Ryan Day opens up on how Ohio State landed on Chip Kelly as next offensive coordinator

Ryan Day had options to choose from when it came to picking a new offensive coordinator at Ohio State. Still, he landed on someone he has history with, Chip Kelly, even if it ended up taking more than one pursuit of him this offseason.

Day recalled the process of hiring Kelly in Columbus during an interview with Joel Klatt on ‘Big Noon Conversations’. From the very start, Kelly was right near the top of the list of potential hires for the Buckeyes. Even so, though, the original timeframe wasn’t going to allow for it, which led to the initial selection of Bill O’Brien for the position.

“Well, when the decision was made to hire an offensive coordinator, I had an A-list, a B-list, and then kind of a C-list,” Day explained. “Chip was on the A-list. So was Bill O’Brien.”

“The timing wasn’t right. I kind of reached out to Chip and said, ‘Hey, I know this is kind of a crazy idea but what do you think?’. And I don’t think it was easy for him. I think there was a lot going on – he has got his team, he has got his staff. So there’s just a lot going on there,” said Day. “I thought maybe we had a chance but the timing wasn’t right. We had to make a decision because of recruiting and so it was great to have an opportunity to hire Bill.”

However, in those initial conversations, Day got a sense for Kelly’s desires at that point in his career. He could tell that just coaching the game again had become a something he wanted after doing less and less of it as a head coach these days.

“He did share with me that he was able to coach the quarterbacks in the bowl game. I think it rekindled that love for just coaching football,” noted Day. “Being in the room, just coaching ball. That really fired him up. It has been a while since he had done that. Like, a long time.”

That came in handy for Ohio State’s second try at him in early February when O’Brien got a chance to be a head coach himself. At that point, Day called Kelly up again and got the right answers this time around. It moved quickly and, in the end, he took the job under Day.

“(O’Brien) had the right turnaround, had an opportunity to go to Boston College…So then I tried him again,” said Day. “I called him one more time and I said, ‘You know, I got another opportunity to do this’. He says, ‘Yeah, I think so. I think I’m more interested’. We talked a little bit longer. But it was not easy for him because there’s a lot going on there.”

“That being said, he really wanted to get back to just coaching football,” Day said. “It kind of allows me to handle some of this other stuff.”

There are few people Day may have been more willing to hand play-calling over to than someone as influential on him than Kelly. That made the double-back pursuit of him so worth it with him now leading the Buckeye offense this fall.