Ohio State Notebook: ‘I’m 100% sure they can get it done’

Chasing Perfection

Good help can be hard to find.

If you are Ohio State offensive line coach Greg Studrawa, however, you don’t have to look very hard.

When it comes to making the Buckeye offensive line better, sure, Studrawa does quite a bit of coaching, but he also an entire defensive line on the other side of the line of scrimmage putting his players through a test on every snap.

Studrawa prepares his players for these moments and then corrects their mistakes, but he knows he can’t do the job all on his own.

“Coach Stud tells me every day just to make them better,” junior defensive end Chase Young said recently. “Every day, the whole D-line goes out and we try to make the O-line better. We’ve definitely seen improvement from the beginning of the spring until now. They’re going to go into the summer and they’re going to work. In the fall, we’re going to see what they’ve got. But I’ve got all confidence in our O-line, and I’m 100 percent sure they can get it done.”

Iron Sharpening Iron

It isn’t just the Buckeye players working against each other and improving each other.

The same can be said for the Ohio State coaching staff.

Offensive coordinator Kevin Wilson loves devising ways to put a defense on its heels. Sometimes that doesn’t happen, however, because an entire practice may be focused on short-yardage situations when the defense knows what is going to happen.

Still, an offense has to find ways to make it work.

Just as Chase Young makes the OSU offensive line better, so too does Ohio State’s defensive staff positively impact Kevin Wilson.

This spring, he found himself contending with both Larry Johnson and Greg Mattison, which wasn’t exactly a field day for the Buckeyes’ OC.

“They’re real good,” Wilson said of Mattison and Johnson. “Of course also, they’ve always been really good because with them comes some really good players. But it’s one thing to have great players, it’s also the ability to connect and to get the respect of the player that he’ll buy into you and that’s the beauty of coach Johnson. And I haven’t been around coach Mattison a long time, but seeing him for years, I think it’s a beauty of him.

“It’s one thing to have knowledge, it’s another thing to have good players. But when they connect, that to me is what separates a great coach, a great unit. In my time, it’s always been Larry’s strength and working with Greg, I know it’s why Greg has been so successful. I’ve always said for years, Greg’s one of the best coaches I’ve ever been around. So it’s knowledge of the position and the ability with the kid and then get the kid to buy it.”

What Does Ryan Day Watch?

No, this isn’t about what the Buckeyes’ head coach is going to do now that Game of Thrones is over.

This is instead about life as a head coach.

Before, when Ryan Day was the Ohio State offensive coordinator, he would hit the practice field with his quarterbacks and then stay attached to them for the entirety of a practice. What the defensive line was doing never mattered to him. The drills in the secondary weren’t in his thoughts.

Now, however, he is the head coach and so he has to see all.

So what does Day watch during a typical practice as head coach?

“It’s funny you ask because that’s really what, as I go out to practice, where do my eyes go? And what it is, it’s the energy and the effort,” he said.

“Then when we get back in here, I’ll start watching the film and really trying to look at technique, scheme, kind of where we’re at that way. But it’s really about just watching the energy, watching the guys run sideline to sideline. Watching the guys in terms of how does the offense operate? Are they getting the plays fast enough? The tempo. Are we using the right terminology when we’re running on and off the field? Things like that as opposed to the techniques or the reads by the quarterback or anything like that.”