And I think that makes a difference because when Urban Meyer showed up in Columbus he knew how to win titles and when things got bad he could go into his memory banks and pull out a file you know and say this is how you handle this or this is how you handle that and when Ryan Day came in he doesn't have that and then the other thing that you need is is at times it seems like you need to have just a little bit of that you need a little bit of the meathead in football i'm not saying you have to be a guy because i think those that era of just the meathead is kind of gone but you need to have a little bit of mike ditka in you and i think i just don't think that's him naturally and so when things get tough i think you know he kind of turtles up a little bit as opposed to maybe you know i mean maybe he doesn't get hit by the uppercut because he doesn't leave himself wide open but he also doesn't land the uppercut when you think ohio state would normally do that because he's naturally cautious i i don't know if i'm if i'm making that up as i look at it from afar but that's my analysis

No, you're spot on.

His personality is not one that is similar to Urban Meyer's.

Urban wanted to really take you down.

He wanted not literally kill you, but he wanted to kill the team's spirits and all morale that they could have in that game.

Take the confidence away as quickly as he could and then make sure it never came back.

Ryan Day's a really good guy.

who gets an

Do you always find that funny when you find somebody from complete opposite coasts and lifestyles that comes to Columbus and try and play?

Oh, dude, it's so, it is so weird, 'cause when you said that, I'm thinking, you know, USC's not that far from where you live.

There are other teams close to you that have been really good.

If he went to, if he said Oregon or Washington, I wouldn't have been shocked.

But the fact that a team in Ohio, and you've been a fan of that team for your entire life, it doesn't make sense to me.

Because for most of his life, now, granted, it's different because he's been alive for Braxton Miller and JT Barrett and Dwayne Haskins, so the quarterback play has been a little bit better than it had been 20 years prior to that.

So maybe that quarterback play was a little bit different, but also I'm naming guys, JT J- JT Barrett, Braxton Miller, they're not the same style of quarterback as, as Brady Edmonds at all.

Did, did UCLA have a real shot here?

Did I get the gist of the Ethan Oneonwa legacy, uh, in, uh, Columbus and, uh, you know, can you fill in any details that I might've missed?

No, you hit everything.

He played 96 snaps last year during his one year at Ohio State, and you're thinking 96 snaps.

He was a highly sought after recruit, was brought in to potentially be left tackle, then he was competing for the right guard spot.

Didn't win either one.

All of a sudden, he dropped down, he's your ninth offensive lineman in the room.

So you're paying this guy a lot of money, he drops down to be your ninth offensive lineman.

Is he going to be a, a swing tackle? Is he going to be, you know, a guy that they like enough to push for a starting job? Will they potentially try to move him inside to guard and give him more reps? Do you think there's a, a path for him that if he can just kind of sit and get NFL caliber coaching, uh, especially from the Falcons new offensive line coach, Bill Callahan, who certainly has a long legacy of success coaching offensive lines in the NFL, that, you know, two, three years down the line we can look at this as a potential successful project? Or is it simply a, "Hey, if you can't hack it at Ohio State, you're probably not gonna be able to hack it in the pros"?

I'm sorry I had to mention that.

No, you're good, bro.

It's going to happen again.

It's going to happen again.

It's going to happen again.

No, but Patricia and Kate McDonald, that's a duo that's very interesting because like you said so well, he came from the NFL.

Kate McDonald was already in college.

So my question, are we like overlooking his athletic ability to be more than a run defender? Like at some point, are we looking at a defensive tackle that can year in and year out garner six and a half to nine sacks on the year? Maybe double digit sacks on the year.

Is Ohio State in any way, shape, or form at a cutoff point, or do you think it's not? Because they're one of the highest grossing athletic departments, but do they want to dump it back in? What do you think, and how is that going to translate to this class and then moving forward after this season?

Well, I think you see the financial change in their recruiting in this cycle.

Being able to get DJ Jacobs and Jameer Brown, while Brown being the in-state kid, they're not coming cheap.

And so I do think you're going to see some financial changes right now in this cycle, and it could come in getting Gabriel Georges and Fakatu.

Those guys aren't going to be cheap either.

I say that because Ohio State is already up what they're going to offer DGG before he's playing at Ohio State to just land him.

Normally, there was a cutoff, and they would just bow out of certain recruiting battles because they didn't want to spend that much money to get him.

If Ohio State's struggling at tackle, convince me how they beat Texas if they go five-man pass protection.

Jay, did you do anything special for the 10-year anniversary this week that you want to tell our audience about that can go back and find you after this podcast? Of

course I did, Craig.

10 years of Locked On is amazing.

And I wanted to focus just on the Ryan Day era.

Since 2019 until now, He's done a lot of winning, won a national championship, went to a natty in 2020.

But I wanted to focus on the top 10 plays during his era, which Jack Sawyer, Jeremiah Smith, Chris Alave, Jackson Smith and Jigba, like all these great players have been there.

And the number one play in the Ryan Day era was Jack Sawyer scoop and score against Texas in the Cotton Bowl, which... help them secure that win that day, help them move on to win the national championship.

Jay, biggest storyline for the Buckeyes, got to be centered around winning another championship or maybe the fact that all your games are on at big noon.

It's not overstating things to say there are a lot of realistic scenarios where either one of these programs could look back and say, "Losing that game is why we didn't make the playoff."

Yeah.

You, you're exactly right.

Because these two teams are probably expected to be the early favorites to be in the Big 10 Championship game, as long as we still have that game.

It's easy to put Oregon and Ohio State as kind of the early front runners every year, based off how they recruit, based off how Dan Lanning and Ryan Day lead their programs, based off the assistant coaches that are there.

It's easy to say that's going to be the case.

Now, you may be a fly in on this ga- on this show and say, "Well, what about the Hoosiers?" I, I gotta wait and see.

[sighs]

And so if you're Bear and this [coughs] how do you get these guys ready for game five? How do you, or game six, how do you make sure the heads aren't dropping? Uh, 'cause there's a lot of youth and guys experiencing this for the first time, and you gotta make sure their mind's right if you wanna stay in this series and force a game seven.

Yeah, and I, I don't think it's gonna be that hard.

I, I know the guys are gonna be down, back-to-back losses, uh, and they're gonna be in their first ever elimination possibility game.

And, but I don't think it's that hard.

You just show them what I just told you.

You go to the tapes and you say, "This was equal.

This was equal.

Yeah.

What can you tell us about Caleb Downs' game? Where does he excel, and where does he still need to develop for that next level?

He's a pro's pro.

He's one of the rare players that I've covered at Ohio State.

When you watch him play, you're looking – you know – he was looking at a pro already.

And he transferred after his first year at Alabama to Ohio State.

And there was a lot of hype around him.

He was the SEC freshman of the year that year.

Tell us, you know, who are some of the names from the offensive side that, you know, outside of Cornell Tate that we need to be paying attention to?

Is there something to that?

I mean, they're just playing teams that are bad.

You can't really map out when you state any different way.

The Big Ten has 18 teams, and you're finding out right now that you have teams that are really, really good that aren't playing other multiple three or four top tier teams in the conference.

And Ohio State just happened to have a stretch this year where you're playing Purdue, UCLA, and Rutgers, who aren't good teams.

Penn State was a team that you thought was going to be one of the better teams in the country.

All of a sudden, they're struggling to win Big Ten games, and they fire James Franklin.

Briefly, give me a final prediction for this game, and does Julian Sayen have his Heisman moment?