Emotional meeting after Michigan loss helped Ohio State refocus for championship run — ‘There was crying frustration. Anger.’

ATLANTA — Jack Sawyer remembers exactly where he was the afternoon of Tuesday, Dec. 3.

He’ll never forget it. Neither will Josh Fryar. Emeka Ebuka too. And Jeremiah Smith.

In fact, the entire Ohio State football team — more than 100 players — gathered in the team room on that Tuesday for an emotionally charged, sometimes heated, three-hour affair where grievances were aired, blame was accepted and tears were shed.

“I recall it being one of the toughest days of my football life,” said Fryar, a fifth-year senior offensive tackle. “You saw every raw emotion from every single player.”

Almost all of them talked, at least a couple from each position group. The only coach in the room, Ryan Day, talked too.

Still reeling over a home loss as 21-point underdogs to rival Michigan just three days before, Day weeped at times, described his missteps and actually accepted some of the blame: “I messed up,” he told players, Fryar said.

“Guys got stuff off their chest,” Sawyer said. “As competitors, guys were mad about a bunch of different things. We talked it out like grown men. We knew we had to come together and go chase this thing. And here we are, a month and a half later, playing for a national championship.”

Ryan Day and the Ohio State Buckeyes had a long, hard conversation after their loss to Michigan on Nov. 30. (Ben Jackson/Getty Images)

That they are. The Buckeyes arrived in Atlanta on Friday and attended the game’s annual media day on Saturday morning near the Mercedes-Benz Stadium, all of them in their white CFP sweatsuits.

The Buckeyes’ march here, so predictable at the start of the season, seemed so implausible just six weeks ago. Despite having perhaps the richest roster payroll in college football ($20 million), Ohio State stumbled across a slew of games in the regular season: the defense got…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-01-18 20:37:00

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