Skull Session: Ryan Day is Moving Different in 2025, Ohio State Looks As Dangerous As Ever and Matt Patricia’s Defense is Hilariously Good

Welcome to the Skull Session.

Ohio State wide receivers are special.

WRU on full display https://t.co/9KhqTsRJr8
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) October 5, 2025

Have a good Monday.

RYAN DAY IS MOVING DIFFERENT. Before Ohio State faced Minnesota on Saturday, Ryan Day stood on the 10-yard line and watched the unthinkable — winless UCLA knocking off Penn State, 43-37. The head coach walked into the locker room and, I assume, gave a similar message to the one he shared with the media after the game.

“If you want to be great, you have to be great all the time. Otherwise, you’re not great. You’re just somebody that shows up every week, and you don’t know what you’re getting,” Day said after Ohio State’s win. “That was the message to our team: It’s about our identity. If your identity is that you want to be great, that you want to be consistent, whatever those things are — we have a list of what we want to be — you have to do that every week, otherwise that’s not who you are, it’s just what you want to be. We talk to our guys a lot about that, but there has to be buy-in.

“We’ve got to go to Illinois next week, and it’s gonna be a bear. You saw what happened in college football today. You’ve got to bring it every week. The team that’s desperate and the team that’s hungry is gonna win the game. And it’s our job to make sure it doesn’t take a loss to make sure we are hungry and desperate. But these guys are still kids, so you’ve got to keep hammering home.”

This elite mindset has made Day a national champion — and college football’s all-time leader in head coach winning percentage. What he said later in the press conference has, too, but let’s look at that in the next section.

RYAN DAY IS MOVING DIFFERENT, PART TWO. When asked what prompted him to reiterate multiple times this week that Ohio State needed to be the most desperate and hungry team in college football, Day said he’s “just always on alert” and wants to make sure no opponent catches his team “off guard.”

“When you keep winning, it’s easy to take the problems and the issues and just say it’s not a problem,” Day said. “I’ll just say it: Bo Jackson reaches the ball out on second down, that’s a problem. We should not be reaching the ball out. That’s going to be a fumble down the road. I’m just going to call it out for what it is. That’s an issue. And if the ball is fumbled, then we’re in a different situation right now. We have to recognize the things we need to get better at.

“The 3rd-and-2, Lincoln (Kienholz) should have been in the A gap, but he bounced it. That’s going to lose us a game if we don’t recognize how important those things are. I love those guys, but we’ve got to get them fixed. And really, that goes to the coaches. We’ve got to get that straightened out. We’ve got to practice it better. We’ve got to drill it better. We’ve got to hold them accountable.

“Those are the things that when you’re chasing greatness, you gotta be all over, you’ve got to take them serious. And it can’t be after a loss when all of a sudden, everybody starts sitting up straight in meetings, or you’re gonna get burnt. Like they say in the Navy SEALs, when you think you’ve got it, you’re about to get it. And we’re far from where we need to be. So we have to stay hungry every day.”

Ryan Day is gone.

Only Evil Ryan Day remains.

I’m kidding — mostly.

Day has been moving different since Dec. 1, 2024, when Ohio State bounced back from its own unthinkable loss with wins over Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame en route to a national championship. This season, Day will do whatever he can to make sure his team never falls flat.

“He’s trying to make sure that we’re never complacent,” Block O winner and captain Sonny Styles said. “Despite the success we’ve had, we know what it’s like to be at the bottom and for everyone to say different stuff about us.”

Call it evolution. Call it urgency. Whatever it is, Day and the Buckeyes look as dangerous as ever.

SILVER BULLETS → SILVER BULLETING. Here’s an incredible stat from Reddit user potterpockets, who shared over the weekend that even if Ohio State’s opponents were able to roll over the points previous teams scored against the Buckeyes in 2025, Ohio State would still be 5-0.

Ohio State beats Texas, 14-7 → 14-7
Ohio State beats Grambling State 70-0 → 70-7
Ohio State beats Ohio 37-9 → 37-16
Ohio State beats Washington 24-6 → 24-22 (this one was close!)
Ohio State beats Minnesota 42-3 → 42-25

Matt Patricia’s defense is hilariously good.

THANK YOU, 11W. I’ll have plenty of Ohio State vs. Minnesota #content in Tuesday’s Skull Session, but I need to end Monday’s column with this: thank you to everyone who came to Eleven Dubgate XIII.

On behalf of the Eleven Warriors staff, we’re incredibly grateful for how you showed out for Special Olympics Olentangy. Eleven Warriors editor Ramzy Nasrallah — who deserves major praise for planning and running the Dubgate for over a decade — informed our staff on Sunday that the event raised over $6,700 for the organization. That’s incredible.

I also want to thank you for your kind words about our work at Eleven Warriors. As full-time staffers, Dan, Andy, and I work tirelessly to provide coverage that’s accurate, entertaining, and informative — and our contributors bring that same energy. We were honored to hear how many of you enjoy the results of that hard work.

Here’s to a great Eleven Dubgate XIV next fall!

DAILY DUBCAST. The first Eleven Dubcast of the week recaps the Ohio State vs. Minnesota game before gawking at the astonishing implosion this past weekend of James Franklin, Jim Knowles and Penn State against UCLA.