Ohio State football: Day needs to learn from last year

The Ohio State football team needs to not just learn from what happened this year but also what happened in their matchup with Clemson a year ago.

The Ohio State football team fell to Clemson in last year’s semi-final because of two terrible calls by the referees. Even though those calls were reprehensible, the Buckeyes still could have overcome them to win. Ryan Day has to learn from the mistakes they made last year.

Ohio State made mistakes that kept them from being able to overcome the awful calls by the refs. J.K. Dobbins dropped two touchdowns. The defense allowed Trevor Lawrence to run for a 67-yard touchdown. Chris Olave broke off his route when he would have had an easy touchdown.

Correct just one of these mistakes and the Buckeyes win the game and face LSU in the National Championship. Coach Day needs to make sure that his team is focused enough that none of these mistakes happen again this year in the rematch.

There’s no doubt that there will be no shortage of emotion for the Buckeyes in this game. We have talked about the revenge factor, and of course all of the crap that Dabo has been talking. Ohio State needs to make sure that they keep those emotions in check.

That will be part of Day’s job as well. He needs to make sure that the team can channel that emotion into physical play, not mistakes. This Clemson team might be better than last year’s squad. Ohio State can’t afford any mistakes.

The Buckeyes will have an ample amount of time to prepare for this game, so there’s no reason they should come out unfocused on the task at hand.