Ohio State Football: Was this Ryan Day’s best team at OSU?

The Ohio State football team finished off a fantastic season with a close loss to Georgia in the Peach Bowl. Was this Ryan Day’s best team in his tenure?

The Ohio State football team came into this season as a favorite to win the national championship. And they were darn close to doing so. A missed 50-yard field goal at the end of regulation in the Peach Bowl may be the difference in Day having his eluded national title or not. We will have to see how TCU plays Georgia, but my estimation is that the Buckeyes would have been at least a touchdown favorite in that game.

But at the end of the day, Ohio State lost. It was Ryan Day’s third trip to the college football playoffs which includes a title game appearance. Day has had four full seasons at the helm since Urban Meyer gave him the whistle. Was this Day’s best team while at Ohio State?

This Ohio State football team was Ryan Day’s best since 2019.

This 2022 version of the Buckeyes was an excellent team led by an excellent quarterback in C.J. Stroud. He arguably played the best game that an Ohio State quarterback has played during the Day era in the Peach Bowl against Georgia. So, while the Buckeyes were maybe a play away from being national champions in 2022, I don’t think it was Day’s best team while at Ohio State.

I don’t think that there is any question that Day’s best team was his first one in 2019. Led by the stellar 2017 and 2018 recruiting classes, Day took Urban Meyer’s program over and flourished right off the rip. He went out and got Justin Fields and turned him into an excellent player by the end of that season. Day also has a very good offensive line with excellent skill position players like J.K. Dobbins, Chris Olave, a young Garrett Wilson, and K.J. Hill.

Offensively, the difference between the 2022 team and this one would be that the 19′ version had a running back who ran for over 2,000 yards in Dobbins. If C.J. Stroud had that this season then I’d bet they beat Georgia handily.

The biggest difference however was on the defensive side of the ball. They had a very good coordinator in Jeff Hafley but furthermore, the talent on that defense was well beyond what Ohio State is putting out now.

There are no Chase Youngs or Jeff Okudahs on the 2022 team. With respect to Steele Chambers and Tommy Eichenberg, the linebacking core of Pete Warner, Tuff Borland, and Malik Harrison were far superior. And they had the eraser, Jordan Fuller, at free safety who was the glue of the entire defense.

That 2019 team was loaded up and down its roster with NFL talent. They unfortunately ran into Clemson which was at its peak as a program. But if a few awful officiating calls would have gone Ohio State’s way, then we could have been talking about this 2019 team as a champion.

Ryan Day has had some very good teams while at Ohio State but his first one in 2019 was the best of them all. Hopefully, the 2023 version of Ohio State football has something to say about that.