Ryan Day feels better about Jaxon Smith-Njigba's status

The status of Ohio State wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba is and will remain a major point of interest in the orbit of Buckeye football until the star makes his return. When exactly that will be remains to be seen, as head coach Ryan Day has been coy about the junior.

Since hurt his leg against Notre Dame in the opener, Smith-Njigba has missed every game for Ohio State. It has been posited that Saturday’s game against Iowa, coming after an off week, could be a good time to slot him back into the lineup. Day has been tight-lipped about that, but was asked if he could at least give an answer on whether or not he’s felt Smith-Njigba is making progress toward being available.

“I can answer that, and the answer is yes,” Day said.

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While Smith-Njigba is getting closer than ever to making his return, Day has been wary of making a hard prediction.

And if Smith-Njigba is to make a return this weekend or beyond, he’s liable to get eased back into things rather than playing 70-plus offensive snaps off the bat. Even discussing that aspect of Smith-Njigba’s hopeful return, Day was coy.

“So, those are the decisions that we continue to — for all of our guys — look at and try to figure out how many plays is the right number of plays for a guy. You hear people talk about a pitch count and things like that. We talk about those things all the time. And so that’ll be the case for some guys, and not in particular too Jaxon,” Day said. “But that is part of the discussions going in to games for some players.”