Ohio State’s Ryan Day silences critics with resounding win over Tennessee

COLUMBUS, Ohio — How different this postgame scene must have felt for Ryan Day, the demanding Ohio State head coach, who stood in nearly the same spot three weeks ago, on Nov. 30, when everything about his team and his tenure worked. to crumble after a fourth straight loss to Michigan. Screaming players, their eyes red from pepper spray discharged by local police officers, rushed past Day in search of medical attention. Belligerent fans, their patience eroded by Day’s confusing game plan, hurled profane insults in his direction. Injured seniors, their careers forever tarnished by an inability to beat The Team Up North, railed against the midfield logo as the Wolverines tried to plant their flag. Chaos reigned as Day grew roots at the 24-yard line, his disbelief and enchantment melding into a temporary paralysis.

That much had changed when Day returned to that place late Saturday night, in the wake of a College Football Playoff game against Tennessee, whose fans had stormed into Ohio Stadium with fervor and left long before the fourth quarter ended. Emboldened, perhaps, by the nauseating prospect of a $20 million roster unraveling with nothing but cash to show for it, Day and his coaching staff authored and engineered their best performance of the season: a 42-17 dismantling of the Volunteers that at the same time, Ohio State’s season extended while the program moves back into the national championship conversation. So comprehensive was Saturday night’s win over a respected SEC opponent that the Buckeyes opened as betting favorites against the No. 1 Oregon in the quarterfinals, a Rose Bowl redux of the instant classic these teams presented at Autzen Stadium in mid-October. That night, the Ducks won by a single point.

To win that rematch and the chance to advance to the national semifinals, there was so much Ohio State needed to fix ahead of the postseason, so many issues both schematic and psychiatric for the coaches to explore. They needed to shore up the interior of the offensive line, where injuries had forced the Buckeyes to begin shuffling personnel. They needed to regain their aggressiveness in the passing game, where targets for wide receivers Jeremiah Smith and Emeka Egbuka had slowed along with the amount of shots downfield. They needed to reinvigorate the pass rush, where veteran edge rushers Jack Sawyer and JT Tuimoloau had underperformed relative to their soaring recruiting pedigrees. And Day himself needed to revive Ohio Stadium, where dozens of fans reveled in the possibility of his firing after another loss to Michigan.

“It had been a long build-up for us,” Day said in his post-game press conference. “To say it doesn’t weigh you down – it does. We’re very proud of who we are. These guys have a lot of pride.

“I think it says a lot about who our guys are that we were able to respond like that in a big way.”

Long before anyone knew what version of Ohio State would show up Saturday night — or just how many Ohio State fans would fill the stadium — Day positioned himself near the goal line during early warmups. He was a keen observer of the lofted passes that quarterback Will Howard heaved at each member of the Buckeyes’ impossibly talented receiving corps. Rep after rep, parabola after parabola, Day watched intently as Howard dropped passes into the metaphorical bucket. For close supporters of the program, especially those eager to see Day removed from his high-paying post, the irony of the situation was rich: There stood Day, the purveyor of a confusing, air-friendly game plan that hampered his team against Michigan last last month , staring at the very style of offense that fans have longed for him and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly to embrace all season.

Perhaps the reason Day was so fixated on Howard’s long passes was because he knew about the very aggressive game plan to come. About the 37-yard touchdown pass to Smith on the team’s opening possession and the 40-yard connection to Egbuka on the second. About the wheel route to tailback TreVeyon Henderson for 21 yards and Howard’s second touchdown pass to Smith for 22 yards, this time Tennessee defensive coordinator Tim Banks chastised the hubris of refusing to give star corner Jermod McCoy any safety help. By the time Howard finished dicing the Volunteers for 311 yards on 24-of-29 passing, his success enabled by a far more resolute offensive line, the Buckeyes’ lead had grown to 32 points early in the fourth quarter.

“To win it all, you have to win the first one,” Kelly said. “It’s really the whole team’s focus. I thought Ryan did a great job of keeping everybody focused. There really wasn’t (any) talk about what we’re going to do on Jan. 20 (when the national championship game is going to be played) because Jan. 20 didn’t matter if we didn’t take care of Dec. 21. I think our guys were laser-focused on playing this game.”

But so was Tennessee’s fan base. With Knoxville only separated from Ohio Stadium by 360 miles, legions of volunteer fans jumped at the possibility of what many of them described as a bucket list trip, driving north along I-75 until passing through Kentucky to invade The Buckeye State. Those who didn’t feel like driving chose to fly, filling the lobby of a hotel next to John Glenn Columbus International Airport with men wearing plaid overalls and women debating how many layers to keep warm a cold Midwestern night. “All of them,” said one of the ladies around 15.15, “You are going to be outside for the next eight hours.”

Thousands more Tennessee fans had already braved the elements for a while, infiltrating the side streets and watering holes next to Ohio State’s campus long before kickoff on a 25-degree night. Pregame interviews with Southern twang-toting Volunteer fans on ESPN radio revealed that most of them had paid between $200 and $300 for tickets, a range they compared to away prices for conference games against Vanderbilt. A leaked presale had allowed countless visiting fans to purchase tickets in the days after this year’s playoff bracket was revealed. Of the 102,819 fans in attendance Saturday night, somewhere between 25% and 35% of them wore orange.

“I think they thought (that) they were going to take over this place,” Howard said.

That Tennessee had enough fans to theoretically do that underscores how precarious the early moments of Saturday’s game really were, how much potential there was for the atmosphere inside Ohio Stadium to sour and seethe toward outright rejection if the Buckeyes were fell behind early. Instead, the resurgent Scarlet and Gray faithful were treated to a resounding victory, with Ohio State leading by 21 at the end of the first quarter and outgaining the Volunteers by 217 total yards — all the while harassing quarterback Nico Iamaleava with four sacks. , nine pass breakups and a 45.2% completion rate, by far his lowest of the season.

Drip and sad Tennessee fans seeped through the exits with more than 13 minutes left in the fourth quarter, their flickering hopes of a comeback dashed by an Iamaleava incompletion on fourth down. So certain was Ohio State’s victory that an assistant coach who watches these games from the stands snuck away for a bathroom break while snaps were still unfolding and joined a couple of reporters in the restroom, chatter still blaring through his headset.

“I told them in the locker room that in life you’re going to be defined by the way you deal with adversity in life,” Day said, “as a person, as a man, as a father. So to see the way that they answered in this game (after losing to Michigan), you could tell by the jump that they had a look in their eyes that they were going to win this game, I thought they played that way.

The look in Day’s eyes was just as telling as the band played “Carmen Ohio” to celebrate a monumental win and the extension of Ohio State’s season. He hugged his wife and he hugged his children just meters from where the madness had unfolded around him on November 30. And tonight he had earned the right to smile.

Michael Cohen covers college football and basketball for FOX Sports with an emphasis on the Big Ten. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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