Ohio State Football: Ryan Day is John Cooper 2.0

Ryan Day spent an entire year talking about the loss to TTUN last year. He talked about the pain and the anger that his Ohio State football team had been carrying for the last 365 days. After the embarrassing loss that he oversaw on Saturday, clearly nothing was different.

Ohio State lost by 20+ to TTUN at home. It was the worst loss to TTUN since 1976. The Buckeyes have now lost two in a row to them and have been embarrassed in both matchups. The common denominator in both losses is a defense that gave up big plays and bad playcalling.

Jim Knowles had largely done good work this season up until yesterday’s debacle. He allowed JJ McCarthy, who had never had a touchdown pass of greater than 45 yards, to have three of them in The Game. The corners looked like they had no idea what they were doing out there. That was a theme for that position group all year long.

The most egregious errors for the Buckeyes came on the offensive end of the ball. They scored three points in the second half. THREE. That’s it. Day decided to go into a shell with his playcalling. This was most demonstrated when he decided to run the ball on 1st and 35.

The Ohio State football team has John Cooper 2.0 coaching them.

Day has proven that he is nothing more than John Cooper with a beard. He can assemble some good teams that can win games and make the CFP when he has someone else’s players. Now that the roster is almost entirely guys he recruited, he can’t win the big one.

Cooper had some of the best Ohio State football teams ever assembled when he was coaching in the 90s. But he lost to TTUN at an alarming rate and that damaged his reputation. Cooper was also the last non-Ohio guy the program hired since they promoted Day to be the head coach.

The two have too many similarities. Incredibly, the Buckeyes still have a decent shot to make the College Football Playoff. After both Clemson and LSU lost as well, the Buckeyes just need USC or TCU to lose next week in order for them to slip in.

Whether or not Buckeye fans should root for that is another question. They would possibly have to face TTUN again and get embarrassed by them for the third straight game.