Coach Ryan Day reveals heartbreaking reason Julian Sayin and Ohio State couldn’t play at 100%: “Those kids gave everything they had”
Ten minutes ago, Ryan Day stepped to the podium inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center looking like a man who hadn’t slept in days. What he said next turned Buckeye Nation’s rage into tears in a matter of seconds.
“Julian Sayin hasn’t been 100 % since Wednesday,” Day began, his voice already trembling. “He suffered a severe high-ankle sprain and deep hip-flexor bruising in our final full-pad practice. Doctors told us Thursday morning he was 60–65 % at best. He begged – literally begged – to play against Indiana.
I’ve never seen anything like it in 25 years of coaching.”
The room went silent.
Day continued: “He could barely cut in walk-throughs Thursday and Friday. We taped him so heavily he said it felt like cement blocks on his legs. Every drop-back was agony.
Every sack he took – five of them – he was basically a statue back there because he couldn’t plant or push off his right side.”
Sources inside the program later confirmed the exact moment the injury occurred: 11:27 a.m. Wednesday, red-zone period, seven-on-seven. Sayin rolled left, planted to throw across his body, and his right ankle rolled viciously inward.
He collapsed instantly, screaming in pain – a sound teammates described as “blood-curdling.” Trainers sprinted from the sideline. The cart came out. Practice stopped for eight full minutes.
Medical staff immediately diagnosed a grade-2 high-ankle sprain with associated hip-flexor trauma. The original prognosis was “doubtful” for Saturday. Sayin spent the next 72 hours in constant treatment: ice baths, hyperbaric chamber, platelet-rich plasma injections, toradol shots, and enough tape to wrap a mummy. He never once missed a meeting.
“Kid wouldn’t even let us list him as questionable on the depth chart,” one assistant coach told me off the record. “He said if his name was on that sheet with anything less than ‘starter,’ he’d never forgive us.”
Sayin wasn’t the only one fighting through serious pain.
Day revealed that the relentless late-season grind – 15 straight weeks of full-contact practices, back-to-back top-10 matchups, and zero bye weeks – had left the roster decimated.
Jeremiah Smith: playing on a badly sprained big toe that swelled to twice its size after the Michigan game Josh Simmons: chronic knee effusion that required draining twice in eight days Denzel Burke: cracked ribs from the Penn State game that still hurt when he coughed Lathan Ransom: deep thigh bruise so severe he couldn’t accelerate out of breaks TreVeyon Henderson: nagging hamstring that flared up again in pre-game warmups
Every starter on the two-deep, Day said, was dealing with something significant.
“We made the decision as a staff that we weren’t going to make excuses,” Day explained. “These kids are warriors. They refused to let us use injuries as a crutch. They wanted to line up and fight. So we let them.”
The result was an offense that looked nothing like the explosive unit that torched Oregon and Penn State earlier in the year. Ten points. 187 total yards. Zero third-down conversions after halftime. Five sacks. Two turnovers. A quarterback who could barely move in the pocket.
And still, Ohio State was a dropped interception away from sending the game to overtime.
Fans who had spent the last 36 hours torching Day, the offensive line, and the play-calling did a complete 180 the moment the press conference hit social media.
Within fifteen minutes:
#ThankYouJulian was the No. 1 trending topic in the United States A GoFundMe titled “Send Julian Sayin to the best medical team money can buy” raised $87,000 in an hour The entire 2026 recruiting class began tweeting photos of themselves wearing ankle braces with the caption “Whatever it takes”
One viral clip showed a father in Cincinnati hugging his crying 10-year-old son in an Ohio State jersey while reading Day’s quotes aloud. Another showed a bar in Cleveland erupting in applause instead of boos when the press conference aired on the big screens.
Sayin himself finally spoke late Sunday night from the training room, right leg elevated and wrapped in ice, face still pale from pain medication.
“I don’t want pity,” he posted on Instagram along with a photo of his swollen ankle. “I wanted to play for my brothers. We left it all out there. That’s all that matters. Love y’all. On to the next one.”
The post already has 1.4 million likes.
Ryan Day ended his press conference with a plea that has since been viewed more than 20 million times:
“Those kids gave absolutely everything they had on that field Saturday night. Every snap was pain for some of them. They’re 18, 19, 20 years old, and they laid their bodies on the line for this university.
Please – I’m begging you – show some grace, some understanding, some love right now. They deserve it more than anyone.”
As Ohio State begins bowl preparations and the transfer portal opens tomorrow, one thing is abundantly clear: the narrative around the Indiana loss has changed forever.
This wasn’t a choke. This wasn’t a collapse. This wasn’t coaching malpractice.
This was a group of battered, broken teenagers who refused to quit even when their bodies screamed stop.
And leading them – limping, grimacing, defiant – was an 18-year-old freshman who turned a catastrophic injury into one of the gutsiest performances in Ohio State history.
The scoreboard says 10-13. The heart of Buckeye Nation says something entirely different.
Thank you, Julian. Thank you, Buckeyes. Heal up. We’ve got your back.
