Some fans went way too far after Will Howard took that knee in Ohio State's loss to Oregon last football season. Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Ohio State's Will Howard received death threats after Oregon loss, per report

Originally posted on CFB-HQ on SI | By James Parks | Last updated Jun 2, 2025 12:40 PM ET

Ryan Day wasn’t the only member of the Ohio State football team to receive death threats after the Buckeyes’ loss to Oregon last season.

Apparently, quarterback Will Howard was also on the receiving end of some sinister warnings from deranged fans, according to Kirk Herbstreit.

They started coming in when Howard slid down on the field at the Oregon 26-yard line as time ran out of Ohio State’s eventual one-point loss on the road to the Ducks.

“Will Howard, he took a knee against Oregon. He played his ass off against Oregon. He took a knee because he lost the time. And he took death threats,” Herbstreit said on The Learning Leader Show.

He added: “It’s so insane that these people have a voice to get to you. And you have just got to somehow insulate yourself the best you can. Because it is brutal.”

The advent of social media provides fans of all sorts an opportunity to get something like direct access to players and coaches, and it’s not always good.

“It’s not easy what you guys are dealing with. And I don’t mean just sports, I’m talking social stuff,” Herbstreit said.

“You get to college football, you are playing on national TV, you miss a field goal when the game is on the line, you get death threats. Death threats. That is real.”

Howard rebounded from the loss, to say the least, leading the Buckeyes to a national championship run that included revenge against then-No. 1 Oregon in the Rose Bowl quarterfinal, throwing for 319 yards and 3 touchdowns in a 41-21 rout.

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day was also the subject of death threats last season, as his wife, Nina, recounted, when she received text messages imploring her husband to commit suicide after the team’s upset loss to rival Michigan.

“They told me multiple times to have Ryan follow in his father’s footsteps and kill himself,” the coach’s wife told The Columbus Dispatch.

Day’s family hired armed guards and even briefly considered leaving Columbus amid that scare.

It’s another unsettling reminder that college football fans of any school have the capacity to take things way too far, but thankfully those fans are in the minority.

(Herbstreit)