Indiana football: Here’s what Ryan Day said about the Hoosiers at Big Ten Media Days

Ohio State football head coach Ryan Day addressed the media on Wednesday, the first day of Big Ten Media Days, in Indianapolis.

With his Buckeyes set to take on Tom Allen’s Indiana Hoosiers on Sept. 2 in Bloomington for the season opener, he had a few things to say about Indiana. Here’s what he said:

Q. How do you feel about your offensive line entering camp? Is it your biggest concern? How do you feel about that group, Ryan?

DAY: Just in terms of guys going in a conference game on the road — we did that a couple years ago against Minnesota. Last year we’re playing Notre Dame at home. This year it’s Indiana on the road. Your concern is guys who haven’t played, guys that don’t have the experience.

The two guards have played, and the two tackles and the center haven’t. Now, I’m excited about some of our options there. Josh Fryar looks good, he cut weight. He’s doing better. We also added Josh Simmons, who prefers to be called Jimmy, by the way. We’ll have to call him Jimmy Simmons. Luke Montgomery has been in the mix. He had a really good summer. We have Vic Cutler we’ve added. We have some good pieces there. They just haven’t played.

That’s where this off-season has been important, but in August it’s going to be critical for them to build a chemistry and make sure they solidify themselves as starters. I think we have enough people there we feel good we can find that, but they have to go do it. That’s obviously something that we’ve got to make sure we’re focused on.

Then obviously the quarterback position. Those are probably the two biggest areas where we’ve got to make sure we’re doing a great job.

Q. Is there any way you would consider possibly starting or playing both quarterbacks early on in the season in games. I know that’s difficult with Indiana as the opener in a Big Ten game. Would you consider that at all? What would it take for that to happen?

DAY: In I guess the last now going on seven years, we’ve been in this situation quite a few times at Ohio State and just not knowing who the quarterback is going to be going into the season. You had a new one with Dwayne, had a new one with Justin, had a new one with CJ, and now here we are again.

When you go into these situations, you’d like for someone to emerge during camp, but who knows if that’s going to happen or not? You’d like to see somebody emerge, and then you name them, just like we’ve done with CJ and Justin and Dwayne. If that doesn’t happen, then maybe that is the case. We’ll have to evaluate it from there.

We’ll see. I know that we’ve got to go in and win that first game on the road, so we’re going to do everything we can and do what’s right for Ohio State.

Again, I’m excited to see these guys compete and go put it on the field. It’s different when you’re throwing routes in the air and going through workouts than when you’re actually playing football. We’ve got to go start playing football here and figure out who the quarterback is going to be.