Ohio State took “a hard look in the mirror” after losing to Michigan but turned the page to preparing for the College Football Playoff even before the Buckeyes knew they’d be in.
Ohio State didn’t get here the way it wanted to get here, but the Buckeyes are in the place they had hoped they’d be right now all along.
“The goal was to be in the CFP at this point. That was it when we started the season. And here we are. Strange way to get here, but that's it at the end of the day,” Day said Sunday. “So it's a new season, and you learn from the past. And there's been precedents on this. You look at last year, Georgia lost to Alabama in the SEC Championship. I think it was 41-24 and then went on to win the whole thing. So now it's just a matter of what we do moving forward.
By the middle of last week, however, Ohio State began to turn the page from the loss to Michigan and start looking forward to a potential CFP game. Even though the Buckeyes didn’t know for sure that they would make the playoff – and there’s a good chance they wouldn’t have ifin the Pac-12 Championship Game – they practiced Wednesday and Thursday as though they were going to make the CFP. Day was pleased with the team’s focus amid the uncertainty.
“I mean, we wanted to be playing in the Big Ten Championship Game and that hurt. So no, it was not a good week. It was an awful week. But we did a lot of that. We looked at self-scout. We looked at Georgia, we looked at up north, even got ahead of the game plans on those,” Day said. “Just that if we're in the situation, let's not be a week behind. We worked pretty hard on that in all three of those areas.
The Buckeyes know they will have to play better than they did against Michigan if they have a chance to beat Georgia. The Bulldogs are the defending national champions and widely regarded as college football’s best team once again, so Ohio State will need to be better in every phase of the game if it’s going to pull off the upset.
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