Ryan Day reacts to Will Howard comments on facing Penn State

Ohio State quarterback Will Howard let everyone know about the chip on his shoulder heading into this week against Penn State. A Pennsylvania native, Howard grew up a Nittany Lions fan but was not recruited by the team out of high school.

“They didn’t think I was good enough, but I guess we’ll see next week if I was,” the Buckeyes QB said after a 21-17 win against Nebraska on Saturday.

Ohio State coach Ryan Day was asked in his Tuesday press conference about the comments from his quarterback. Although Day mostly chose to focus on talking about how important the game was as a whole, he did acknowledge that it means even more to Howard.

“For Will, he grew up in Pennsylvania so I guess that’s a little bit different for him,” he said. “But for everybody else, just like the Oregon game was circled on our schedule, we know what’s at stake here. We’re gonna have a great week of practice and go into that environment and finish the way we didn’t do two weeks ago. Now we have another opportunity to do that in this game. So we’ve got to do that and finish in the fourth quarter.”

Ohio State has won 11 of the past 12 matchup against Penn State, including seven straight. However, the stakes are much higher for the Buckeyes entering this contest than their opponent.

Ohio State already has one loss this season as it blew a chance to win the game against Oregon a couple of weeks ago. If it loses another, it would fall even farther behind in the Big Ten race with little chance at making it up.

That being the case, Day knows that not only Howard, but others will have to bring their best.

“Our guys have been in this situation before so now it’s time to go win a top five game and get a victory,” he said. “That’s what the guys are focused on. The coaching staff, everybody in the building is focused on winning this game right here.”