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Who will new Titans head coach Mike Vrabel hire as his offensive coordinator? That’s the question everyone wants an answer to. We’ve all heard the rumored names — John DeFilippo, Matt LaFleur, etc.
But Adam Schefter gives us one from out of left field here. It’s Ohio State co-offensive coordinator Ryan Day. Look at the wording here. Schefter says Day is “considering becoming the Titans OC.” That would obviously mean some sort of offer has been made.
New Titans’ HC Mike Vrabel’s offensive coordinator hire is significant, and....Ohio St. co-offensive coordinator Ryan Day is considering becoming the Titans’ OC, according to league sources.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) January 21, 2018
Who is Ryan Day? He’s a guy off the Chip Kelly tree. He actually played quarterback for Kelly at New Hampshire.
Ryan Day played under Chip Kelly at New Hampshire, then began his coaching career under him at UNH. Kelly hired Day to be his QB coach in PHI, SF. Seems likely to bring back a lot more Oregon college scheme for Marcus Mariota, if hired.
— Cameron Wolfe (@CameronWolfe) January 21, 2018
Day was the quarterbacks coach for the Eagles and 49ers before joining Ohio State. He was the offensive coordinator at Temple and Boston College before hitting the NFL.
He ran the Ohio State offense with Kevin Wilson in 2017. The Buckeyes, of course, run a spread system under Urban Meyer. I would assume Day would bring some form of that spread to the Titans, if he were to be hired.
We’ve clamored for years now for more spread offense. This would certainly give us that. In the little spread action that we saw last year, Mariota really popped. You saw the run game open up too with less traffic in the middle of the field.
So the Ohio State offense could be coming to Nashville. That’s a pretty exciting thought, with Mariota in place. The NFL is a different animal, but this is pretty clearly the best system to maximize Mariota’s talents.
UPDATE
After doing some digging and research, Day seems pretty adaptive as a play-caller. He called the shots for Boston College, overseeing a straight-ahead power scheme which allowed Andre Williams to run for over 2,000 yards.
The next year he came back with a power run game centered around quarterback Tyler Murphy. While the Titans are certainly primed to run some spread looks, I guess we shouldn’t assume that Day would totally commit to that with the Titans.
Bottomline seems to be this — Day is going to run whatever works best to move the football. That seems like such an obvious statement to make, but we saw Terry Robiskie and Mike Mularkey stick to what they wanted to run over what actually worked too many times.