Buckeye Postgame Updates: Ryan Day Happy With Win, Focus Turns To Penn State

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Following Ohio State’s 41-7 win at Purdue on Saturday, Buckeye head coach Ryan Day met with reporters to discuss OSU’s 34-point victory. Day discussed the re-emergence of sophomore running back Dallan Hayden, the injury to cornerback Denzel Burke, the overall performance of both the Buckeye offense and defense, and much, much more. The highlights of everything he had to say can be found below.

No injury updates right now.
Liked the way the game started. “We all know we have a big game next week.” Some people would call this week a trap game. He talked to the team all week about competitive stamina and competitive excellence, bringing it every week. That’s life in the Big Ten, especially on the road.
On the red zone package with QB Devin Brown: Starting off with the weather, they wanted to make sure they had a good plan. Devin Brown is big and strong, so he gives them something. They’ve been working on it. It helps equate numbers in the red zone, but they can’t turn it over. “I’m glad we were able to do that in this moment here.” He threw a nice ball to Brandon Inniss. They’ll keep building that package.
Came out strong in the first half, aside from the fumble. The defense kept fighting, especially down at the 1-yard line. Feel much better about the way they ran the ball, especially being down three running backs.
It starts with the leaders on defense. They’ve been in a lot of battles before.
When you lose three running backs, you need to rely on the offensive line to rock the ball, even against a loaded box at times. Dallan Hayden ran hard. Xavier Johnson took some hand-offs as well to help ease the losses.
Dallan Hayden has really good feet. He’s got good vision, good quickness. It showed his mental preparation because he hasn’t played a bunch. He took care of the ball.
They hope to get everybody back next week.
It felt like they were knocking guys off the ball at the line of scrimmage.
Cade Stover does a lot of the dirty work for them in the run game. That then creates play-action passes. He also had a nice catch in a one-on-one situation.
Dallan Hayden will remain on call week to week.