Ryan Day: Bye week comes at a good time for Ohio State

The bye week couldn’t have come at a more opportune time for Ohio State football. Sitting at 6-0, the Buckeyes are dealing with injuries to several key players and could use a chance to rest up before hitting the field against Iowa in Week 8.

“I think it does come at a good time and you bring up a good point,” coach Ryan Day said in his Tuesday press conference. “There’s times where you start to get into a rhythm and you don’t want that bye week. I don’t know if that’s the case here. We’re gonna practice today, tomorrow and Thursday. Really put some good three days of practice in and keep grinding on this thing. But it does allow us to get healthy heading into the Iowa game.”

Ohio State has played without star receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba for the past three games as he battles a hamstring injury suffered in the season opener. Running back Miyan Williams also missed last week’s game against Michigan State after being seen wearing a knee brace at practice.

Those are just two of many wounded Buckeyes, as cornerbacks Jordan Hancock, Cameron Brown and Denzel Burke, safeties Tanner McCalister, Cam Martinez and Lathan Ransom, offensive linemen Matt Jones and Enokk Vimahi, defensive linemen Mike Hall and Omari Abor and running back TreVeyon Henderson are also dealing with injuries.

Day doesn’t expect to get everyone back by next week, but he is confident the bye will be a positive development for a number of those players.

“Going into today’s meeting talking and going through the injury report, really for a bunch of those guys the expectation is that they’re gonna play in the Iowa game,” he said. “Now, they still have to come along and they have to have a good week and all that, but that’s the goal right now is to get them healthy this week and have a full week of practice next week and those guys are ready for Iowa.”

Ohio State is the No. 2 team in the country heading into the bye week, and should only get better once it returns to full health. But more than injury recovery, Day is also hoping this week can be an opportunity for the Buckeyes to tune up a few things as they prepare for the back half of the season, which features matchups with Penn State and Michigan.

“We’re gonna practice today, tomorrow, Thursday and then do our plus-one like we typically do coming off of a bye week,” Day said. “We want to, as a staff, look at what we’ve done, look at where we’re headed, evaluate everybody in the program and kind of see things we’ve done well and enhance those but things that we need to improve on. We obviously want to get healthy, get some guys back on the field. We want to get some guys that are playing with a few things healed up. And then continue to work good-on-good fundamentals and technique.

“As you get five, six games into the season, you can start to get scheme-oriented and we can’t do that. So we’re gonna dive back into fundamentals and techniques and try to identify the things that need to get done here in the home stretch.”