Ryan Day can finely rest easy with his national title in hand. Well, that’s probably putting things a bit too simply.

There’s no resting easy in Columbus. As the head coach at Ohio State, the expectation is always to win the next game, regardless of what happened in the previous one.

The good news is Ryan Day will not have to hear any silly talk about a hot seat for the offseason portion of 2025. That will be some solace after a grueling 4-year stretch before delivering a breakthrough College Football Playoff run en route to his first national title.

So … what’s next? Trying to repeat, of course, but that’s so difficult under normal circumstances. And it’s safe to say circumstances underneath Day are not normal this offseason.

After the failure of the 2020 season that included getting blown out in the national championship, Day fixed his defense. The 2021 season was Jim Knowles’ first in Columbus, and while it wasn’t perfect and didn’t produce a title, it set the Buckeyes an a trajectory that came to fruition in 2024.

The Buckeyes then brought in Chip Kelly to lead the offense for 2024, but that move went even deeper. Kelly came aboard to essentially free up Day to be a head coach, and the elite staff underneath the head coach paved the way to the marquee title run. (Even with that pesky detail about losing The Game to Michigan.)

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So, how does Day move forward from that run? By losing both coordinators, including Knowles to a Big Ten rival in Penn State looking to knock the Buckeyes from the top of the mountain.

To be fair, Ohio State might not have able to keep Knowles anyway. The way he has spoken about Penn State while growing up in Philly shows the power of nostalgia, but the larger point of this piece isn’t about the defense.

The bigger gamble for Day is the new offensive staff, considering what we know from the past and the assignments we have seen Ohio State dish out this offseason.

Ohio State has (reportedly) hired an offensive coordinator, but that hire was Virginia Tech OC Tyler Bowen to be the offensive line coach for Day. Another recent report also indicates Bowen will have the role of run-game coordinator.

As for the official role of OC, it is being reported that Brian Hartline will be elevated to the role, again, only this time he will reportedly get to call plays. Tight ends coach Keenan Bailey will also assume a role of co-OC.

So, in one offseason, the Buckeyes are going from one of the top offensive minds in the game coordinating the offense to essentially a 3-man think tank. That’s not to say it’s a bad move or that Ohio State is doomed to have too many cooks in the kitchen, but it’s certainly a gamble, and it’s certainly not a small one.

Consider that Ohio State more or less already tried this method 2 seasons ago.

Coming out of the 2022 season, Day expressed a desire to relinquish play-calling duties and lost OC Kevin Wilson to the Tulsa head coaching job. Day promoted Hartline to the OC role, but he still called the plays, and we know how the 2023 season played out.

While Ohio State went 11-2, the offense finished 45th nationally in scoring. That is still the only offense to finish outside the top 15 nationally in points per game during Day’s tenure.

Kyle McCord served as the scapegoat for fans, but that only scratched the surface of the issues. The ground game was far less explosive and fell behind even the numbers produced by the 2022 offense that was decimated by running back injuries.

The simplest way to put it? Nothing about the 2023 offense — from the staff organization to the player performance and development — was good enough. And that’s exactly why Day hired Chip Kelly.

Sure, keeping Kelly in Columbus would have always been preferable, but that was never going to happen — at least for long. A coach with his pedigree was bound to get whatever future opportunities he wanted, and he found it in the NFL.

But even in Kelly’s departure to join the Las Vegas Raiders, there was the chance to find a proven option for Ohio State, another veteran OC and proven QB developer. Instead, Day went all in with a number of pieces already in-house and Bowen from VT, and he did all with the development of former 5-star prospect Julian Sayin a paramount detail for 2025 (and beyond).

There’s no need to write off the formula before we have any results to gauge. But Day is putting a lot on the line coming off his national title.