Ryan Day says he’s done making excuses, plans to ‘leave no doubt’ against Michigan football

Ryan Day came into the head coaching position of Ohio State with great accolades and expectations.

The OSU coach was previously the offensive coordinator, elevating the Buckeyes to new heights on that side of the ball. He also, similar to Michigan football head coach Sherrone Moore, had a stint as interim coach as Urban Meyer served a three-game suspension in 2018. But in 2019, Day came into Big Ten media days flying high, and his first year as the Ohio State head coach matched that energy as the Buckeyes won the Big Ten his first year and played for a national championship the second year.

However, after 2020, things took a turn for the worse. Even though he has had one College Football Playoff appearance in the past three years, he’s lost all three of those years to rival Michigan. Pressed to turn things around, Day said on Tuesday that he’s aware of what the team expectations are and it’s because of what Meyer and Jim Tressel had done before him.

“I think when you look year in and year out, the expectations are what they are,” Day said. “Every year, you have an opportunity at Ohio State. You have an opportunity to win every game and that’s what the expectations are. And that’s because of the great players and coaches that have come before. And we understand that.”

Now 1-3 against the Wolverines, Day, his team, and the fan base haven’t had solutions as much as excuses. In 2021, it was the cold, the snow, and the players were sick. In 2022, it was just a handful of plays away from keeping OSU from being blown out by 22 points. In 2023, it was, again, a few plays, as well as a quarterback who didn’t live up to expectations.

This year, on one hand, Day isn’t shying away from expectations. But on the other, he’s not talking about Michigan as much as he has at previous Big Ten media days. One thing he’s not going to do, at least not any more, is make excuses for the past three years.

Now he’s determined to get so far ahead of Michigan in The Game that there’s no doubt or opportunity for the Wolverines to find themselves in the lead once the clock hits zero.

“After every year, you have to identify what are the things that have held you back from reaching your goals, knowing that we want perfection and we want to win The Game at the end of the season,” Day said. “In particular, last year, what was it that prevented us from finishing off that last drive or getting off of the field on defense? Why didn’t we do that? Well, it’s easy to say that it comes down to a play or two, but that’s not really the case. What we need to do is leave no doubt. No doubt. Don’t leave it to one play, don’t leave it to one call, don’t leave it to one stop. Leave no doubt when you’re on the field.

“And we’re not going to get into all of the reasons or all of the things that we’ve done to try to address that, to get that fixed. But we have, we’ve worked hard on that, and we feel good about where we’re at going into the season.”

We’ll see. After each of the past three years, there was always this confidence that Ohio State would right the ship and Michigan would again go back down to being the lesser of the two teams. But in each of those years, Michigan had its say, and the Wolverines emerged as Big Ten champions.

So has anything actually changed? We’ll see in November.