Ohio State Buckeyes College Football Pregame Quote, 01/08/2025

Q. How much do you watch other offenses as opposed to other defenses?

COACH KELLY: You watch the other offense when you’re watching the other defense. You know what I mean?

When you are watching all 12 of the playoff games, you are not only watching Texas defense, but you’re watching the team that’s playing against them.

So you saw Georgia twice. Then you saw Arizona State last week and every other game they played this year.

You are looking at both. You are looking at plays maybe that is there a certain group of plays that affected their defense as you try to put together your plan.

Q. How much of a temptation is there to do too much of what other teams to do well against someone versus what you do well?

COACH KELLY: I think that’s the dilemma for all coaches. That’s a really good point.

How does it fit into what we do? How does it fit into the skill sets of our players? We’re trying to play to our strengths. You may say this is a good scheme, but it takes a certain type of player in this position to run it, but it may not be what we’re in. It also may be something we don’t do at all. So then time on task, how many times would you have to run that play versus the varied looks they give you. And is it worth investing that time in that? Or is it better to invest in timing on some other things.

That’s always part of your how much is too much; how much is too little. You are always kind of going into these games and saying we prepared for each situation. Do we have enough players in those situations?

Then do we have the requisite amount of time to practice and feel confidence in that game plan and our players can execute them.

Q. What do you know about the Texas Defensive Coordinator (Pete Kwiatkowski)?

COACH KELLY: I know Pete. I’ve faced him. He’s really sound, very, very well coached team. Their co defensive coordinator Johnny [Nansen] was on staff when I was at UCLA. So I worked with Johnny.

I think they are the number one red zone defense in the country, and that’s for a reason. Again, they played big time SEC schools. Really, really well coached team and a really good scheme.

Q. Do you think that coming up the way and coaching at that level, what have you picked up from that moving forward to where you are now?

COACH KELLY: I think everybody has varied pasts. Sometimes when you are at a lower level, you have to have more responsibility. Not only are you a running back coach, but you also may be in charge of filming practice.

You pick up a lot of different things and a lot of different skill sets that maybe you wouldn’t get if you were at a bigger school. You get exposed to a lot of different things when you coach at the lower levels because there aren’t as many coaches. You have to wear a lot of different hats. I think that helps you in the long run.

Q. We talked throughout the season of Will’s [Howard] running. How prepared do you feel like he is to do that, if needed?

COACH KELLY: Yeah, he’s extremely prepared. Will is a tremendous athlete. What we do is based upon what the conditions give us and do you need him to run into that. We have all the confidence in Will in the world if he has to tuck into the zone.

Q. Are you having fun this season?

COACH KELLY: Yeah. This group of players is great. The fact we get to be around the kids, it’s been awesome. It’s a great coaching staff. We hope to keep it together one more week.

Q. Can you talk about Coach [Ryan] Day, just his management style and just how he steers the program?

COACH KELLY: There’s things that come up for head coaches that sometimes that are different than being prepared for third down. I think he’s done an unbelievable job of managing all the responsibilities that come with being a head coach.

I would say he’s probably more involved in offense, defense, and special teams game planning than any other head coach in the country because of how he’s done it.

Q. How would you describe how he handled, after the Michigan game, the external stuff of needing a new guy in here, the whole calling-for-his-job thing and all that kind of stuff. You have been through that as a coach. How did he handle that from your point of view?

COACH KELLY: He was the same person every day. When we’re in the Woody (Woody Hayes Athletic Center), we don’t talk about anything external. We talk about praise and blame is all the same.

So when you win the Tennessee game and everybody tells you how great you are, that means absolutely nothing when you walk in the doors of the Woody. When you lose a game and everybody’s talking about how bad you are, that means absolutely nothing when you walk into the Woody.

It’s about how Sundays are set up and how to have a great training session on Sunday, and how does that lead into our game plans on Monday and what Tuesday and Wednesday look like.

I think he was extremely consistent. I mean, regardless of what was going on outside of that building, every week laid itself out in the exact same mindset.

Watching him being able to not be distracted, I think that’s one of the things we pride ourselves on. You can be distracted as a coach if you pay attention to things going on outside. If you pay attention to things on the outside that aren’t about our current opponent, it’s a distraction. He’s done a great job of not being distracted.

Q. Before a game like this, do you ever sit in your office and go “I got to come up with something that’s going to surprise”? Do you have those kind of moments or periods, where like, two of your first three plays in the Rose Bowl you understand, coming up with or being creative, whatever you want to call it.

COACH KELLY: We don’t and I understand the question. But we don’t look at it that way. We look at as how do we put together a plan that will beat this defense and then that’s it.

There’s a lot of ideas that come up. What can we run? What can we manage? How much is that play? Is that a good play? It’s a really good play, but how much do we have to invest from a timing standpoint to be able to run that play? If we’re only going to run it once a game, how much snaps do we need in practice to run it?

And if it’s going to take 30 snaps to get it down right, to run it once, that’s a problem we might not play that week. We might play it another week.