Ryan Day has arguably reached the pinnacle of college football coaching at 41 years old. So… that’s pretty depressing right off the bat.
The first thing you should know is Ryan Day was a pretty good football player. In high school he was a stud QB/DB in New Hampshire which, sources tell me, is a state. Then he went to the University of New Hampshire where his offensive coordinator was a guy named Chip Kelly. For those who don’t know, Chip was the coach at Oregon but bolted to the NFL before the NCAA could nail him with random shit. Just kidding it wasn’t that big a deal. At NH, Day apparently set records for touchdowns and completion percentage, although I can’t find any of those stats on the UNH Website!
He went on to Graduate Assistant roles at Boston College and Florida where he met a guy named Urban Meyer. Then real coaching gigs at Temple, Boston College, back to Temple as offensive coordinator, and back to BC as offensive coordinator (looks like he followed Temple head coach Steve Addazio when Addazio moved to BC). In 2015 and 2016 Chip Kelly hired Ryan as QB coach in his stints with the Eagles and 49ers. Remember when Sam Bradford had a decent season with the Eagles? Coach Day was his QB coach! (I know you guys also remember the QB’s he had at Temple (Chris Coyer, obviously) and BC (Chase Rettig), right?)
And then Urban hired him in 2017 as QB coach and quickly promoted him to OC.
QB Stats 2017-2019 for OSU: 138 passing TD’s, the most for any school over that 3 year period.
- JT Barrett threw 35 TD’s in 2017 and Dwayne Haskins threw 4.
- Haskins threw 50 FUCKING TOUCHDOWNS in 2018, the most under-appreciated individual college football season in history.
- And Justin Fields threw 41 TD’s and had just 3 INT’s in 2019.
- And in our weird, abbreviated 2020, Justin threw 15 TD’s and had 5 INT’s in 6 games.
JT, Dwayne, and Justin (twice) were each B1G QB of the year in those 4 seasons. Basically Ryan Day makes quarterbacks really good. What do we think about Dwayne Haskins and Joe Burrow being JT’s backups in 2017? In 2018 Dwayne threw 50 TD’s and in 2019 Joe threw 60. Those are the 2 best backups in history, right? Nope. Kenny Guiton. Sorry Kenny G, I almost forgot about you for a second.
Coach Day coached 3 games in 2018 during Urban’s suspension and took over as full time Head Coach after Urban’s retirement. He somehow got Justin Fields to transfer from UGA and sailed through his first full season, only to lose get screwed out of a close one to Clemson in the semifinal. And in 2020 he’s 6-0, ranked third in the playoff standings, third in most photos where his nose is sticking out of his mask, and gets another shot at those jerkbags from Clemson. It’s a pretty good start to a head coaching career.
Salary: Coach Day’s initial salary was 4.5 million per year. In Feb 2020, right before the world fell apart, he signed an extension through 2026. So, he’s set to earn $5.4M in 2020, $6.5M in 2021, and $7.6M in 2022. 2023-2026 are still to be determined. It also looks like he has one of the largest buyouts – $45M. So if OSU wanted to get rid of him for some reason, it would cost a goddamn fortune. Anyway, let’s all raise a glass of Bud Heavy and toast to the guy who was built in a lab to coach the Buckeyes… may he avoid penalties randomly levied by The Cartel The NCAA!
-Eric
The Buckeye Football Blog 