On Nov. 27, 2022, I wrote that Ohio State needed to fire Ryan Day. One day prior, the Buckeyes had lost their second-straight game to Michigan, and suffered their first loss to the Wolverines at home since 2000.

The response back then was mostly in defense of the head coach. Day’s defenders championed his 45-5 overall record at the time, his dominance on the recruiting trail, and his three College Football Playoff appearances in his five years in charge of the program. Fans of other teams laughed at the idea of wanting to fire a coach who won the vast majority of his games and had even gotten his team to a national title game — which they notably lost by a million.

While I would love to sit here and gloat about being right, it brings me no joy to report that I was absolutely correct, and now we are all paying the price.

Here we are two years later, and not much has changed since the Buckeyes lost that 45-23 contest in Columbus. All of the incredibly obvious flaws under this coaching staff have come home to roost time and time again, culminating in Ohio State’s worst loss in program history on Saturday.

As a 20-point favorite at home, Ohio State lost to a 6-5 Michigan team without its best player on each side of the ball. The group of Wolverines that handed the Buckeyes their fourth-straight loss in the rivalry is the least talented group that program will ever have again, without a single notable quarterback, wide receiver or defensive back on the field for the 13-10 upset. Michigan is only going to get better moving forward, but the talent gap didn’t matter in the slightest because of the coaches on the home sideline.

The only advantage Sherrone Moore’s team had in that game on paper was its defensive tackles, and Ohio State’s offensive game plan was to run directly into their face masks 25 times. The duo of Kenneth Grant and Mason Graham forms the best interior defensive line in the country, and they were matched up against an interior offensive line that just lost its starting center and needed to completely re-form the depth chart.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand who has the upper hand in that battle.

So what was the plan for the braintrust of Day and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly? A steady diet of runs between the tackles, resulting in little to no yardage each and every time and keeping the offense behind the chains for the entire afternoon.

Ohio State ran the ball 26 times for 77 yards, and without the one chunk run by Quinshon Judkins for 17 yards, gained 60 yards on 25 carries — 2.4 yards per attempt. No matter how many times the Buckeyes literally and figuratively rammed their heads into a wall, they just kept going back to the well.

Ohio State had one drive all game where they decided to go up-tempo and attack the Michigan defense through the air vertically. On that series, which began with two minutes remaining until halftime, Will Howard completed six of eight passes for 58 yards, drew a pass inference and scored the only touchdown of the game on a 10-yard throw to Jeremiah Smith.

Howard had more passing yards on that one scoring drive than in the entire second half combined, where he attempted only 15 passes and completed seven for 56 yards.

You would think following the success of that drive that Ohio State would’ve made adjustments coming out of halftime, but you would be wrong. Of the Buckeyes’ 10 plays on first down in the second half, seven of them were runs. Outside of the one 17-yard run by Judkins — the team’s longest rush of the game — the other six attempts totaled 17 yards. Even when playing behind the sticks, they doubled down with three more runs on second down in the second half for a net gain of three whole yards.

The overall split for Ohio State in the second half was 15 passing plays to 12 run plays, with four of those passes coming on the Buckeyes’ final desperation drive. Those 12 rushes gained 41 total yards, which, again, without the outlier 17-yarder, means OSU ran the ball 11 other times for 24 yards — a mind-numbing 2.18 yards per carry.

There are a few obvious reasons why this happened, and an obvious reason why it failed so spectacularly.

Firstly, Michigan defensive coordinator knew he could trick Chip Kelly into running into a light box. A lot of Kelly’s offense revolves around having a numbers advantage, and the Wolverines were not stacking the box against the run. What the OSU offensive coordinator failed to account for were the actual names on the jerseys, and the Graham/Grant duo against a maligned interior OL was a win for UM every time, regardless of what the numbers said.

The bigger reason why this was the case, in my opinion, is that the 2021 loss to Michigan has completely broken Day’s brain. Following that game, Jim Harbaugh came out with his famous ‘born on third base,’ comment. Even more detrimental to Day’s coaching philosophy is what Wolverines then-defensive coordinator Josh Gattis had to say of Day’s program:

“They’re a good team. They’re a finesse team, they’re not a tough team.”

So much of what made Ryan Day a great fit both as Ohio State’s offensive coordinator and then its head coach was his offensive scheme. Even before Brian Hartline started dominating the recruiting trail with five-star talent after five-star talent, Day’s offenses were a quarterback’s dream. His passing concepts, which heavily involved mesh routes and other crossing patterns, opened up the field and made it easy for guys to get open.

C.J. Stroud threw for almost 400 yards in that game with two touchdowns, while TreVeyon Henderson ran for 74 yards and a TD. The offense was not the problem.

Ohio State ultimately lost because Day made a terrible decision to retain an overmatched Kerry Coombs as defensive coordinator. He would rectify that decision with the hiring of Jim Knowles — whom he actively hamstrung with a stubborn, over-the-hill defensive line coach until this year, but more on that another time — but from that point on to this very day, everything about the way Day runs the program became about chasing toughness.

Day fundamentally misunderstands what it means to be a tough team. The Buckeyes’ head coach has spent the last three years trying to prove Gattis wrong by insisting on running the football, even despite obvious weaknesses along the offensive line and a treasure trove of future NFL talent at wide receiver.

In Day’s mind, running the football at will is the only true measure of toughness. In reality, being able to run your offense and do whatever it is that you’re good at even when the other team knows it’s coming is toughness — and would actually win football games.

Even in his postgame press conference following this cataclysmic loss, Day proved that he still doesn’t get it:

“We struggled to run the ball.” Day said. “We have to establish the run, especially in this game. […] That ultimately, with the turnovers and the missed field goals, was the difference in the game.”

