Ryan Day Quotes - 11-6-21

Ryan Day
Ohio State Head Coach
On the game
“It is great to see our guys win like this. I am very proud of our guys. Proud of the special teams. There was really a lot of great performances. When you play nine conference games and your other game is Oregon you have to bring it week in and week out. We have a young team, and we have to learn that it is every single week that you show up. The defense did that today. They played really well. It is hard to win in this conference. It is hard to win on the road. Coming off of an emotional game, a late game two weeks in a row coming in here, 11 a.m. kick. It was going to be a challenge. We knew it. Certainly too many penalties on offense. Just shooting ourselves in the foot across the board. I thought the drive at the end was huge to go for the field goal and make it a two score game. Certainly we are going to watch it, and think we could have won by three touchdowns or more if we cleaned some stuff up, but this is a good team. That is a good defense. We knew that coming in. I said that, and I believe that. It is great to get wins on the road. Not easy to do.”
 
On the run game
“I will have to go back and look at it and see exactly what it was. I think we can do a better job with the runs. Right now we are not getting as much as we would like on it. We will go back and figure that out. When they blitz a lot, there is going to be an extra guy in the box and that opens up opportunities for the pass game, which I thought we did a good job of. We just got ourselves out of whack with a couple of penalties. We had the sack. Just a few things in there that were big plays that got us off schedule, which happened a little bit last week, too. So things we just need to make sure we are on top of. I think we are moving the ball. I think we are doing a good job that way. We are just not clean in some areas, but anytime we are talking about this after a nine-point win on the road, that is a good thing. We are doing really well on defense. Running the ball across the board. Stopping the run against again a good team that took Michigan State to overtime. They had the team up north beat. They played well against Oklahoma. This is a good quality team. We knew that coming in and we have a lot of respect for these guys.”
 
On quarterback C.J. Stroud
“I think (C.J. Stroud) has made pretty good decisions. Up until this point, I thought he forced a couple of things early on. But that is going to happen with a young quarterback. We are going to work through those things, but if there are times for him to run the ball we are going to have to look at that on film and go from there. I thought he competed. He is out there as a young quarterback. I guess this is his eighth start. It is not easy. It is just not. When you play in November on the road against good teams like this, it is going to be a grind. It is going to be hard. There is a lot of learning lessons on the way, but he did some really good things. He threw some really good footballs and made some good decisions. All part of the process."

NU Athletic Communications