Ryan Day praises Ohio State's growth on defense, but still sees room to grow

Ohio State defeated Notre Dame in their season home opener, highlighted by a strong defensive showing as they held the Irish to just 10 points. The defense certainly has not been a strength of the Buckeyes the past few seasons, and head coach Ryan Day spoke about the improvement of that unit this year.

“It was certainly great to see them play the way they did, we’re seen a lot of that in the pre-season, we’ve seen a lot of that last spring, guys in the backfield making plays,” Day said.

Day spoke about the opening drive of the ball game, and the new mindset of their defensive after giving up 54-yard completion on the first play of the game.

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“One of the things that I thought was great in the game was the first play was an explosive play and I think the easy thing to do would’ve been, oh here we go again,” he said. “And we’ve talked a lot long and hard, I know the defensive side has and I’ve talked to the defense, that with out style of defense at any point we can get a negative play, get them off schedule and either force a field goal or force a punt because of the different styles and scheme we run.”

The Buckeyes had a short memory on that drive, keeping them right where they were and even pushed the Irish back one yard before forcing a field goal. They’d only go on to score one more time in the entire ball game.

“And that’s exactly what happened, I think they picked up three on first down, and then second and seven Mike [Hall] gets int he backfield, creates a negative play, third and long force a field goal. We’re off the field, we got a lot of energy, we moved on,” Day explained. “Nobody had their heads down, there was no panic, they believed in it. And I think that’s Jim’s mentality is give me a yard and we’ll defend it, so that was great. But to see the defensive line win the line of scrimmage was excellent in day one.”

This is the defense’s first year under new coordinator Jim Knowles, who’s clearly made an early impact on the Buckeye’s defense. Day was happy with how his defense performed, but not satisfied, as he looks forward to them building off of their strong week 1 showing moving forward.

“We did in the first game, but that means nothing moving forward. We certainly have not arrived, we’ve only played 49 plays and that was great, but we got a lot of football to play. But for game one, it was well executed and now we gotta do it again this week,” Day said.