COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ryan Day is walking a visitor out of his office after a 30-minute mid-August chat. There are a million things to do with Texas looming at the end of the month, and the urgency is palpable in The Woody, as Ohio State calls its Woody Hayes Athletic Center. But Day pauses for just a moment to look back.
Specifically, his gaze falls on the black-and-white photo on his wall. The wood frame contains entire chapters in a single snapshot.
A scoreboard in the background provides context: “3RD & 11 BALL ON 34.” Near the top of the photo, a football is descending from the dark upper reaches of Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Near the bottom, No. 4 is twisting his neck and lifting his gaze upward to find the ball as he’s sprinting downfield. A few yards behind, No. 29 is giving chase. And a Renaissance painting of emotion is etched on the faces of players, coaches and fans. Everything hangs in the balance, right there.
Jeremiah Smith is about to haul in the bomb that clinches the national championship for the Buckeyes.
“It’s an iconic picture,” Day says. “You can see on everybody’s face: If we get this catch here … The quarterbacks knew it.”
The three backup Ohio State quarterbacks are clustered near the middle of the photo. Two of them—Devin Brown and this season’s starter, Julian Sayin—have an index finger raised in the air in triumphant anticipation as starter Will Howard’s pass arced downward, on target. Resilient Notre Dame was about to be broken by the Buckeyes. The natty would be theirs.
Not seen in the picture: Ryan Day.
He was further downfield, watching it unfold from a longer view. The call to throw the long pass in a high-pressure situation came from offensive coordinator Chip Kelly. But the challenge to throw it—to be as aggressive as possible, to not flinch—came from Day during the week-plus of preparation for the game.
“If we’re in that situation, game on the line, would you take [Smith] on a one-on-one situation against their DBs?” Day asked his offensive staff. The answer came back affirmative.
“O.K., guys,” Day responded. “When it comes down, we better make that call.”
A few minutes after that play, as the final seconds were ticking off the clock, Day did something remarkable. He started jogging down the sideline, unhitching his headset and attendant electronic gizmos. Then he threw the entire apparatus skyward, toward wherever, never bothering to look where it landed. He was free at last, literally and figuratively breaking out from under the championship burden that comes with coaching the Buckeyes.
“It certainly wasn’t thought out,” Day says. “I mean, it was like, just get these things off of me. If it seemed like it was the weight of the world on that headset, right there it probably was the case. It is symbolic that I just kind of threw it into the crowd.”
The headset will be back Saturday, when the reigning champions welcome the No. 1 Longhorns to the Horseshoe—a massive season opener. It will rest more comfortably on Day’s head now than it ever did before, but the expectations—internal and external—never go away when you’re the head coach at Ohio State. There is still a monster to feed, a team to build, a new set of challenges to face. The afterglow of January has been replaced by the adrenaline of August.
This season, the challenges began with identifying the next man to throw bombs to Smith, the greatest talent in the college game. Playing quarterback under Day has become one of the elite assignments in the game, and he let the competition go deep into the offseason before making a decision between Sayin and Lincoln Kienholz.
While the Buckeyes have become Wide Receiver U., they might also have an argument to make about being Quarterback U. under Day. It’s been a dazzling run at that position.
“Being a quarterback here is probably one of the most prestigious positions in all of college football,” Kienholz says, a week before it was announced that Sayin would start.
Day took over as Ohio State head coach in 2019, with a three-game stint as acting head coach the previous season while Urban Meyer was suspended. In those seven seasons, the Buckeyes had a quarterback who led the Big Ten in pass efficiency five times (Dwayne Haskins in 2018, Justin Fields in ’19 and ’20, C.J. Stroud in ’21 and ’22) and finished second the other two seasons (Kyle McCord in ’23 and Howard last year).
Having elite teammates helps, but the trajectory of Howard and McCord’s pass efficiency reflect what could be considered the Day bump. Howard’s efficiency rating at Kansas State in 2023 was 140.13; last year at Ohio State it was 175.25. McCord’s efficiency rating in ’24 at Syracuse was 148.76, after being 161.64 as the Buckeyes’ starter in ’23.
Haskins, Fields and Stroud all were first-round picks. McCord and Howard both were sixth-round picks this past season, with Howard on Pittsburgh’s initial 53-man roster but expected to land on injured reserve after breaking a finger. McCord, who transferred to Syracuse for his final college season to make room for Howard in Columbus, Ohio, was placed on Philadelphia’s practice squad.
