There’s no rivalry bigger than Michigan Wolverines and Ohio State in all of college football. The Buckeyes’ head coach very well knows the stakes and what’s on the line here. After going 1–4 in their last five head-to-head matchups, the head honcho plans to cook up some long-term scheme to beat the brakes off Michigan this time around.

“Well, what you try to do is you try to put metrics in place that you can evaluate on a week-to-week basis, that ultimately you’re going to use in that last game. So, you know, winning different situations, winning different things. And so whether it’s a turnover battle, or rushing yards, or whatever those things are, we come back in on Sunday and say, okay, here are the things that we have to win in the rivalry game. And so here’s what we’re going to focus on during the season,” Ryan Day said of his secret anecdote when the host asked how he prepares for that rivalry week alongside every other week.

Basically, Coach Day knows that the Michigan game is the “big one” everyone cares about, but he can’t just ignore the rest of the season, right? So, to balance it out, he uses the weekly games as a giant practice run.

 

He tracks specific goals like winning the turnover battle or rushing for a certain number of yards that he knows are the “must-haves” to beat their rivals. For example, they know that in this rivalry, the team that rushes for more yards wins about 90% of the time. So, if they beat a team but didn’t dominate the run game, Day considers it a failure in their preparation for Michigan. They’ve taken this to heart lately. In their big 2025 win, the Buckeyes held Michigan’s offense to just 163 total yards compared to their own 419.

Mind you, the Buckeyes have one of the toughest schedules in the country. They open their non-conference Power Four slate against Steve Sarkisian’s Texas. The Buckeyes have the most diabolical stretch in mid-October, playing back-to-back against teams like Indiana, USC, and the Oregon Ducks. By winning them in their own game, Ryan Day builds confidence and conviction.

Instead of just looking at these wins as wins, the coaches evaluate every single game based on how those skills will translate to that final matchup. It’s like they are grading themselves on a “Michigan scale” every Sunday. If they do the right things during the season, he figures the wins will come naturally along the way while they prep for the big finale.

To make this idea feel real to the players, they have this “secret” tradition with actual bricks. After every single practice, Day gives a brick to a player who stood out that day. That player then goes over to a platform and physically sets it down.

The whole point of the bricks is to create a foundation that won’t crack. Day says that when the “storms” come (which is basically his way of describing the high pressure of the rivalry game), that foundation is either going to hold up or it’s not. There’s nothing in between. Even though the Buckeyes are 9/10 times the superior team than Michigan in terms of roster and elsewhere, you simply can’t just show up and hope for the best. You have to earn it months in advance.

This mindset helps them stay locked in on the opponent right in front of them while secretly building the strength they need to take down Michigan at the end of the year. By doing this, they have more than 12 weeks of game-study and prep-time on Michigan.

Why running the pigskin is the bread and butter in this matchup for Day

The only goal Coach Day focuses on to beat Michigan is winning the rushing battle against them. If you look at the history and more, the team that outrushes the other has won this rivalry for the last 24 years.

Ryan Day learned it not the so easy way. In their 2024 season, despite Michigan going 8-5 without actual QB1, they put blind faith on their defense to stop Day breaking his 4 loss streak. The Wolverines’ defense held the natty-winning Buckeyes to only 77 yards in a 13–10 loss. So, since then, Day made a dominant ground game the central metric for his program’s preparation when it comes to the Michigan Wolverines.

It paid off in dividends for the Buckeyes last season. The Buckeyes outrushed the Wolverines 186 to 100. Bo Jackson even had more rushing yards than Michigan combined. To Ryan Day, the secret to the Michigan game isn’t complicated: you just needs to run the ball better than they do.

Apart from that, Day looks at “ball control” as the second half of that rushing goal. They controlled the ball for 40 minutes and 1 second compared to Michigan’s 19:59. By making the rushing battle a non-negotiable weekly metric, Day has turned the Buckeyes back into a physical powerhouse that can weather the storm and finally take back control of the rivalry.

 

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