Ohio State’s Ryan Day sought NFL experience in offensive coordinator

When Ohio State coach Ryan Day hired Arthur Smith as offensive coordinator in January, it mirrored a staffing move from the previous offseason.

He found a coordinator with a deep NFL background

Smith had been in the league for more than a decade, rising through the ranks from a quality control coach to head coach of the Atlanta Falcons.

It was a similar path to Matt Patricia, who made a splash in his first year as the Buckeyes’ defensive coordinator after a long career as an assistant and head coach in the NFL.

The immediate success of Patricia, who kept the Buckeyes as the top-ranked defense in the Football Bowl Subdivision in 2025 despite heavy roster attrition, offered a blueprint for the other side of the ball with Day leaning into a CEO-style role leading the program.

“It allows me an opportunity to kind of step away,” Day said, “and really dive in everything else and be more present in the building with players, staff, and certainly with the NIL stuff and raising money. It’s a different mindset.”

Day first hired an established play-caller for his offense when the Buckeyes won the national championship in 2024, bringing in his coaching mentor Chip Kelly as the coordinator.

Kelly also had four years of experience in the NFL between head-coaching stints with the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers. But he had not gone directly from the league to Ohio State, having spent six seasons coaching UCLA in the immediate years before his move to Columbus.

As Day considered Smith in his latest coordinator search, he valued his postseason experience. In each of Smith’s four years as an offensive coordinator between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Tennessee Titans, the teams made the playoffs, including the Titans’ appearance in the AFC championship game in 2019.

The expansion of the College Football Playoff has put a premium on teams peaking at the right time in December and January, requiring them to play as many as 16 or 17 games, approaching the length of the NFL’s 18-week, 17-game regular season.

“We’re trying to build an identity that carries throughout the entire season,” Day said. “When you have somebody like Arthur who has been through playoff games and played through a long season in the NFL, you have to build toward the end of the season. That’s the goal for us, because when you think about the way things are structured now, you’ve got to be building toward the end of the season.”

The Buckeyes hit a wall down the stretch last year. After finishing the regular season with an unbeaten record, they lost consecutive games to Indiana in the Big Ten championship and Miami in the playoff quarterfinals to end the year.

In two postseason losses, the Buckeyes, who averaged 37 points per game during the regular season, totaled just 24 points.

Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Email him at jkaufman@dispatch.com and follow him on @joeyrkaufman on X.