Ohio State’s Playoff Loss Raises Familiar Questions About Ryan Day

Throughout 2025, Ryan Day received a ton of credit for limiting wear and tear on the best roster in the country. The Buckeyes went on a massive playoff run the year prior, so he needed to make sure everyone was healthy and ready to attack the most important part of the schedule this year.

However, what really happened was that Ohio State never found that second gear, and they left the car in cruise control from the start of the year until they whimpered out against Miami.

For the millionth time during the Ryan Day era, Ohio State had one of the better rosters in the country, and for whatever reason, they could not win the biggest games on their schedule. Day has managed to raise the ridiculously high floor that Urban Meyer created at Ohio State. He’s 88-12 in his first 100 games leading the program, and just last year, he got them over the hump and won a national title. With that said, Day does deserve a larger share of the blame for his lack of true success, given all this talent.

The defense he was gifted this year should never lose a game. You have two, no doubt, first-round picks at receiver. Julian Sayin was a Heisman finalist, and Bo Jackson came into his own, leading a high-powered rushing attack by the end of the year. It is unacceptable to lose to Miami in the playoffs. The window to win championships is so small in college football, and when you lose chances like this, it leads me to doubt that you are the right guy for Ohio State.

Trailing 14-0 to start the first half, you’d think Day would’ve played with some sense of urgency. The offense thrived this year when you weren’t the slowest team in the country, but he refused to adjust. Ohio State only had three real possessions the entire second half, and that alone lost you the game.

On the first drive of the second half, Day scraped the stretch run game that hadn’t worked at any point in his tenure at Ohio State, and finally let the offense run a much more effective downhill gap scheme. Your offensive line has proven time and again to be so much better in gap schemes and running between the tackles. The two-minute offense has been the best they’ve looked all year, but Day was too scared of tiring this team out over the course of a season, and because of that, they weren’t ever ready to play in a non-conservative fashion.

I’m not sure if this is on Sayin or Day, but their refusal to let quarterbacks run killed them once again. Miami was able to send aggressive blitzes, knowing that Sayin would never pull the ball and take off. Sayin is more talented than Will Howard, but in the most significant moments, Howard wasn’t afraid to scramble and keep the offense on schedule. It’s something Ohio State has lacked, leaning into the pure pocket passers during most of the Day era.

Above all else, it’s an absolute joke that there was no better option at kicker than Jayden Fielding. I’m not going to blame a kid for blowing a game for the fifth time in his career. I will blame Ryan Day for not having a better option. Fielding has zero ability to make a clutch kick, and it’s ridiculous even to send him out there. He never had a chance to make a meaningful kick.

It’s hard to say Ohio State should move on from Ryan Day with the consistency he’s brought to the program; however, he was on the hottest of seats after losing to Michigan in 2024. There’s a reason his seat was so hot then, and it should be ridiculously hot going into 2026. 

The schedule is brutal for Ohio State next year, and if he can’t win big games, I do think there might be a better option to lead the Buckeyes moving forward.