Day can’t coach virtually during game, talks coaching changes this week
COLUMBUS, Ohio –– With the advent of Zoom communication and the uptick in virtual meetings over the past nine months, surely Ohio State head coach Ryan Day, who tested positive for COVID-19 last week, could find a way to do some coaching on Saturday.
Right?
Actually, Day said Thursday that he will be relegated to spectator status once the game begins in East Lansing, Michigan, at noon, as a result of rules that restrict outside communication –– even from a team’s usual head coach.
“I’ll be watching and communicating up until game time and trying to do the best I can that way, but once the game starts, the coaches have to coach, the players have to play,” Day said on 97.1 The Fan. “It’ll probably be the hardest three hours of my life, but at that point you just got to get them to the game and then let them go.”
Day said coaches are technically not allowed to communicate back and forth via text message or on a cell phone during games, which means that he won’t be punching in any play calls for Justin Fields and the Buckeye offense from his coach on game day.
“The rules are pretty clear that what you have to do is, you have to use the headset during the game to communicate with anybody on the sideline, and then there’s a limitation on that as well,” Day said. “So it’s fairly restrictive.”
Day was one of several members of the Ohio State program to test positive last week, contributing to a number that surpassed a 7.5-percent positivity rate among 170 total players, coaches and other staff that comprise the “tier-1” Buckeyes.
The result was the cancellation of Ohio State’s game against Illinois the night before the game was scheduled to kick off this past Saturday, and even though team activities were on pause for several days, the Buckeyes are set to return against Michigan State this weekend.
They’ll do so without Day and some unknown number of other players and coaches, but the Buckeyes will have seventh-year defensive line coach Larry Johnson stepping up into an acting head coach role against the Spartans.
Day said co-offensive coordinator and tight ends coach Kevin Wilson and defensive coordinator and secondary coach Kerry Coombs will be the other two voices on the headset come Saturday.
“Larry will be the head coach, so ultimately, he’ll have the final decision. But Kevin will give a lot of input in terms of timeouts, game situation stuff and then also Kerry as well,” Day said. “The three guys will be on the headsets and they’ll discuss it. At the end of the day, Larry has the final say, but I think those guys talking together and communicating those things will be fine.”
However, not all of them will be assuming their usual positions before kickoff. Day said Wilson, who typically coaches from the box, will be down on the field this week.
“We're gonna have Kevin go down on the field for a lot of reasons. We’re gonna move a couple people around,” Day said. “He’ll definitely be down on the field and that’s good for a lot of reasons, communicating with the offense, but also with game management, helping with timeouts and those types of things.”
It will certainly be quite a mix-up for a Buckeye team that has played just one time in the past three weeks, but as Day said Thursday, the program must be prepared from Plan A through Plan D during a season that continues to yield new challenges each week.