone will finally have actual information for all of our quarterback hot takes. It will be second only to the Spring Game, which proved beyond a shadow of a doubt last year that Joe Burrow was a better quarterback than Dwayne Haskins.
After practice, students can then mingle and take photos with players and coaches.
When all of those festivities are then done, head coach Ryan Day will speak with reporters for the first time since before everyone left for spring break.
