Ryan Day addresses Jaxon Smith-Njigba's status, potential workload for Penn State game

As the Ohio State offense continues to hum, it’s largely been doing so without last year’s leading receiver in Jaxon Smith-Njigba. He’s been dealing with a hamstring injury since Week 1 against Notre Dame and limped a bit as he left last week’s game against Iowa.

However, with a big game looming against Penn State, Ryan Day said “the plan” is for Smith-Njigba to play on Saturday.

Day told reporters he’s preparing for Smith-Njigba to be active for the pivotal Big Ten East showdown in Happy Valley. As far as a potential “pitch count” goes, Day said he and the staff are taking a wait-and-see approach to see if that’s necessary. After the Iowa game, he confirmed Smith-Njigba was only planning to play a certain amount of plays.

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“As the week goes on, we’ll know more,” Day said. “When you come out of games like that, you’ve got to keep evaluating and see how things go. But we’ll keep figuring more stuff out and by the end of the week, we’ll have a better idea.”

Smith-Njigba only has five receptions for 43 yards this year, but emerged as the top target for Ohio State and quarterback C.J. Stroud last year. He hauled in 95 receptions for 1,606 yards and nine touchdowns while also putting together an impressive showing in the Rose Bowl, totaling 347 yards and three touchdowns against Utah.

One thing Day and the medical staff don’t want to do is rush Smith-Njigba back. They have a detailed plan in place to make sure he doesn’t make the injury worse, and Day opened up about that a bit during his press conference.

“We have such great people in sports medicine and our doctors,” Day said. “There’s been a very specific plan on how to get him back to playing. Number of total yards per day, number of high-speed yards per day and then, after each practice, evaluating the range of motion and strength. We’re just kind of following that lead.

“It’s way over my head. I’m trying to figure out what to call on third down and all those strength and numbers and things like this. We’re just relying on the doctors to give us the information and we just go from there.”