The 2024 college football season was a weird one for the Ohio State Buckeyes. At several points in the campaign, it looked like they wouldn’t be a national championship-contending team.
Their defeat to Oregon in October and their November loss to an unranked Michigan team to close out the regular season cast doubts on their College Football Playoff prospects. The fact that they didn’t qualify for the Big Ten championship didn’t inspire confidence either.
This is what coach Ryan Day spoke about this Tuesday during the SEC media days when talking to ESPN’s “SportsCenter”:
“Going through the Oregon loss and the last game of the regular season, it allowed us an opportunity to show the character of our team and the resilience of our team. I think it made us stronger in the end and allowed us to dominate down the stretch in some of those games we played, and when you look at the run we went on, it was historic.” (3:10)
Thomas Payne once wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls”, and that stretch just after the defeat to Michigan in the regular season closer truly proved the mettle of the Buckeyes. Had they failed to go on the run that they went on, even Day’s job could’ve been in jeopardy.
Ryan Day on the state of the quarterback competition at Ohio State
During the first day of the Big Ten media days, Ryan Day also spoke about the state of the quarterback competition at Ohio State. Currently, the race is between Julian Sayin and Lincoln Kienholz, but it seems like Day hasn’t made up his mind yet.
“We’re going to put them in as many competitive situations as we possibly can to figure out who handles that the best because we’ve got to be on point Week 1,” Day said. “We can’t be messing around. I know that we’ll need all of those guys in that room this year.”
Sayin is a former five-star recruit from the class of 2024, who initially committed to Alabama but transferred to Ohio State following Nick Saban’s retirement. He was considered the third-best quarterback of his class.
Meanwhile, Kienholz is a former four-star recruit from the class of 2023, who was the 11th best in the nation that year. None of them have had any experience as a starting quarterback as of yet.
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