Ryan Day finally addressed the decision that cost Ohio State a shot at beating Texas, and his answer was somehow less reassuring than saying nothing at all.
Asked Monday whether he regretted not letting the Longhorns score in the final two minutes of Saturday’s 24-23 loss, Day gave the kind of response that will keep Buckeyes fans up at night.
“It didn’t work, so the answer is yes,” Day said. “If we win the game, then it would’ve been the right decision. In the moment you’ve got to make a hard decision and I decided to try and hold the line. Would love to have seen what it would’ve looked like if they would’ve scored.”
The Situation
Texas had the ball at the 1-yard line with 1:30 left. Ohio State had no timeouts left to speak of and needed the ball back with usable clock. The conventional play, the one every analyst screams about from the booth, is to let the offense walk into the end zone immediately, take the ball back down four with roughly 90 seconds, and try to win it.
Day chose the other path. He told his defense to hold the line. Texas bled the clock down to 25 seconds before punching in the go-ahead touchdown, which left Ohio State with essentially nothing. The Buckeyes never got a real chance.
Criticism was immediate and it came from everywhere: fans, former coaches, television analysts. It is one of the few in-game decisions where the math is not really in dispute.
Why His Answer Makes It Worse
Read that quote again. Day is not saying the process was wrong. He is saying the result was wrong. “If we win the game, then it would’ve been the right decision” is outcome-based thinking from a coach who is paid enormous money to think in probabilities.
The decision was bad when he made it, and it would have been bad if Ohio State had somehow stopped Texas on four straight plays inside the 1. Getting bailed out by a goal-line stand would not have made the call correct. It would have made him lucky.
That distinction matters because it predicts future behavior. A coach who admits the reasoning was flawed fixes the reasoning. A coach who only regrets the scoreboard runs it back the next time the situation comes up.
The Bigger Picture in Columbus
Ohio State walked into Austin as the No. 1 team in the country and walked out at No. 6. Texas took the top spot. The Buckeyes gave up a 20-point fourth-quarter comeback, which is the part of this game that should actually terrify Columbus more than any single clock decision.
Day has won a national title. He has also built a resume full of enormous games where the endgame management gets questioned, and this one is going to stay attached to him for a while because the answer he gave was so revealing.
The Buckeyes will almost certainly still make the Playoff. The roster is loaded and the schedule leaves room. But if Ohio State runs into another one-score game in December or January with the season hanging on a two-minute decision, nobody in that fan base is going to feel great about who is making it.
Day says he would love to have seen what it looked like if Texas scored early. He had the chance to find out. He passed.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.