BONUS: Legend Bey Ready To Go At Kick Returner

0:00Welcome to another special bonus episode. We are running out of time before kickoff at 12.30 on Saturday. So we're going to cram in another couple podcasts into your feed between now and then we get it. You don't want to be sitting in the office or walking the dog or whatever without having some Ohio State football stuff to listen to and think about. So we are going to do our very best to fill as many of those moments between now and kickoff as we possibly can. On this episode, we're going to get to hear a little bit from Ohio State head coach Ryan Day. You've already heard a bunch from his interview on Tuesday. Now he get a chance to hear a little bit from him, but what he had to say after practice on Wednesday. There's only one day difference, but they've had their two biggest practices between the time we talk to him Tuesday at noon and then Wednesday after practice. Those Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon practices are to the most physical and a lot of times some things have changed between those two things. So always interesting to hear the abbreviated we call it the lightning round press conference with Ryan Day on Wednesday.

1:00First thing he was asked about was sort of balancing working some of the freshman because we know they're going to be playing some freshman. Devon Sanchez played last year in that season opening game, but you can see legend Bay, you can see Jay Timmans. You're probably going to see some other guys as the game goes sort of further further along, but how do you balance working in those freshmen. But sort of ignoring, you know, hey, these guys are probably going to make some mistakes. Yeah, that's why we practice, but you know, we will always say veterans are remembering and young guys are learning and the faster they learn, the better. So we said this before if they make a mistake, okay, if they make the same mistake again, that's when there's a problem. There's going to be mistakes made early on when they go out there as long as they're making them at full speed and they don't continue to repeat those. Then that's a good thing. And so we've all seen that when you have young players out there, you have to work through some of those things and the guys that deserve to have that opportunity through what they've done in terms of earning trust with their teammates, with their coaches, and earn the opportunity to do that are going to do that.

2:01And then we'll watch their performance on the field and see if they have earned more reps, which there'll be some guys. Certainly I see that happening with them. One of the position groups that we had not heard a lot about during fall camp was the kickoff return and punt return units. And that's really sort of a function of the fact that they just don't work on that that much while we're in there. There hasn't been a lot of talk about that because there's been a lot of other questions that people have had to ask this month. So we got a chance to hear from Ryan Day. What the expectations were for the punt return and the kick return on Saturday. I will tell you I put out on Twitter. Here's what they're planning on doing and kick return and people got very excited. You'll see Brandon and Phil Bell and Devon McEun back at punt returner. And so we have those three guys that we feel good about. We'll see how many we have and see how many opportunities we give each guy and how that plays out. But those are really our three guys in the punt return game. And then in terms of kickoff, if things go the way that they've gone and the way we expect them to throughout the week, legend bay will take the first kickoff back.

3:09Next up, get an update on the tight end room, where things stand there, who he's expecting to play. And I'm going to tell you you're going to listen to this answer and you might think, hey, I think you missed someone and we'll get to that in a minute. I think when you look at, you know, just in the last couple of years, when you look at the development of Cade Stover, who came over from being a linebacker to being an NFL player, draft pick. And then obviously hit two tight ends here, drafted, you know, second and third round. You just see, you know, how they played obviously, you know, in the rivalry game and throughout the season. There was just a lot of progress made. And, you know, I think, you know, will last year was probably the best blocking tight end there was in the country. And most of the scouts that I spoke to and NFL personnel shared the same thing with me and certainly, you know, Max, you know, became a second round draft pick. And so I think that, you know, year and year out, you've seen the tight ends getting used more and more here. And that's a credit to him. This year, I think, you know, we have really good depth. There we have some really good young players, but it's been, it's been good to watch Mason come in and really earn the opportunity to play a lot this year.

4:19You're going to see Bennett, you're going to see Nate Roberts. And then you're going to start to see, you know, Max LaBloc have an opportunity to play as the season goes on. And those other young guys will kind of see how they continue to develop. But I feel like they have bright futures out of them, Nick Louder, Brody Lenin. So there's there's a good group there. But I think, you know, the top three right now would be, you know, Nate Mason, Bennett, not necessarily in that order. And then probably Max. All right. So bonus points to you if you thought, hey, he didn't say Hunter Welsing's name because it didn't occur to Ryan Day that he didn't say Hunter Welsing's name either until a little bit later on. We were actually already started to interview Luke Montgomery, Ryan Day had finishes interview, walked away, and then kind of what, uh oh, and came back and sort of interrupt the Luke Montgomery. He can pull rank. He's the head coach, pulled rank on Luke Montgomery, sat back down and then started talking here about, you know, oh, by the way, also Hunter Welsing. I just wanted to ask about tight ends and then I forgot about Hunter. And this is what happens when I start naming off guys. So this is why I don't like naming anybody.

5:27Hunter's got a very good camp. Hunter's going to play a lot of football as well. He's done a good job of coming in, you know, in a new program embracing the culture. He can really do some really good things down the field. He's learned to be physical in the run game. So that is another weapon for us at tight end is Hunter Welsing. So I just want to make sure I did that before I have to go find him and say, why am I not playing this year? You are playing Hunter. Just keep up the good work. Next up, the defensive line. That's a spot where everyone's kind of interested. We're assuming they're going to play a bunch of guys, but who's going to be starting in the defensive line on Saturday? I think it just depends on what personnel grouping we're in to early on depending on what they're in, but you're going to see all a lot of those guys play based on, you know, how many defense alignments are in the game based on what's in the game. So, you know, we have base personnel. We have nickel personnel, but you know, Kenyatta will be out there. Certainly Zion will be out there. James, Edrick, John Walker, bow.

