Caleb Downs<\/a>. Patricia will be able to replace everyone with talented dudes, but game changers like Styles and Downs are rare, and replacing an athletic freak like Arvell Reese might be wishful thinking.<\/p>\nWhile the defense should still be high in the national rankings in 2026, it seems impossible to believe it will be better in 2026 than it was in 2025, which means a backward step, and that\u2019s a logical expectation.<\/p>\n
More Challenging Schedule<\/p>\n
Ohio State didn\u2019t have too many challenges in 2025. Penn State entered the season as the marquee matchup on the Buckeyes\u2019 schedule, but the Nittany Lions were much worse than expected, which cost James Franklin his job.<\/p>\n
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Texas was a good test to start the season, but Ohio State was rarely threatened afterward, even in difficult environments like at Washington and at Michigan. The Buckeyes avoided Indiana, Oregon, USC, and Iowa in the regular season, meaning they only faced Michigan among the Big Ten\u2019s six best teams (Ohio State being one of those).<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes should have fared better against the Hoosiers in the conference championship game, but credit to Indiana for making life difficult for Ohio State, and Ryan Day\u2019s team made too many critical errors to win the tight game. Indiana also exposed weaknesses that Miami was able to exploit in the College Football Playoff, which combined with the extended time off with the bye to hinder the Buckeyes\u2019 start to that game.<\/p>\n
If Ohio State makes the Big Ten championship and\/or College Football Playoff in 2026, the team will be better tested. The Buckeyes visit Texas this season, which will be a tough early challenge. During the regular season, the Buckeyes travel to Iowa, which is never an easy place to win, as well as Indiana and USC.<\/p>\n
Ohio State also hosts Illinois, Oregon, and Michigan. It\u2019s not impossible to get through that slate without a loss, but it will be much tougher than what was in front of the Buckeyes in 2025.<\/p>\n
By no means am I writing Ohio State off as a contender for a Big Ten title, a berth in the College Football Playoff, or even a national championship. But I\u2019m not as confident as others seem to be that Day will be able to get through the regular season unscathed.<\/p>\n
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A step backward in quality can still yield all the team\u2019s goals, depending how other teams fare. I\u2019m not expecting that, and I won\u2019t be shocked if the team misses the CFP at the end of the season, depending on how things go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From now until preseason camp starts in August, Land-Grant Holy Land will be writing articles around a different…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":900733,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[613,7,1286,2252,274,2277,49,48,107787,2149,1446,69,2239],"class_list":["post-900732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-caleb-downs","tag-football","tag-iowa-hawkeyes","tag-jim-knowles","tag-kaleb-johnson","tag-matt-patricia","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-ncaa-football-game","tag-ohio-stadium","tag-ohio-state","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-sonny-styles"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116634519028344892","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=900732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/900732\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/900733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=900732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=900732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=900732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}