Joel Klatt
Lead College Football Analyst
The most recent edition of the “Joel Klatt Show” was a championship edition.
We welcomed Ohio State head coach Ryan Day to the show just a couple of weeks after his triumph. In our 30-plus-minute-long conversation, Day and I touched on several key moments from Ohio State’s national championship run, Will Howard’s growth, Chip Kelly’s departure, the play by Jeremiah Smith to seal the title and, yes, the golf cart incident.
Here is a snippet of my conversation with Day.
Klatt: Did you enjoy it (not calling plays)? I don’t think anyone’s asked you that yet, because I know you love calling plays. I mean, you’re a call coach deep down. Did you enjoy this seat, this different view of the horizon?
Day: I enjoyed winning a national championship. There were really great moments, just connecting with the guys, good moments, bad moments, you know, all the above. It’s like being part of a family, being a brother, being a dad, being an uncle, being a colleague. I think that was what allowed me to do that and bounce around. But I felt like in the playoff, I was able to spend more time on football because there was no school, and we had time together. And that was my favorite part of the year, for sure.
Ryan Day speaks on Chip Kelly’s departure to the NFL | The Joel Klatt Show
Klatt: There’s one last thing that I want to ask you about the season. I’d love to go back and it’s third down. Notre Dame is fighting. It’s a one-score game. It’s the fourth quarter of the national championship. Can you explain what it felt like for you when that ball was in the air, headed to Jeremiah, and you realize, like, he’s open, and you’re going to win?
Day: When you’re up 31-7, you look at the clock, you start doing the math, like, “We got a chance to win a national championship here.” … We probably, I guess, could have been more aggressive. I thought the reverse call that we made to Emeka [Egbuka], that was a good call, and we got a chance to [put it away], but it’s just not the way it works. For whatever reason, it’s just not the way it works. And so you’re in a battle back and forth. And we wanted to at least eat some clock on that drive.
But we’re on the headset. We’re talking through the situation, third-and-11 with a possibility, and the one thing that Will [Howard] did a great job of all season was he could get us into multiple calls. That’s a huge deal for a quarterback. It’s one thing when it comes from the sideline. It’s another thing when your quarterback can do it quickly. So, we were hoping to get one-on-one coverage on the outside. If we didn’t, you know, we would probably have thought about something else. But once we got the one-on-one coverage on the outside, we felt like we had a chance. We’re going to be aggressive.
We had said this in a meeting, if we’re in a situation like this, and we all sat in a room and said, “If you have Jeremiah Smith one-on-one with the game on the line, would you take that chance?” And everybody in the room said yes, and that decision was already made. Then, it was just a matter of go and do it. We had spent a lot of time on that play, on that route against that corner. You could even see Emeka on the sideline during one of the videos. He was talking about that exact leverage, that exact play, and then those guys were able to execute it. But there’s a great picture on the sideline of that ball in the air, and you can see our entire sideline looking up at the ball, saying, “He catches this ball, we’re gonna be national champs.” What a great time.
Klatt: And then the golf cart crashes.
Day: (laughs) I don’t know if I was more stressed in the golf cart or when I was on the field during that throw.
Klatt: Now you’re about to deal with what everybody that reaches the mountaintop deals with. And you can go all the way back. Ohio State, Urban [Meyer] lost Tom Herman after the national championship. … You guys then become the apple of everyone’s eye. Jim [Knowles] is going to move on, and Chip Kelly is going to get an opportunity to go back to the National Football League with the Raiders. So, navigating that, that’s going to be kind of your next era as a national champion head coach in college football.
Day: You’re excited for guys. Justin Frye’s got a great opportunity to go into the NFL. And these opportunities come up when you win a championship like this. These guys are great coaches, and they have a chance to do different things. And that’s part of it, like you said. Now you gotta adjust, and you gotta figure out, move these puzzle pieces around. The good news is we’re at Ohio State. So we have some really good opportunities to hire some great people and fit them in with some people who are really good young coaches that are just rising stars here, I think, in the profession, and some guys with great experience. So, this is going to be part of the deal. We knew that. I knew that right after the game it was going to happen like this and so you have plans in place. But we’re going to make sure we take our time and find the right guys because it’s Ohio State, and so you have an opportunity to get the best.
Klatt: Because your offense was so talented, I think it’s going to be overlooked what you guys were able to do, but, Will (Howard) set the Ohio State record for completion percentage. I think that’s one of those overlooked things. You guys did some incredible things on offense. Obviously, because you were talented. But even with some of the guys, I don’t think people would have expected that out of Will Howard when he transferred from Kansas State.
Day: He really grew as it went on. You could see he got better every single week.
Klatt: His best football was in the playoff, by far.
Day: He just had such a command. I don’t know how else to say it. When it’s fourth-and-3, he’s going to get four. But he’s also very, very intelligent. Like I said, he was carrying multiple plays at the line of scrimmage. He was a leader. And then the huddle. The huddle was there for a lot of reasons, but one, the huddle was that we had such a great leader in Will. He was looking those guys in the eye, and they were breaking the huddle, and they believed in him when they huddle. When we didn’t play as fast as we normally did, efficiency was something that we talked a lot about, and I thought we played with much more efficiency this year.
Joel Klatt is FOX Sports’ lead college football game analyst and the host of the podcast “The Joel Klatt Show.” Follow him at @joelklatt and subscribe to the “Joel Klatt Show” on YouTube.
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