In real time…the thunder and lightning entrance (background) was a metaphor – not nearly enough against teams who perform beyond the publicity and empty anticipation. (Press Pros Feature Photos)
Buckeye fans are left to wonder what might have been — or perhaps what even was. Maybe this team was just not the juggernaut we made it out to be after watching weekly dominations of overmatched mid-tier teams.
Arlington, Texas — So it turns out Ohio State will not repeat as national champions after all.
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Miami crushed those dreams here Wednesday night in front of a crowd of 71,323 vociferous fans hoping for a return to glory for their program.
That might yet happen for the Hurricanes, but they still have to win two more games.
Veteran columnist Marcus Freeman writes the Buckeyes and sports at large for Press Pros Magazine.com.
So, welcome back to reality.
Sometimes in college football, magical things happen and everything aligns.
Sometimes you have a great defense and a suspect unit on the other side wipes it out.
Actually that is much more common, and it’s what happened to the 2025 Ohio State football team.
The 2025 Silver Bullet defense really was that good, exceeding expectations. The offensive line really was as much of an issue as it seemed like it might be as years of subpar recruiting caught up with the unit.
And so Ohio State did not defy the odds as it turns out. They won’t be the first repeat national champions in program history.
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They miraculously made themselves better on defense by upgrading at defensive coordinator and plugging in new guys like Kayden McDonald, Arvell Reese, Kenyatta Jackson and Caden Curry, all veterans who were waiting in the wings behind NFL draft picks last year.
But the offense lost two good backs in TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins, a first-round receiver (Emeka Egbuka) and a first-round offensive lineman in Donovan Jackson.
The new quarterback had a great year for a redshirt freshman, but Julian Sayin still has a lot of room to grow.
The new backs weren’t really good enough.
The line wasn’t either, at least when playing teams better than Rutgers or Michigan.
Such is life sometimes.
This is also why you can’t afford to let chances like last year get away.
(Ask about 20 past Ohio State teams or the 2021 Cincinnati Bengals if you have any doubts.)
Of course there were times this looked like a team for the ages. The Buckeyes crushed Big Ten team after Big Ten team, only slowing down when star receivers Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate missed time in November with injuries.
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It would be nice to have a program that can win without superior talent on the perimeter, but clearly Ohio State does not.
Some of that is just natural attrition in college football. The quality of a roster always ebbs and flows, but the deficiencies on the offensive line were anticipated for years by people who follow recruiting closely. In fact, this unit might have overachieved based on sheer talent and experience, but Ohio State should not be in that position to need something like that to happen.
Perhaps those who are returning — which could be all of them, but it’s hard to know in this portal-plagued reality in which we now exist — will get incrementally better, and that unit will dominate next season.
Perhaps they reload like they should have this past offseason.
We’ll worry about that in the weeks and months to come.
For now it’s hard not to conclude the 2025 Buckeyes were just never that dominant team they appeared to be for long stretches of the season.
It is what it is.
A dejected Ryan Day leaves the field following Thursday’s 24-14 loss to Miami in the Cotton Bowl. “We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to do better. So that’s the bottom line. Whatever it takes to get better, we’ll do.”
“I thought the guys battled and got back into a rhythm,” head coach Ryan Day said. “And I thought we had a good plan going in on how to get the ball out of our hands quick, but that obviously didn’t work. We took five sacks.
“So we’ve got to get back to it and figure out where we’re going to go moving forward, but we’ve got to sit down and evaluate all of it.”
If Matt Patricia returns as defensive coordinator, the biggest concern concerning for the long term is what Day does with his offense.
Brian Hartline is done as offensive coordinator, a job I’m not sure he was ever cut out for anyway.
Of course he’ll be missed in recruiting and developing receivers, but that’s all the more reason for the offense to need to continue to evolve.
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It tried and tried this fall, often in vain, a fact exposed by the two best teams Ohio State played after a glorious detonation of a Michigan it turned out was running on fumes.
That said, this was the second game in a row where the offensive game plan seemed to be a big problem, too.
After leaning heavily on heavy formations against Indiana, Ohio State came out trying to spread the field more, run the ball and throw it deep.
That didn’t work because of issues up front as they asked their physically limited blockers to win one-on-one battles against Miami’s talented front four, a losing proposition if there ever was one.
They were capable of coming up with answers because they did just that, but not until the second half when Day remembered angles are your friend if you’re not big enough to bully the man across from you.
By then, the margin for error was just too small, and now they get to stew on that for a few months before giving it another go next fall.
Ohio State will have to do it without some of the stars of this team, especially on defense — at least assuming a few of those guys go pro (Caleb Downs, Reese, McDonald).
There will be reloading, but expecting the defense to be elite like that three years in a row might be asking a lot.
Will the offense be able to pick up the slack?
“I mean, I’ve got to look at it all and figure out what that was and what that is because it’s not good enough,” Day said when asked about the poor first half from his scoring unit.
“So we’ll look at it all. We’ve got to do better. We’ve got to do better. So that’s the bottom line. Whatever it takes to get better, we’ll do.”
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