What They’re Saying About Ryan Day

 

On Thursday, Chip Kelly made an addition to his coaching staff, hiring Ryan Day as the Eagles’ new quarterbacks coach.

Sheil offered some thoughts and background about Day on Friday, but here’s some more information from around the Web.

Chris McPherson of PhiladelphiaEagles.com talked to Boston College head coach Steve Addazio for his thoughts on Day:

“I thought Ryan was a bright, young coach who really gets it,” Addazio said by phone on Thursday night. “I had a great relationship with him at Florida. I watched how he recruited, how he handled himself. I thought he was a sharp guy. I have a great deal of respect for him.

“He’s an excellent teacher. He understands a lot of different styles of offense,” Addazio said. “He relates well to players. He did a great job recruiting. A tireless competitor.”

Austin Tedesco of Boston.com notes Day’s ability to adapt to his personnel:

He showed an ability to adapt his style to the team’s talent during his two years running BC’s offense. In his first season he organized a power running attack behind Heisman finalist Andre Williams, who rushed for more than 2,000 yards. Last season, Day took advantage of quarterback Tyler Murphy’s running ability and mixed in an option game that helped knock off then No. 9 USC and lead the Eagles to a 7-6 record.

Here’s what Kelly had to say about Day back when he got the job at BC:

“He [Ryan Day] played for me and I coached with him,” Oregon head coach Chip Kelly said today after the Ducks practice. “He was a great kid and one of the bright minds as well as one of the best players I have ever coached. I think he is one of the best young coaches in the country and it was just a matter of time before he was running the show, offensively, somewhere.”

Julian Benbow of The Boston Globe was able to speak to Day in 2012 about his coaching philosophy:

“My philosophy is to always be on the attack, always be aggressive, and to create as much conflict as we can on the defense,” Day said. “We’re going to do that in a lot of different ways.

“We’re going to have to be aggressive, we’re going to try to play fast, we’re going to always be on the attack, play tough, play hard-nosed with a lot of energy, and those are the key components to being successful.”

Day also spoke to Joseph Santoliquito of CBSPhilly.com in 2013 about Kelly and how he utilizes the quarterback in his schemes:

“Coach Kelly is a master of playing really, really fast, which has become an edge for him,” Day said. “Going into my senior year, he told me in the off season to lose some weight. I wasn’t super mobile. We ran zone option, side to side. From there on, his quarterbacks have run a little bit. But I wasn’t Colin Kaepernick by any means. I was able to run the offense, and I wasn’t running by too many people in the secondary. The best thing I can say about Coach is that he’s always been able to adapt his offense to the personnel that he has. He was like that at UNH and then at Oregon. But coach Kelly’s offensive background is in a lot of things, the run-and-shoot. He has backgrounds in the pro passing game, the spread, and read-option.

“He’ll take the best things the Eagles can do and he’ll use them. One of his greatest strengths as a coach is he’s a great thinker on his feet—that’s accurate. His players love playing for him. I played for him 10, 12 years ago and he’s one of my closest friends in college coaching. I can thank him for everything in football that I’ve had. He leaves an impact on people’s lives.”

ESPN.com had a story about how Day had his appendix removed one night and coached in a game the next night:

By 11 p.m., Day was undergoing emergency surgery to remove his appendix at a Boston hospital. The following morning, after taking a heavy dose of pain killers, he turned on the TV in his hospital room and saw one too many promos for the No. 2 Eagles’ ACC showdown at No. 8 Virginia Tech on Thursday night.

So Day did what any maniacal college football coach would do. He picked up the telephone and checked available airline flights to southwest Virginia. Day found a flight — he had to fly from Boston’s Logan Airport to New York’s LaGuardia and then to Roanoke, Va. — and didn’t have much time to get there. He climbed out of bed and left his room wearing electrodes and the same clothes he’d arrived at the hospital in the day before.

“The doctor told me, ‘Officially, I can’t clear you for this flight,'” Day said. “If it wasn’t Virginia Tech and wasn’t Thursday night, I wouldn’t have done it. My wife didn’t want me to go, God bless her. But she gave me her blessing at the end. I told her all week that I just had a feeling something special was going to happen.”

[H/T to Iggles Blitz for that link]

Here’s Chris Brown of Smart Football:

@lawlornfl Day has experience marrying gap run schemes with zone blocking schemes in a way with a lot of carryover. Ran for a lot of yards

— Chris B. Brown (@smartfootball) January 23, 2015