Ohio State head coach Ryan Day takes part in his weekly radio show today beginning at 12:00 pm. He is expected to look back on last week’s game a bit, and then spend time talking about this weekend’s game against the Miami RedHawks. We will provide updates throughout the entire hour. Hit refresh for the latest updates throughout the show.
+ The offensive line needs to be a little cleaner in terms of fitting up the blocks and recognizing the protections. They want the pocket cleaner. The effort has been great though.
+ For the seniors, there’s only so many more times these guys get to play in the Shoe. He talked to the team about that before the season because he wants them savoring these moments because they don’t last.
+ They just got out of a meeting on Thursday. They go through every single player and every single class to make sure they’re doing well. That’s a lot for the coaches, but they do it because they want to know what’s going on with their players.
+ Justin Hilliard wanted to play a bunch on Saturday, but they held him to three plays. They’ll get him out there more and more, but he is raring to go.
+ “We’re talented back there.” The defensive backs are buying into the technique.
+ Damon Arnette’s been through a lot. He now has his degree. They are confident in him right now. It was great to see the guys celebrate with him.
+ This team hasn’t played four full quarters yet. They will need to soon. The offensive line is good, but not great yet in terms of their blocking.
+ They can live with effort penalties in the process of a play, but the pre-snap stuff drives him crazy. They work on eliminating those penalties. They can’t live with those kinds of penalties.
+ There are so many things to clean up on offense, defense, and special teams. They’re a long way away from where they want to be. The sign of a mature coach and mature team is winning like they did last week but then being able to find the areas that need to be addressed. “And we can’t get distracted along the way.”
+ For 3:30 games, they wake the team up around 8:15 and let them have breakfast. They want them to always have a meal four hours before the game starts, so they’ll have an 11:30 team meal on Saturday.
+ Miami had five or six sacks against Cincinnati. They do a good job of moving around with their defensive line.
+ Miami is not going to come into Ohio Stadium intimidated. They have a lot of players from Ohio who will be motivated to play in this game.
+ A lot of the pass pressure this year is coming from the outstanding coverage in the secondary.
+ The overall depth on this team allows them to play with tempo.
+ Being able to show the film of blocking kicks and blocking punts, it brings a belief to the players that what they are being asked to do will bring results. That’s every single player doing what they need to do, not just the guy blocking the kick. That’s why they spend so much time teaching concepts.
+ Day is happy with Justin Fields’ production this year. The X factor is his legs. Defenders have to be careful running at him. His threat to run makes the running game “a lot better.” His decision making is still a work in progress. It’s a week to week thing that they work on. They try to fight against any regression to going back to his high school days when he could do whatever he wanted and get away with it.
+ When you split carries like JK Dobbins did, you look to make more of an impact in your limited attempts. When you’re not splitting, you’re just running the ball and okay turning 5 yards into 8 yards. Now you add in Master Teague as a change of pace guy and you’ve got something good with this running game.
+ Getting a win on the road was a good way to get the conference schedule started. Starting fast in all three games has been key.
+ The Indiana game was strong in all three phases. They won the battle up front and came into the game with momentum from the Cincinnati game.
+ The defense has momentum as well. The defense tackled hard and ran to the ball well, and early in the game that can be a little intimidating. And then as long as you get the offense off schedule, good things will happen.
+ “We’re not really a time of possession team.” They don’t pay attention to time of possession, but they will slow things down in the second half if they need to or want to.
+ With OSU running the ball with more frequency, you’re seeing more defenders loading the box, which opens up the play-action and makes it very effective.
