Ohio State’s 41-28 loss to Oregon is latest unacceptable failure
· Yahoo Sports
I am angry. I am frustrated. I am embarrassed. And perhaps more than anything else, I am exhausted by watching an Ohio State football program with every conceivable advantage continually squander those advantages. Saturday’s 41-28 loss to Oregon wasn’t merely another disappointing result; it was a debacle and evidence of a program that has lost its way. Over its last 11 games, Ohio State is 6-5, and there is no reasonable argument that can make that acceptable, regardless of opponents or situations.
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Now, to be clear, this article will not be about calling for anyone’s job. I have never had the stomach for that, and I don’t feel comfortable doing it. I’ve only done it once, following the 2024 loss to Michigan, and as angry as I was about the team’s performance, I was still sick writing the article. These are real people, with lives beyond football, and while criticism — even fiery criticism — is part of the job, I don’t like calling for anyone to lose their job.
But there is no objective metric by which you can look at Ohio State’s performance against Oregon — alongside last week’s loss to USC and the trajectory since the national championship — and deem it remotely acceptable for a program with this much talent, money, infrastructure, tradition, and institutional support.
And let me be unequivocal about something else: No matter how furious fans rightly become, there is absolutely no excuse for attacking, harassing, or threatening a player or coach. None. Online, in person, it doesn’t matter. Ohio State football might feel like the most important thing in our lives, but it is still a sport played largely by 18-to-23-year-olds. They deserve basic decency and personal safety, even when their performance merits criticism. Accountability is not cruelty, and passion is not a license for abuse.
That distinction matters because the scrutiny of the football itself should be relentless. Compassion cannot excuse complacency, and patience cannot permit incompetence. And, Woody above, there was a staggering amount of incompetence on display Saturday.
For approximately 15 minutes, Ohio State looked like the team we’ve been begging to see. The Buckeyes were inspired, aggressive, and creative, jumping to a 14-0 lead behind two Bo Jackson touchdown runs. Luke Fahey looked confident, and the game plan seemed not only coherent, but, dare I say, inspired.
Then the bottom fell out.
Oregon scored 38 unanswered points while Ohio State looked powerless to stop virtually anything the Ducks did. The offense suddenly became lifeless and predictable, the defense timid and confused, and the coaching staff seemingly made no meaningful attempts to right the ship. There were missed tackles, wide-open receivers over the middle, multiple dropped interceptions, a third-down snap sailing over Fahey’s head, and a pathological insistence on throwing screens that nobody in scarlet had any interest in blocking for.
The final statistics almost make the implosion harder to comprehend. Aided by some late, largely meaningless production, Ohio State actually outgained Oregon 413-395 and recorded more first downs, 23 to 22, yet rushed for a pathetic 53 yards on 21 attempts, failed on all four fourth-down opportunities, and didn’t register a single sack. This wasn’t simply an opponent overwhelming the Buckeyes with superior talent; it was Ohio State failing at nearly every football fundamental.
And what makes all of this even more infuriating is that Ohio State had absolutely everything to play for on Saturday. After last week’s catastrophe against USC, the Buckeyes knew that their College Football Playoff hopes were hanging by a thread. They were back home, in front of more than 100,000 Buckeye fans, with an opportunity to salvage their season against a ranked rival.
If ever there was a time for this team to play with desperation, urgency, and fire, this was it. Instead, after the first quarter, we got a performance so lifeless and uninspired that you would have thought the Buckeyes and their coaches had already packed it in for the season. And don’t get me started on the unforgivable inability to involve the best player in the sport, Jeremiah Smith, in the offense for more than two straight quarters.
For approximately 32 and a half minutes, Ohio State didn’t get a completion to the sport’s most dangerous player. When Smith finally caught a pass in the fourth quarter, his visible frustration recalled his reaction against USC. He finished with seven receptions for 133 yards and a touchdown, including a late touchdown and a separate 57-yard catch, but those totals obscure his disappearance as the game unraveled.
After the long reception, Smith glanced toward the sideline with an expression that seemed to say, “See what happens when you actually give me the ball?” I can’t know what he was thinking, but a coaching staff cannot repeatedly fail to involve its greatest offensive weapon and then be surprised by his exasperation.
Fahey repeatedly forced the ball toward Devin McCuin, who finished with nine receptions on 13 targets for 84 yards, while the offense struggled to manufacture opportunities for Smith. On multiple occasions, the freshman QB forced the ball in between double and triple coverage to McCuin. If there are three guys covering McCuin, there can’t be that many on J.J. There is simply no coherent offensive philosophy that can justify allowing your most talented player to disappear for as long as OSU did, especially when the alternatives aren’t consistently working.
