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The Ohio State Buckeyes were down out. They’d just lost to rival Michigan for the fourth consecutive year and, in turn, missed out on the Big Ten championship game and a chance at bye in the College Football Playoff.
But they were still in the College Football Playoff, and they were still the most talented team in the country on paper. So while everybody else discussed how coach Ryan Day was going to get fired and what the Buckeyes would do going forward, they scraped themselves up off the mat.
All Ohio State has done since is dominate, winning their three CFP games by an average of 19.7 points per game. The Buckeyes now sit one win away from a national champion. How did they recover? Star defensive end Jack Sawyer explained just that in an article for the Players Tribune.
Ryan Day Told His Ohio State Team The Hard Truth After Loss To Michigan
“Guys were upset, frustrated, tempers flared, it got heated. Some difficult questions were asked, and no one shied away from any of them. Especially not Coach Day — and that’s such a credit to him, when you consider the circumstances. He’s got people all over town, the internet, radio, TV saying he’s this awful coach, or he should be fired. And it’s like he didn’t even care about any of that,” Sawyer wrote.
“All he cared about was our locker room, and our accountability, and our getting back on the same page. He was basically like, ‘We’re going to the Playoff. That’s happening.’ And once we were going, we knew we had two options. Option A: We could stay down after taking that punch from TTUN, and already be defeated, and play the way most people expected us to play. Or option B: We could get back up. Be pissed off. Lock in. Go out there. And play OUR f—ing game.”
Apparently it was that simple. On one hand, Day deserves credit for rallying the troops. But the troops probably should’ve never needed to be rallied. There was a reason they were huge favorites over Michigan to begin with.
Does Ohio State make the national title game if it beats Michigan? Who knows? But it’s obvious the talent was there. Maybe they needed a wake up call. But it probably could’ve come in a different form than losing to your hated rival for the fourth consecutive time.