Ohio State’s wide receiver trio of Jeremiah Smith, Emeka Egbuka and Carnell Tate is far and away the best unit in the country. TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins are great players, but with your offensive line missing its two best players and the opposing team featuring a pair of dominant tackles, ‘establishing the run’ was never the way the Buckeyes were going to win this football game.

There are so many other reasons why Ohio State lost its rivalry game for the fourth-straight year, and all of them fall squarely on the shoulders of its head coach.

Kicker Jayden Fielding had a miserable game, missing a pair of sub-40-yard field goals. Punter Joe McGuire’s average punt distance was 36 yards. On the other side, Michigan’s Dominic Zvada, whom they added through the transfer portal, nailed a 54-yarder with ease. The Wolverines’ punter, Tommy Doman, boomed a 68-yard punt to flip the field.

Ohio State has lost a number of games over the past few seasons because of poor special teams play, and frequently the inability to make field goals. There is zero reason a program of this magnitude should not have been able to solve that problem by now. Michigan went out and got better at kicker, while the Buckeyes let the 2023 Groza Award winner at Miami of Ohio transfer to Alabama without a fight.

Clock management has also been a massive flaw during Day’s tenure. Ohio State led by two scores in the fourth quarter against Georgia in 2022 and lost the game. This year, the Buckeyes had the ball inside Oregon’s 30-yard line with 30 seconds left and one timeout and didn’t even get a chance to attempt a game-wining field goal.

Against Michigan, the Wolverines had a 3rd-and-2 with two minutes left, and instead of having a chance to make a stop and getting the ball back with some time, the Buckeyes committed an illegal substitution penalty — even AFTER a timeout — and provided a free first down.

The list goes on and on, but the general problems for the Buckeyes remain the same. There is only one way that things are going to truly change in Columbus: Ohio State needs to fire Ryan Day.

In my eyes, there are no remaining logical arguments for keeping Day around.

The biggest negative of the program moving on would be a likely exodus of players, which would obviously suck. Guys like Jeremiah Smith and Caleb Downs are generational talents, and it would be brutal to see them go. However, Day has already proven that he cannot win with these guys, so what good is having them in the first place?

The Buckeyes might take a few years to get back on their feet from a talent standpoint, but we’ve already seen Day’s ceiling even with the most elite players money could buy.

Ohio State’s 2021 recruiting class was the No. 2 group in the nation, and they went 0-4 against Michigan and 0-12 in Day’s self proclaimed goals of beating TTUN, winning a Big Ten title and winning a national title, barring an incredibly unlikely miracle run this year. The head coach’s recruiting has been something his defenders have pointed to throughout his tenure, but again I ask: What good are all these top-five recruiting classes if you aren’t going to win anything of substance with them?

For so long Day has been propped up by his overall record, which now stands at 66-10. His defenders have somehow deemed it impressive that Ohio State had never lost to an unranked team during his tenure, which is no longer true after this loss to a 6-5 Michigan team. Personally, I think any average college football head coach would have no problem winning the vast majority of its games with this roster, especially with how the Big Ten was constructed in the first three years of Day’s tenure.

Those 66 wins mean nothing to me when you can’t beat anyone of equal talent in the games that matter most, but congrats on beating up on Purdue and Iowa, I guess.

Ohio State fans get a lot of flack for complaining about 11-1 and 10-2 seasons, but that should be the absolute floor for one of the biggest brands in college football. The Buckeyes get to trot out an army of five-stars every week against teams that are four-score underdogs. The talent disparity between the top and bottom of the sport has only grown, and Day shouldn’t get a free pass just because he can win games against Northwestern and Rutgers.

What is the defining win of the Ryan Day era at Ohio State? What is one game you could point to where Day out-coached his opponent? His most notable victory is probably the 2020 Sugar Bowl against Clemson during the shortened COVID season, and even that was followed up by an embarrassing blowout loss in the national title game where he gave up on his team at halftime.

You’re telling me there isn’t anyone else out there who could at least match that kind of production given Ohio State’s resources?

I don’t buy into the narrative either that Day is this un-replaceable entity and that Ohio State would have to have some home run hire immediately lined up if they are to move on. Before Urban Meyer hired him as his offensive coordinator he was a completely unknown commodity. Ohio State is not a program where a guy should be learning on the job for his first head coaching gig, and we are seeing the fallout of that decision now.

This is one of if not the single most desirable head coaching job in all of football, and the powers that be would have virtually limitless options to replace Day with anyone they see fit.

It’s not like Ohio State would completely fall off the map with a new head coach, as some seem to think. This program’s brand has been built over decades and decades, and it isn’t going to instantly crumble because it fired a bad head coach. The Buckeyes may need a transition year in 2025, but they aren’t suddenly going to become a team that regularly finishes 7-5 or 8-4.

Ohio State didn’t cease to exist when Woody Hayes or John Cooper got fired, and it will continue on as a national powerhouse far after Ryan Day is gone.

Day has had more than his fair chance to change the narrative. The Buckeyes could have come out and bludgeoned a bad Michigan team and gotten the bad taste of the last three years out of their mouths. Even had Ohio State gone on to lose in the College Football Playoff, fans could hang their hats on restoring order to the rivalry and getting a chance to compete for a Big Ten title.

Instead, here we are. Ohio State is still going to make the College Football Playoff, but is there any reason to believe Day won’t lose to the first talent-equated team he faces? Even a stunning national title run would feel hollow after another loss in The Game, and would only make Saturday’s outcome that much more frustrating.

It is time to move on. Is Ohio State going to go out and hire a stud head coach this offseason, go undefeated in 2025 and win the national title? Probably not, but the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over against an expecting different results, and that is where the program is right now.

The Buckeyes need a complete reset, and that starts with finding a new leader.