Ryan Day stays quiet on injuries, 'hopeful' Buckeyes will be healthy against Penn State
COLUMBUS — Ohio State blew out Purdue on Saturday, but the No. 3 Buckeyes left that 34-point win with some serious injury concerns.
Ohio State head coach Ryan Day was asked postgame if he had any updates on the players who left the lopsided victory early, as well as for those who didn’t even suit up at Ross-Ade Stadium.
“Yeah, I can’t give any updates right now,” Day said. “I know everybody wants to know, but I can’t do that right now.”
He did more of the same Tuesday during his weekly press conference, deciding against giving injury updates on some of his biggest names on the roster, including three household names: Running backs TreVeyon Henderson and Miyan Williams and wide receiver Emeka Egbuka.
Their status remains up in the air for the showdown with Penn State in the Horseshoe on Saturday.
“Not going to get into all those guys,” Day said. “But we’re hopeful we’ll have all of those guys.”
This comes after Henderson, Williams and Egbuka all missed Saturday’s game at Purdue. And running back Chip Trayanum left the game at Purdue with what appeared to be a head injury.
That’s just on the offensive side of the ball, too. Defensive back and star cornerback Denzel Burke exited the game and headed to the locker room in the second half after having his legs swept out from under him, suffering an undisclosed issue. He did not return to the game.
With plenty of injury questions still looming, Day declined to give much of an update, keeping the status of some of his stars close to his vest ahead of a massive top-10 showdown.
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Without Henderson, Williams and Trayanum in the backfield, Ohio State ended up leaning on Dallan Hayden and wideout Xavier Johnson, who has spent time at both running back and receiver in his career. Hayden led the way with 11 carries for 76 yards and a score. Day said postgame that he and the staff will have to look at their plan with Hayden — he still has two more games before he’d be at risk of burning his redshirt — and figure out what’s best for the team.
“I think we got to look at it and just see what that room’s looking like, and we’ll kind of play it week-to-week,” Day said. “We didn’t know how the season was gonna play out. But we wanted to at least have the choice to be able to save his redshirt if possible.
“But we’ll sit down and talk. If it’s something that we got to go play and do what’s best for the team — and there’s opportunities to go play — then we’ll go from there.”