“They all had a desire to be great,” Day says of his run of QBs at Ohio State, which includes Joe Burrow when Day was an assistant coach. “I think that’s the first thing I think of Dwayne, his nickname was Simba. He always had this vision in his head that he was going to be an NFL first-round draft pick. I think that was the same thing with Fields. C.J.’s story was a little different because he grew up in the Inland Empire [California] and it was Bryce Young and DJ [Uiagalelei], and he was kind of the one that felt like he had to fight his way out of there. But he always had that in his mind.
“I think Kyle was that way, and I think Will, because it wasn’t as easy for him. He was always really, really hungry and fought through the adversity. They just want to be great. They want to be that guy. And I think when you come to Ohio State, you have to have that vision. You have to have that drive to want to be elite. You have to withstand the weight that comes with this position and this place.”
Now it’s time for the next future pro to emerge.
“When guys leave the building, other guys have to step into the role and the good thing is they have a reference point,” Day says. “The negative is they haven’t really done all that work. They haven’t carried it all. So that’s the biggest thing. And just trying to get them as much experience as we can, even in practice to get them ready, because we play this huge game to start the season. We usually have a couple games to work things out. Don’t have that opportunity here. Got to be your best early on.”
Sayin arrived from California with five-star credentials. He originally enrolled at Alabama, but transferred after Nick Saban’s sudden retirement in January 2024, and was the heir apparent to Howard. The Californian is not physically impressive, listed at 6' 1" with a youthful face and a capable but not overpowering arm. But he possesses many of the traits Day most values.
“To play quarterback here, you have to be accurate, one,” Sayin says. “Two, you have to get the ball to the playmakers. We have such good skill players here. You have to be accurate and let them catch and run. Then you have to be a great decision-maker. You can’t be turning the ball over.”
With Day as head coach, Ohio State has committed 77 turnovers in 80 games. Fewer than one per game is a winning formula, and limiting turnovers will be vital Saturday. Texas returns a loaded defense that forced 55 turnovers the last two seasons, including 38 interceptions.
Minimizing mistakes is key, but so is the ability to move past them when they do happen. Golf has a bounce-back stat for players who can record birdies after making a bogey, and if you applied something similar to Ohio State QBs after losses to Michigan, the numbers jump off the screen.
Stroud was 0–2 against the Wolverines, with a combined efficiency rating of 140.84. In his next games—against Utah in the Rose Bowl and Georgia in the Peach Bowl playoff game—his combined rating leaped to a spectacular 210.46.
Howard last season was similar. He had a dismal game against Michigan, with a 100.01 rating. The four playoff games that followed he had a combined rating of 184.40.
“[Quarterbacks] want answers the next day [after a loss], and if you can give them some clarity on what went wrong and then how we’re going to fix it, it gives them a chance to compartmentalize it better,” Day says. “When they’re confused on why it didn’t go well, hopefully it’s not like, ‘Hey, you’re not good enough.’ If you can show them how to fix it, that helps. They have to believe in you, too, and then go get it.”
There is one other quarterback in that black-and-white picture on Day’s office wall. He’s further in the background, not in uniform, and he’s frozen in surrender-cobra stress.
R.J. Day, Ryan’s son and a QB at St. Francis DeSales High School, has his hands locked behind his head as he stares at the play. The weight of the moment had to be immense.
The Day family had been through the wringer a few weeks earlier, after a fourth straight loss to hated rival Michigan—this one a stunning upset at home, a game in which the burden of the rivalry seemed to paralyze the home team. It had gotten ugly after that in Columbus, with Day and his family the targets of fan abuse. The only way out was to win it all … which the Buckeyes did, when Smith’s hands cradled that pass.
Now a junior, R.J.’s recruiting profile thus far mirrors his father’s. Ryan played quarterback at FCS New Hampshire; R.J. is being recruited by several FBS schools, but most of them are outside the Power 4 conferences.
R.J. was on the outdoor grass fields at The Woody, standing behind the offense and observing, during a mid-August practice. This was a grueling, good-on-good scrimmage day in the central Ohio heat, with the offense laboring through ups and downs. The teenager soaked it all in, living the preseason grind with his father.
“I love it for him,” Day says. “He loves it. It’s a lot, but it’s kind of a bond for us. If I was selling insurance or something else, I don’t think I’d have this time with him in this setting. We work together on the field all the time. So it’s fun and I’m proud of him. I’d feel the same way if he played the piano, but this is something he decided to do.
“The great ones, I think they have a burn inside of them, a fire. I won’t get into what his burn is, but you can probably imagine what that is. It burns hot with him. He really wants it in a lot of ways, and that’s cool to see.”
The quarterback business regenerates in the Day household, and at The Woody. They’re on to a new season, trying to create the next iconic moment that could be frozen and framed in the head coach’s office.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as How Ryan Day Turned Ohio State Into Quarterback U..