Ryan Day on how NFL experience helps with expanded playoff: 'Time will tell'

With an expanded College Football Playoff, it’s possible for a team in the field to play as many as 17 games in a single season. And as the number of games moves closer to what NFL teams manage, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day was asked if NFL experience on coaching staffs will help teams manage better.

Ohio State would be well positioned if that’s the case, as a number of coaches on the Buckeyes staff have worked in the NFL in notable roles. Day himself is a former NFL offensive coordinator and his current offensive coordinator at Ohio State, Chip Kelly, has been an NFL head coach among other roles. Further, secondary coach Tim Walton has extensive experience playing and coaching in the NFL.

It’s a wealth of knowledge and experience that Day and Co. surely already tap into, but he’s not quite sure how it will be impactful during a longer season.

“Time will tell,” Day said. “But like you said, Tim Walton has been in the NFL for a long time and you mentioned some of the other guys that have been there before. Certainly Chip’s been a head coach in the NFL and I feel like it’ll be a lot of input across the board as we get towards the end of the season and what that means schematically. We’ve already talked about what that means, a little bit, in terms of our training and during the season. But, I do think that experience should help because it will be different in how we approach it.”

Day continued, and cut back against the idea that things need to be done much differently when it comes to the actual football on the field, despite all the changes happening around the sport.

“But ultimately, football is still football, and I’ve been saying that, too,” Day said. “Like there has been a lot of changes, when you think about the way that the season’s played out. You look at the way our teams are designed nowadays. You look at, even, during the game now you have coach-to-player communication. We have tablets on the sideline. So there’s a lot of things that are going on. But the truth is, football’s still football.

“Like that hasn’t changed, and we can’t lose focus on that. And that’s what being in the preseason is all about. Like all that other stuff goes to the side, put the football down and let’s see who can play with fundamentals and toughness. And so that’s why we don’t want to over do it, that way. There’s still so much of the game that’s the same that it’s been for 50 years. And that’s what we’re focused on right now as we get into the season. We’ll make sure we make the adjustments that we think are appropriate.”