COLUMBUS, Ohio –– A few weeks ago, with the Big Ten still on the sidelines while other conferences and the NFL had already jumped back into a live football season, Ryan Day and the Ohio State coaching staff had time to sit back and make some observations that they might not have otherwise had the chance to.
Day said that the Buckeye program put together a reel of oddities –– situations for his players to be conscious of and for the coaches to plan around as the return to football after a COVID-altered offseason led to some interesting moments early on in the season.
That reel didn’t seem to help Day and Ohio State avoid a bizarre turn of events before halftime in Saturday’s win against Penn State though, a scenario that will go down in the books as some combination of clock operator’s error and general time mismanagement by the coaching staff.
“I’m in an interview with Maria Taylor and they’re telling me we have to go back on the field for one second. It was like I was in a bad dream, I couldn’t believe what was going on,” Day said on 97. 1 The Fan on Monday.
The Buckeyes had the ball on fourth down in their own territory with just two seconds left on the clock before half on Saturday, but rather than risk the chance of a return by punting it away, Day had junior quarterback Justin Fields take a delayed knee to end the half.
But after both teams had already run off the field, referees determined that there was still a second left on the clock, allowing Penn State to sneak in a last-second field goal before receiving the ball to start the second half.
It had the potential to be a huge change in momentum, something that Day was avidly trying to avoid. In fact, Day even used timeouts when Penn State’s drive began to stall with two minutes left in the half in hopes of scoring again before the break.
“I felt like we had momentum, and a lot of it, going into halftime. And so we called the timeouts and we were gonna go after the punt, which we did, but we didn’t get it,” Day said.
But the Buckeye offense only picked up a yard, and Day was content to give up on the drive and take an 18-point lead into intermission.
“If we split a run, we probably would’ve kept going, but we didn’t, and so I felt like OK, let’s just get out of the half,” Day said. “Did the math on it, and thought it was gonna be about four or five seconds, in which case we would’ve had the quarterback run around a little bit and go down. If it was longer than that we would’ve punted it, but it was two seconds.”
The problem was, Fields’ fourth down knee did seem to take at least two seconds, but upon careful inspection, the clock’s start wasn’t quite simultaneous with the snap, which allowed the extra tick to remain.
“We did a milk victory, was what we call it, and you milk the clock. And that’s what Justin did, he didn’t go right down,” Day said. “He kind of counted to himself, two seconds in his head, looked up, he said he saw double zeros, took a knee.”
Not only did the Nittany Lions convert the field goal, but they also scored a touchdown on the opening drive of the next half. Luckily for Day and the Buckeyes, the bizarre situation did not cost them the win, as Ohio State managed to stave off the comeback to take a double-digit win out of Happy Valley.
Ahead of the Buckeyes’ upcoming game against Rutgers though, and likely for the rest of his football coaching tenure, Day is sure to take a different approach to any –– even vaguely –– similar situation.
