Ohio State's Ryan Day Gives his Preliminary Thoughts on Georgia

Ryan Day knows his No. 4 Ohio State team is in for a monumental task when they face No. 1 Georgia in the College Football Playoff Semifinals.

Christian Goeckel | Dec 5, 2022

The Ohio State Buckeyes (11-1, 7-1) faced a weekend of uncertainty. Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day knew his team needed some help after they fell to Michigan in the final week of the regular season.

The Buckeyes, at No. 5, were on the outside looking in. Then, on Friday night, No. 4 USC got trounced by Utah in the Pac-12 title game, opening the door for one-loss Ohio State to move up into the final slot of the College Football Playoff.

On Sunday, that's exactly what happened. Ohio State's reward for making the Playoff? A New Year's Eve matchup in Atlanta against the No. 1 Georgia Bulldogs (13-0, 9-0) in the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl.

Day met with the media following the announcement of the matchup.

On the chance to play Michigan in the College Football Playoff National Championship if they can upset Georgia:

“We have to go down to Georgia and play the defending national champions in Atlanta. If someone said that at the beginning of the year, “You get to go play the defending national champs, in Georgia.”, let’s go do it.” said Day.

“You gotta play [Georgia] in order to play for a national championship. That’s where our focus is going to go, and then we’ll go from there.”

On the job Kirby Smart has done at Georgia:

They’re a very good team. Kirby’s obviously done a great job; especially, breaking that threshold, last year, in the national championship. That’s something that I've got a lot of respect for; he did that. That’s a long time coming [for Georgia], and he did it. Hats off to him.

Ryan Day's initial thoughts on Georgia:

They came back this year really playing well; went through the whole season undefeated. Played really good in the SEC Championship Game, and they have a lot of weapons that are really well coached. So, big challenge for everyone across the board, but going into the season, we knew we were going to be in this situation; to play for it all, Georgia’s going to be in the way.

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