How the Ohio State football team can learn from their recent failures

In the last three seasons, the Ohio State football team has had high expectations. In each of those years, the Buckeyes were talented enough to win the national championship. Instead, they weren't even good enough to win the Big Ten. They haven't won a conference title since 2020.

Ohio State football fans would consider each of the last three seasons failures. Any year that you don't beat Michigan and win a Big Ten title, that's a failure. Ohio State came close in each of those years to beating TTUN, but ultimately weren't able to do so.

So where does this leave the Buckeyes as they head into 2024? This is perhaps their most talented defensive team since the 2019 season. On offense, they should have a slight improvement as well. Ryan Day knows that failure is not really an option now that Gene Smith has retired.

Smith's retirement means that he no longer has a safety blanket. Ross Bjork didn't hire Day, so if he fails again this year, it might be his last. So how can he and the rest of the team learn from their failures in each of the last three seasons so that it doesn't happen again?

The answer is that they may have already started learning from it. Day's hirings in the offseason may have been born out of those failures. He brought in Chip Kelly to handle the offense so that the team could be more diverse on that side of the ball. Play-calling had become a bit stale.

Coaching had been a big failure in each of those losses to Michigan. While there were some nefarious things happening from Michigan in the first two meetings, the Buckeyes were still outcoached in those games. Day is trying to make sure that won't happen again in 2024.