Joel Klatt reveals what loss in 'The Game' means for Ohio State, Ryan Day moving forward

Joel Klatt recognizes that Ohio State’s loss to Michigan this past weekend wasn’t exactly the best thing to ever happen to the Buckeyes. Still, all of their hopes and dreams are in the palm of their hand.

On the latest episode of The Joel Klatt Show, Klatt revealed what Ohio State’s loss in The Game meant to their team, and their head coach in Ryan Day. Morale may be low among their fanbase, but there’s still plenty of potential to go around for the remainder of the 2024 campaign.

“What does this mean for Ohio State? My gosh,” Klatt started. “I mean, this is just such a difficult conversation, because there is a sector of people out there, Ohio State people, that want like, ‘Well, this means that we’ve got to change.’ I’m not one of those. I’m really not. And it doesn’t seem like your athletic director is either.

“Here’s the weird part for Ohio State is like. This is going to hurt a lot. They are still in this thing. And there is not a great team in America. All due respect to Oregon, Ohio State already saw Oregon. Ohio State already played with Oregon in Oregon and lost by a point. That’s the unequivocal, almost unanimous number one team in the country. So Ohio State still has a very clear and open path to win the national championship.”

Evidently, Klatt believes it’s about putting the loss to Michigan in the rearview, learning from it and getting better for the Buckeyes: “There are times when you’ve got to get up and brush yourself off and push forward,” he stated. “I know it was an emotional loss. I fully understand that. I really do. I have been there as a player. I grew up in Colorado. I have lost to Nebraska on my Senior Day. I know how it feels. It’s awful. It’s awful. I don’t want to put myself in the coach’s shoes because I didn’t have a family at the time, so I’m not trying to do that.

“I am trying to say like, there are times as a player and as a competitor, when you go through things that you don’t feel like you can get up off the mat, but you have to get up off the mat because everything is still ahead of this Ohio State team. There’s not a dominant team out there. And guess what? If you can learn from this game and fix some of the issues that you had in this game, and if you can avoid repeating them, then they could win the national championship.”

Joel Klatt: ‘We’ve seen (Ohio State) fix the defense before. Now it’s time to fix the offense’

One thing Klatt emphasized was the way the Buckeyes’ defense responded after their earlier loss to Oregon. Similarly, the FOX analyst would like to see the Ohio State offense bounce back now, after their performance in Week 14.

“You see, after they lost to Oregon, I thought that they did a really good job. Ryan [Day] in particular, and the defense in particular under Jim Knowles, of transforming themselves and evolving on defense to become a better team. They were better defensively in the back half of the year than they were in the first half of the year, and specifically than they were against that Oregon team. Okay, so that’s pretty clear,” Klatt stated. “Well, now you’ve got to do the same thing, even though it hurts bad, because it’s a punch right in the gut because it’s Michigan, but you’ve got to do the same thing on the offensive side. And what is the thing that you’ve got to learn? You cannot get dragged into a street fight with that offense. You can’t, because the offensive line is not good enough to do that. It’s not good enough to do that.

“Ohio State has got to play on the perimeter. This cannot be a running team. It cannot be a running team in order to win the national championship. It has to be a passing team, which means they’re going to have to trust Will Howard. And Will Howard’s going to have to play better. Kind of a bottom line proposition. And I think that Ryan Day is going to know that after watching this film. I think that Chip Kelly is going to know that. And I think Will Howard is going to know that. There are games when Will plays really well. Saturday was not one of them. But if this team is going to reach their potential, it will be because of the passing game. It will not be because of the running game.”

Continuing, Klatt is of the belief that if the Buckeyes can play more on the perimeter, then they’ll be in fantastic shape moving forward: “Ohio State is a great team if they play on their terms,” he delineated. “This is not a team that’s going to be able to devolve into some street fight and win at the top end. We just saw that against Michigan. So where do they go? We’ve seen them fix the defense before. Now it’s time to fix the offense. And it’s a philosophy thing.

“Okay, they’re not going to get a new offensive line. You’re not going to fix the run game. You’re just not. There can be creative run game. There can be things that they can do and run on the perimeter and you can soften people up in the middle of the defense in order to run the football more effectively, but it’s not going to be a running team.

“They need to move away from that. They need to move away from that quickly. And if they make that fix, then I think that they can have something moving forward.”

Time will tell if Ohio State takes Joel Klatt’s advice all the way to a national title in 2024. That might be the one thing that saves Ryan Day’s job, and his standing among Buckeyes faithful, but it might be a long shot after this past weekend’s performance.