Despite the true-freshman quarterback’s seeming reluctance to throw to the best player on the field, the team’s failures far exceed those of the backup quarterback. Fahey was dreadful for stretches after the opening quarter, but his 36-of-50 for 360 yards, 2 touchdowns, and 1 interception (again aided by garbage time) isn’t horrendous. The 14 fourth-quarter points after Oregon had already wrapped up the win make the final score a bit misleading, especially since Fahey looked unprepared and out of his depth for much of the game.
Ryan Day and quarterbacks coach Billy Fessler don’t get to hide behind the loss of Julian Sayin or his replacement’s inexperience. Ohio State should never not have a backup prepared to step in to run the offense. Of course, you can’t expect him to do everything as well as the starter, but this is Ohio State: “Next Man Up” must be more than a mantra; it has to be how you prepare.
But there is plenty of blame to go around beyond Fahey. The line couldn’t establish a running game or block on passing downs, play-calling became increasingly incoherent, and the defense that was supposed to sustain the team during Sayin’s absence couldn’t pressure the quarterback or make routine tackles.
While I was lukewarm on Sayin for much of this season, clearly his talent was far more extraordinary than I gave him credit for, as it was clearly somehow concealing sizable problems on both sides of the ball. But when he goes down, the people who are paid exorbitant amounts of money have to find other ways to paper over those holes.
Of course, I don’t believe that the Ohio State players and coaches don’t care, or that they aren’t trying, but there is a difference between caring deeply and demonstrating the discipline, preparation, expertise, and competitive fire necessary to get the job done. Whatever has been happening inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center at practice and during the week, what we watched in The Horseshoe on Saturday was soulless, uninspired football. And when a program goes 6-5 over an 11-game stretch despite having virtually every competitive advantage imaginable, it becomes impossible to rationalize its failures as injuries, bad luck, or a few bad games.
Ohio State has now lost three games in a season for the first time since 2011, ending 14 consecutive seasons with no more than two defeats. It has lost consecutive regular-season games for the first time since that same ill-fated Tattoogate season, which honestly shouldn’t really even count. I don’t think there’s any arguing that this is the worst Ohio State team since at least 2011, and frankly, this season is even more frustrating. That season at least had absurd NCAA rulings, multiple starters dismissed from the team, and an interim head coach to help explain away the failures. This one, on the other hand, started with championship expectations and a wealth of elite talent.
The season isn’t over, but the national championship hopes that we had when the season began almost certainly are. I don’t think it is being too much of a homer to believe that Ohio State should make the College Football Playoff every season. That’s not a demand for perfection; it’s a recognition of the program’s exceptional advantages, and if the field does, in fact, expand to 24 teams next year, that expectation should become essentially nonnegotiable.
Day and his staff have squandered every single ounce of momentum and potential from the 2024 national championship. Aggressiveness, passion, and creativity carried Ohio State to the top of college football, and I thought they provided the blueprint for a decade of sustained dominance. Instead, the program has too often been plagued by cowardice, apathy, and banality.
Far more often than not, in the biggest situations, a program that has had all of its recent successes driven by intensity and ruthlessness has opted instead for timidity and complacency. Players bear responsibility for failed execution; coaches bear responsibility for preparation, development, strategy, and establishing standards. To be sure, this is a program-wide collapse, and will take a program-wide effort to correct.
I’ve long considered Ohio State the closest thing college football has to a recession-proof program. But even seemingly invulnerable institutions can be undermined by passivity and poor leadership. Without a dramatic turnaround between now and next fall, I might have to reconsider just how invulnerable Ohio State really is; and that possibility makes me angrier than any individual loss ever could.
I am not demanding that anyone be fired. I am demanding that Ohio State football look like Ohio State football: disciplined, physical, inventive, intelligent, and urgent. That means developing backups, adjusting failed plans, putting great players in positions to succeed, and remembering that the scarlet and gray and the Block O carry obligations far greater than simply showing up and expecting to win.
There are still games left, and I desperately hope this team finds some fight, but hope and blind allegiance are not a strategy; pride is not a substitute for honesty; and a past national title cannot be used as an indefinite crutch for present failures.
Eleven games: six wins, five losses. A program that has gone from national champion to an embarrassment in less than two years. Something has to change, not because angry fans are owed victories, but because Ohio State is capable of so much better, and the people responsible for making it better have run out of excuses.