Ohio State Buckeyes: 5 takeaways from Ryan Day’s spring practice preview

Here are five things to know from the 45-minute media session:

1. Day has a simple formula for success this spring.

After most of spring practice was wiped out by the coronavirus pandemic last year, the coach of the Buckeyes just wants to see what his guys can do.

“We have to make sure we get 15 practices and start with that right there,” Day said. “And then we just need to get better fundamentally. We need to keep guys healthy so they get these reps so that when we get done with the spring we have ‘X’ number of reps on film that we can coach up off of film over the next couple of months as we head into preseason.”

That includes the three freshman quarterbacks — C.J. Stroud, Jack Miller III and Kyle McCord — who are competing to replace Justin Fields.

“They have to just dive themselves into the process,” Day said. “They can’t worry day in and day out and about am I going to get one leg up on the guy next to me or not. Certainly it’s a competition, and there has to be a little bit of that, but what has to happen is you just have to get really just immersed in the process and how do I get better every day.”

2. He has revised his insistence on getting as many game-like reps as possible.

“The first knee-jerk reaction coming off this season was we’ve just got to start getting game reps, game reps, game reps because I was so nervous about not playing games, but the more I talked to our staff, we can’t just jump into that,” Day said. “We missed a lot of fundamental work, and we have to make sure that we’re fundamentally sound and our foundation is right before we just jump into those types of things.

“So I think it’s going to be a combination of really making sure fundamentally where we need to be, but then at the same time like we talked about we do need to try to get some team and game reps going in those situations.”

3. The team is fairly healthy.

Although Day said “a pretty good list of guys” are coming off surgeries and could be limited this spring, he expects just about everyone to be able to get at least some work in before all is said and done.

Mentioned by name were defensive backs Cam Brown, who suffered leg injury in week two at Penn State, and Kourt Williams, who went down with a knee injury in the preseason.

They will not have contact this spring, but Day anticipates them being able to do some individual drills before spring ball is over.

4. One defensive back is suspended.

Day confirmed Marcus Hooker is suspended indefinitely as he faces an OVI charge.

“We’re very disappointed and take what happened very, very seriously,” Day said. “We’re gonna let the process play out.”

According to Franklin County Municipal Court records, an impaired Hooker was pulled over southwest of campus in Columbus on Saturday. He was not in an accident, and he did produce insurance. Hooker is to appear in court Friday morning.

“He is suspended right now indefinitely, and we’ll kind of see as things move forward,” Day said. “We’ll make the decisions as we go, but want to get all the information for us before we did anything.”

Hooker is a fourth-year player from Pennsylvania who had 15 tackles in seven games last season.

5. The Buckeyes are still taking things one day at a time as the pandemic is still not over.

They received a reminder COVID-19 can still rear its ugly head at anytime when the team had to pause workouts last week, but Day indicated there is growing optimism within the program things will sooner or later be back to normal.

“I mean, it was like taking a punch last week when we had to shut down for a little while,”Day said. “It was like, ‘Oh my gosh, here we go again,’ but we got back in here this week. We’re starting to get going again. We’ve got practice on Friday. The news that we’ll have the vaccine here by the end of the month was huge. And so because of that, yeah, we’re starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel here, starting to get some excitement going again.

“Our guys have been into it. I think they’ve had a really good seven weeks of training. The attitudes have been excellent. And again, nothing is perfect. I think we have a great group, a great culture. There’s still things that we need to work on. There’s still mistakes that people make, but we’re in a good place right now and it’s exciting moving forward in the future.”