6:30And then you're going to see the other guys rotate in really quickly. They took a kind of close look at a bunch of different stuff on the offensive line after the way things ended there last year, but they do have four returning starters, including Philip Daniels. So what did they want need to see from Philip Daniels to make sure that while they were shuffling all the stuff around that he was going to keep his job consistency is number one. And, you know, he certainly has the ability to play as good as anybody in the country, but the challenge was for him to play consistently. He's shown that in practice, but he needs to continue to do that throughout the games. And, you know, that's one of the best things is having that competition because it brings out the best and everybody up there. And those guys know they need to bring it every day, but, you know, he's earned the opportunity to do that. But there's a lot of guys that are working really hard, you know, that, you know, have certainly put themselves in a situation that, you know, we all feel comfortable with them going in the game as well. Earlier, you heard Ryan Day talk about the fact that legend Bay is going to be the starting kickoff returner. And I mentioned, yes, there's a lot of excitement around that because on the field, yeah, absolutely he can do some stuff that there are not very many people on that roster that can do. So sure, there you go. A lot of excitement there. But, you gotta remember, he also missed the first two days of fall practice for the game.

7:49And it's a very, very, very, very, very, very important thing for a disciplinary thing. So what did he do to sort of earn his way back into the good graces of the program and the trust to be the guy that they're putting out there to return kicks? Well, when we say there are events and the, you know, there was an event that happened and, you know, he certainly controlled at that point the response and the response since then has been much better. He's worked really hard in practice. And he's got some habits that he needs to improve on just because he was a quarterback before and there's a lot of things that come with playing running back that are a lot different than, then certainly being a quarterback. So he's had to learn those things. But he's worked and he's had a good attitude when he's been out there. It's not all been perfect. But I also think that we see the explosiveness when the balls in his hands. And he knows the first thing that he has to do when he's in the game is take care of the football. But so how do you do that? You have to earn, you have to build trust through time. And he's built enough trust that we feel comfortable with him being back there. But he's going to have to go, you know, I always say when the balls in your hands, you literally have, you know, the hopes and dreams of the entire Buckeye nation in your hands.

9:00Right? Like that's true. I heard a coach told me that one time and they're exactly right. So it's a big responsibility. And between Coach Locke, Coach Smith, myself, you know, I feel like we really hammered that home with legend. And he's he's embraced that and he knows how serious it is. At least, you know, that that's what he's shown. That's what we're going to go off of. So right now we trusted. He's going to go in the game and take care of the football forest and give an opportunity to be explosive. But the number one job is to make sure at the end of the play we have the football and then we'll go from there. And I think that's probably the message when the balls in your hands at the end of the play, we have to have the ball. And then let your training just kick in, let your national instincts take over. The rest of it will just happen. And finally, Ryan Day was asked about having two former head coaches as coordinator, NFL head coaches, Matt Patricia, Arthur Smith, what's his sense of confidence having guys who have done this before at a even higher level than college and who've even had bigger jobs at a higher level than college. It gives me energy. Yeah, it gives me energy. I you know, just you know, everybody, the coaching staff, everybody's working. You know, it looks the way it's shown on the field. The scheme has been been solid. I think that, you know, we have the right stuff. It's time to get going with the games and figure out what we have and have some success and make some mistakes and figure all those things out and start to solve the problems because, you know, we've said this before. There's certain assumptions that we're making going into the early half of the, you know, early few games into the season.

10:22Some of those are going to be right. Some of those are going to be wrong and how quickly can we identify them and get them right. But it's given me energy. It's it's allowed me a lot of opportunity to be around the players more. I mean, it kind of chased everybody around on the field. So it's been great to have them around and again, I every time I have an opportunity to thank, you know, our administration, you know, our board, our president, our cabinet for the opportunity to hire those guys because I don't take that for granted and these guys are great. All right. There you go. One more bonus show for you. We'll have more coming up a little later on in the week. We've got a ton of content coming for you all week long at Buckeye Insiders.com and at youtube.com slash at Buckeye Insiders. If you have not checked out our site at Buckeye Insiders.com, you should do that. We have a lot of content on our front page covering the football team covering recruiting, covering X's and O's. We've got some great scheme content from Ross Fulton and Michael Pettit this week. Got some basketball content there as well from Marcus Harman. But the real sweet spot on that site, the spot that it makes it worth your membership, that is the insider's board. That's where we have our conversations behind the paywall with our members.

11:26We can take some real deep dives on some stuff that we can't share outside the paywalls information that we can't necessarily share and just share our thoughts more broadly answer your questions all that kind of stuff you want to talk to us. You want to ask us questions, you want to interact with us, you want to interact with a really fun community, that is the place to do it. The insider's board at Buckeye Insiders.com. If you'd sign up today, get access to our whole team of insiders, get access to that community. Also get access to some of our fun live events. We got coming up a little later on this fall. We got one coming up next Friday night in Austin, Texas. If you're going to be in Austin, you're going to want to be a part of that live event. You can sign up today at Buckeye Insiders.com to get access to that. We're going to have some tailgates for home games later on in the season and a bunch of other stuff. So plenty of benefits to becoming a member. Membership has its privileges as they used to say on a credit card commercial in the 1980s and it definitely does at Buckeye Insiders.com. Thank you guys all for joining us and we will have more content for you as we count down to kick off.

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