Urban Meyer gives insightful commentary on Ryan Day staff changes, challenges

On this week’s Urban’s Take with Tim May, a national college football show from On3, former Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer discussed one of his favorite topics – the Buckeyes.

Discussing head coach Ryan Day’s new hires on the defensive side of the ball, Meyer praised the Buckeyes skipper for making the hard choices. In bringing in Jim Knowles, Perry Eliano and Tim Walton, Day had to cut Kerry Coombs, Matt Barnes and Al Washington.

“It’s hard because there are people involved and you’re at Ohio State where 12-2 Rose Bowl champions is not good enough, think about it,” Meyer said. “But like I used to tell my staff and my players, ‘That’s life in the big city. You don’t have to be here.’ It’s tough, but it looks to me like he made the right moves.”

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“Obviously, it’s to be determined but Ryan Day is a great leader,” Meyer continued. “Ryan Day is elite, that’s the term I use when I talk about him because first of all, I love him, great guy and great friend, but he also, just the way he manages that organization. He’s an elite play caller but he’s also shown his ability to make changes on staff that he believes were necessary.”

Urban Meyer: ‘That seat is as lonely of a seat as you can have’

The former Florida and Jacksonville Jaguars head coach described running a program as a lonely pursuit.

“It’s awful… I always felt like loyalty got in the way, I can work with this and we always had success,” Meyer said. “The media and everybody wanted me to get rid of a defensive coordinator named Luke Fickell and I didn’t do it. He’s one of the best I’ve ever been around. It’s a fine line. As Ryan can tell you and as I can tell you, that seat is as lonely of a seat as you can have because everybody wants something from you.”

In his words, Ryan Day was looking for a “fresh start” on the defensive side of the ball after the 2021 season.

“I felt like a fresh start was the right thing to do,” Day said after making the moves in January. “I felt like that’s kind of what we’ve been doing the last couple of years. Tweaking it and bringing a guy in and moving a piece over here. I really wanted to start fresh and have a system in place so that when something goes wrong, there’s an answer to the system, that everybody believes in the system.”