Why Ohio State should still have belief in Ryan Day in 12-team CFP era

The last three years have been a rough go for Ryan Day in a lot of ways. And that’s hard to believe when one considers Day’s Ohio State teams have lost just six games and won double digit contests each year.

But with losses to Michigan ending the regular season all three of those years — twice dashing any realistic College Football Playoff hopes — things can get tense in Columbus. Fortunately for Day, though, the 12-team playoff format could help him circumnavigate his maize and blue roadblock.

“I think the new playoff system really helps Ryan Day. Because it puts them in that mix every year. Like you don’t have to beat Michigan, though Ryan Day will deal local problems if he can’t beat Michigan. But nationally, you’re in the mix. And if you’re in those games, you can win a few. And you’re always going to have the talent to go on a run at Ohio State. Like you will always have enough talent that if you get in to the playoff, you can win the playoff,” On3’s Andy Staples said on Tuesday when discussing the matter with former LSU offensive lineman and current CFB analyst T-Bob Herbert.

Herbert concurred with Staples and wondered if the narrow blinders of the four-team CFP unfairly altered the perspective on Day and his run so far. Through six years, Ohio State is 56-8 under him.

“That’s all to say maybe we’ve gone too far with Ryan Day. I love — getting Quinshon Judkins is huge. They’re retaining talent at a pretty unreal level,” Herbert said.

Both he and Staples noted the defense, especially, will carry over oodles of talent into 2024 that could be in the NFL. Pairing that with the high school and transfer talent on offense along with some more returners and the recipe for Ohio State could be back on track.

“The defense was finally awesome this year. And the cruelest twist of irony, football has a way of doing this — it’s like LSU now can’t play defense to save their f-ing life and are just spitting out Heisman quarterbacks — but in a cruel twist of fate, Ohio State finally gets the defense they needed and it’s in a year where for the first time in six years they don’t have a quarterback throw 40 to 50 touchdowns,” Herbert said.

The biggest question Herbert has is the upside of quarterback Will Howard, who transferred in from Kansas State. But he’s giving Day the benefit of the doubt that he can cook up some offense to match what should be a championship-level defense.

And for Herbert, it’s not hard to see a path back for the Buckeyes to beating the Wolverines and competing on the national level each and every year in the 12-team CFP.

“So, I still think because of that defensive improvement, if you look at Days resume I would be — even though I don’t really believe in Will Howard that much — but there’s enough evidence if I’m an Ohio State fan, I can do pretty simple mental gymnastics to believe that ‘Oh, he’ll fix the quarterback position and then we’re going to be better than ever because our defense is better than ever,'” Herbert said.