Five Ohio State football players who have defined the Ryan Day era so far

The Ohio State football program is firmly in the Ryan Day era. He has been the head coach since the 2019 season, so he's had a group of guys that he's recruited fully graduate by this point. There are no more players left on the team from when Urban Meyer led the program.

So far, the Day era has been complicated. There have been a lot of wins. Day has made the College Football Playoff three times in the five seasons he's been the head coach. Even so, he has just two Big Ten Championships and no national championships on his resume so far.

Day has coached a lot of players already since he's taken the big job. Players are now defined by the Ryan Day era. There are five players in my mind who have best defined that era so far. Day is hoping he'll have plenty of more players to coach for a long time, but that depends on how he does this year.

This is not a ranking of the best players he's coached. This is a list of players who have defined the time and results he's coached so far. We'll go in chronological order, so we're going to start with a player from the 2019 season.

5. Chase Young

I have not seen a single Ohio State football player be better than Chase Young. He was an absolute animal while he was with the Buckeyes. He only played for Day in his final year in 2019, but he was the best player in college football in my mind in that single season.

In that season, he led a great Buckeye defense. He had 21 tackles for loss, 16.5 sacks, and a whopping seven forced fumbles. That was all while being suspended for two games for something that is completely legal now. He single-handedly wrecked offenses.

When he was out there, opposing teams had to double-team him if they wanted any chance of giving their quarterback enough time to throw the ball. He even wrecked those sometimes. I've never seen a player dictate so much of what the other team had to do.

Young was the second overall pick in the NFL Draft following that 2019 season. He recently played in the Super Bowl for the San Francisco 49ers. Day had one of the best defenses in the country with young on the field. It's a shame the refs had to screw them out of that Clemson win.

The next player on this list was the quarterback on that 2019 team and was the first starting quarterback Day ever had as a head coach.