BONUS: Are Young Defensive Linemen Ready To Roll Vs. Texas?

0:00All right, we got one more bonus episode for you on Ryan Day's press conference on Tuesday. He had a ton of interesting stuff to talk about and we're going to give you one more show with a bunch of just sort of a little bit on the defense, a little bit on some more general topics in college football. Was he asked about the Michigan clock thing? Oh, you bet he was. Did he want to answer it? Oh, you'll have to wait to find out. He was asked about sort of the first thing we're going to talk about though, the NFL mindset in the program. He's talked about a little bit this year and has two former NFL head coaches on his coaching staff as coordinators, defensive coordinator, Matt Patricia, offensive coordinator, Arthur Smith. What have those guys brought to the program already just one week into the season? I mean, both are different guys, but they both have a great experience of game planning, calling games, organizing a staff, pushing a staff. They both had coaches before, so they see it from that lens. That's been good. I think the communication throughout the week and then also during the game has been excellent.

1:06The ability to recognize what's going on in between series, communicate that, get the things addressed, make adjustments has been good. But I think at the end of the day, it really comes down to again the other relationships that they're building in the staff rooms and then also with the players because ultimately you know, this is not the NFL, this is college. And the relationships and the motivation and all the things that come with it are critical with our success. So that's why they're here because they have the combination of those things. One of the areas where you saw some very talented young guys playing was on the defensive line against ball state, Zion Grady, second year player. He was a starter, Curry Wilder, true freshman. He was contributing right away in the Rushman package, that sort of third and long passing situation kind of package. He was rushing there from the middle of the line. So what did Ryan Day see from them after watching the film? Yeah, you can see the juice. You can see the athleticism. You know, Curry is a hard charger. You can see that. You can see the energy and the more he continues to show that, the more he's going to opportunity

2:09is going to have Zion's been two years in a program now and has shown really good versatility and consistency. Somebody that's going to be a huge part of our defense on all three downs. Curry will continue to try to build his packages. He saw he was in there on third down. But the more opportunity that he has to show us that he can make plays, the more reps he's going to get. And we're going to have to play depth in this game as well. So excited to see where this week goes for him and what packages we have been for. Coaches always say they never quite know what to expect from a team until they go out on the field in week one. So okay, what did Ryan Day and the coaching staff learn about their team in week one? I don't know if there was really a whole lot of things that we learned. I think there was it was good to see some of the throwing and catching early on. I think it was good to see the running game get going in the second half. I think it was good to see some young players get on the field for the first time, make some plays. I thought the defense played physical, ran to the ball, established a certain level of

3:14play in terms of how they're going to run to the football. Obviously the kickoff returns were a disaster. So we got to get that fixed. So there was some things in there, but I think we were able to play some depth, which was good. And I think we've been in games. You've seen them before where the starters come out and the level of play just falls off and it's like we just grind into the ground and it's just like a mess in the second half. I don't think that happened in the game this past week. I remember one of those games. I forget exactly who we were playing. It was just like really bad. The second half, we won big. My daughter came up. She's like, what was that in the second half? I was like, you're right. I don't know what the hell it was. But we didn't have that in this game. It was consistent play across the board. So I think one of the things that we took away from it is, we're going to have to play depth in this game. I think they play depth.

4:15You see the number of players they play. We're going to have to play depth in this game. So it was good to have that game as a little bit of some information to say. We feel good putting them into the game based on how they created out. Next up, this is one of those questions that you have to ask. Even if you know what the answer is likely to be, right? And it was asked his thoughts on the ending of the Michigan Michigan State Game. Yeah, I really haven't been focused on that at all. It's been all, as you can imagine, all about Texas. That's it. I mean, all of our time. I mean, the minute, you know, we got done with that game, it was on to Texas. And so obviously, we read about it and saw it, but really haven't really thought much about it. We saw just a little bit of almost everyone during that first game for the buck eyes against Ball State. And we saw Connor Hawkins, their new kicker, the transfer from Baylor. We saw him kick PATs. Did not see him, though. Kick a field goal. It was something that Texas did. Texas got their kicker out there. And then he hit a field goal just to sort of settle everything down. Haven't seen that yet from Connor Hawkins. So what situations would Brian Day feel comfortable sending Connor Hawkins out in this weekend?

5:20Yeah. Well, all situations that require a field goal are an extra point. If we need him to do some kickoff, he could do that as well. What have I recognized? Somebody's very serious about his work. You know, he comes in the building. There's no nonsense. I think the guys respect the way he handles his business. And then on the field, he's been consistent. So yeah, it would have been nice to see him. I had the extra points. It would have been nice to see him kick a field goal. But he has experience. You know, he needs picked some big, some big field goal. So we've tried to put him in as many of those situations as you could imagine as we could in preseason camp and he's responded well. And finally, the buck eyes had been talking all off season about the fact that they needed to pop some bigger plays in the run game. And they did in the second half against Ball State. And one of the keys to that was really, really good blocking down field. And man, this is one of these things. Coaches love to talk about. White receivers blocking down field. So Ryan Day was asked about the importance of that down field blocking and blowing up

6:21some of those big plays on Saturday. All right, there you go. We are going to have a ton more coming for you all week long at BuckeyeInsiders.com and at youtube.com slash at BuckeyeInsiders. Going to have some bonus shows. Let you hear a little bit from Steve Sarkeesian. The Texas head coach, some of the things he had to say this week, we will be back at Ohio State Wednesday night for Ryan Day's lightning round press conference where then they've had their Tuesday physical practice. They've had their Wednesday physical practice. That's kind of the end of the hardest part of the work week. And then we get a chance to talk to Ryan Day then. We'll see what his mood is like at that point and how things are going. That's always an interesting, interesting press conference. Talk to some of the players as well. I'll start around 6.15 pm Eastern time youtube.com slash at BuckeyeInsiders. We'll do our best to stream those live for you. And then we are going to have we will be down in Austin on Thursday evening. We'll have coverage from down there all Thursday, Friday, Saturday. It is going to be a really phenomenal weekend of coverage at youtube.com slash BuckeyeInsiders

7:22and BuckeyeInsiders.com. We would love to see you there. We'd also love to see you at our live event in Austin Friday night. You want to come meet the team. You can do that. We'll be have our BuckeyeInsiders live event Friday night in Austin right after the Ohio State team arrival. You can come meet Tony and Juck and I. You want to do that. You have to become a member at BuckeyeInsiders.com. We'll have a member that is only gathering in Austin on Friday. We'd love to see you there. That will do it for today. Thank you guys all for joining us. Have a great day. We'll talk to you tomorrow.