The Ohio State football team played an almost perfect game against Grambling State last weekend en route to a 70-blowout of the Tigers. It was a huge performance after squeaking out a 14-7 win over Texas in Week 1. The difference in opponents was very stark.
Julian Sayin was able to show that he is in complete command of the offense after he had a huge game. He even set a record in the first half with how well he started the game. That doesn't mean that Ryan Day was happy with how everything played out, though.
Day had his weekly press conference on Tuesday afternoon. While he was generally pleased with what he saw against Grambling State, he mentioned that there is one big "red flag" that they need to address moving forward because it has been an issue in each of the first two weeks.
Ohio State coach Ryan Day calls out punt returner for mistakes
During his press conference, Day mentioned that they have to be better when it comes to returning punts.
"That's an area coming out of the game that we've got to improve on, for sure," Day said. "I think we lost 47 hidden yards with the ball bouncing around on the ground. A couple of them were very difficult because they weren't very well hit, but other ones I feel like we could have fielded. It's not just one thing."
Brandon Inniss has been the primary returner for the Buckeyes over the first two games. It doesn't sound like Day is particularly pleased with what he has seen from Inniss in those first two performances. Still, Day mentioned Inniss will continue to return punts, but a couple of other players will, as well.
"Brandon (Inniss) is still gonna return punts for us, but we also have Jeremiah that we can put back there, Carnell (Tate), Caleb (Downs), if we need to. We're gonna stick to it, but we got to get better. There's no question. That's something coming out of the game that was a red flag that we got to get fixed."
While this issue wasn't bad enough to affect them against Grambling State, Day understands it could against Illinois or Penn State. He wants to get this cleaned up now before the hard part of the schedule starts to arrive. Inniss might not have that starting return man spot for much longer.