Ryan Day recalls ‘grieving phase’ that Ohio State went through after Michigan loss

Ohio State‘s loss to Michigan at the end of the regular season spoiled the Buckeyes bid into the Big Ten Conference championship game, as well as a first-round bye in the College Football Playoff.

Marking the fourth consecutive time the Wolverines have bested Ohio State, many counted the Buckeyes out of national title contention, and some on social media even called for the program to move on from head coach Ryan Day. Frustration was visible, something Day didn’t sugarcoat while recently joining Urban Meyer and company on the Triple Option Podcast.

“When you don’t win that game, you don’t just wake up the next day and move on,” Day explained. “There’s like a mourning phase and grieving phase you have to go through. It’s the way it is, man. There’s a lot that comes with that, and you have to take a step back and let the emotions clear. First thing, we got everybody together, because at that point, narratives were being thrown out everywhere.”

Talk on social media surrounding the state of the Ohio State program ramped up before their opening CFP game against Tennessee. The frustration within the Buckeyes program even boiled over at one point.

“The truth is, there were certain things that were done in that game that cost us to lose the game,” Day continued. “We brought everybody together and identified what those things were, and the guys have to take accountability. There were guys challenging each other, there was conflict. There were groups going at each other, but at the end of the meeting those guys walking arm in arm outside the room, because we talked about, here are the things that we’re going to do to get these things fixed.”

Some players stood up and helped lead that movement. It was the catalyst for the championship run they’d find themselves on over the next month.

“Then there was a bunch of dudes who stood up and said, ‘Man, do you still believe that we can win the national championship? Because if you don’t, get out of this room because we all believe.’ So that was really the genesis of the conversation,” Day explained.

“We put that plan together, and then you put one practice in front of another. You can’t solve that problem two weeks before the Tennessee game. You’ve just got to go back to work. And the biggest thing that I kept thinking about is what, Bill Parcells said — ‘Just coach the team.’ Don’t worry about all the other things, and trust in the coaches and the players that are with you.”

Day told his group that this was an opportunity to write one of the best stories in the history of the best stories in the history of college football. Once they got some momentum going after the Tennessee game, his team wrote the rest in Sharpie.

The post Ryan Day recalls ‘grieving phase’ that Ohio State went through after Michigan loss appeared first on On3.