Loss to Michigan sends Ryan Day scrambling : 'We'll figure out what's next'
Ohio State entered Saturday's contest with Michigan extremely confident. It's a chance to remove 365 days of the sour taste left after the loss against the Wolverines in 2021.
What the Buckeyes weren't counting on, though, was for the Wolverines to be the ones throwing the haymakers and making a house a home in Ohio Stadium.
With confidence also comes shock for head coach Ryan Day. Now on the receiving end of back-to-back losses to the Wolverines, the moves he made last year to counter U-M had failed in a major way. It was supposed to be the answer, the missing pieces to get the ship righted.
Now, Day and the Buckeyes are left scrambling for answers.
"We'll figure out what's next," Day told reporters after the game. "I don't know exactly what is next right now but that's life at Ohio State. I certainly know what this game means to everybody. When you lose, it all comes back to me. I'm the head coach and that's what probably hurts the most."
Like defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, Day agreed that the difference in the game was the Wolverines' ability to make explosive plays when it counted in the second half.
After heading into halftime feeling good, those feelings were quickly wiped out by what the Wolverines were able to do.
"I think when you looked at the first half, physically, we were playing really well up front, especially on defense," Day said. "I’m not sure how many yards they had in the first half running the ball. Then they had those two long plays. In the second half, it was more of the same; too many big plays. When you look at the game, there was just way too many big plays. On offense, we had too many penalties and it got us off schedule. We just didn’t do a good job converting on third down and then it gets out of hand at the end because we are probably throwing the ball too much."
As for the emotions, a clearly crushed Day didn't have much to say other than the Buckeyes simply fell short on Saturday.
A stark difference of what the program was a few short years ago in this game.
"Hard to say right now because this is not the outcome we all envisioned," Day said. "I thought we had really good preparation. I thought we were building towards playing really well in this game. We were fighting there in the first half. I felt really good going into the second half and we just didn’t execute well enough in the first half. I thought we played hard, I thought we were fighting out there, but in the end, we came up short."
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