Ryan Day and the Buckeyes took college football by the throat in 2024. After being left for dead after losing to Michigan for the fourth year in a row, they became an angry, purposeful team, sweeping Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame to win the first 12-team playoff.
This is not a bash-the-Buckeyes post. OSU is a great program.
With nine national championships in their history, they've won 11 or more games in every non-Covid year since a 6-7 season in 2011, their only losing season since 1988.
They've missed a bowl once in the last 37 years, fallen short of the playoff threshold (10-11 regular season wins) once in the last 21 regular seasons, since Jim Tressel went 9-2 and 8-4 in 2004 and 2005.
The Buckeyes still have two of the highest-impact players in college football in Jeremiah Smith and Caleb Downs. Ryan Day has stacked up five top five recruiting classes.
They are a team that reloads. They have the best wide receiver room in college football. From the portal they added Beau Atkinson (North Carolina DE), Max Klare (Purdue TE), Ethan Onianwa (Rice OT), and C.J. Donaldson (West Virginia RB).
Safety/linebacker hybrid Sonny Styles racked up 100 tackles last season with six sacks.
Even with this wealth of talent and tradition, Day and the Scarlet and Gray have three major challenges to address:
1. They sent 14 players to the NFL. In this era national championship favorites are teams with a strong core of returning senior leadership.
2. The Buckeyes will have an inexperience starting quarterback this season, either junior four-star Lincoln Kienholz (22 career pass attempts) or five-star redshirt freshman Julian Sayin (5-12 passing last season, for 84 yards.)
3. The schedule is daunting. Don't misunderstand-- OSU has run the Big Ten for many years, but everything about the 2025 slate makes it as hard as possible to repeat.
Day has two new coordinators this year with Chip Kelly joining Pete Carroll in Las Vegas and defensive coordinator Jim Knowles bolting to Penn State.
Ordinarily with major staff changes and a new starting quarterback a team would want to have a soft landing, a couple of games to tune up the offensive line (three new starters) and get the passing game to gel. Instead, the Buckeyes open with Arch Manning and No. 3 Texas.
They'll have a bye on September 20, but they open Big Ten play on the road against Washington, a sleeper playoff contender this season with elusive quarterback Demond Williams Jr., 1,000-yard rusher Jonah Coleman, and playmaking wide receiver Denzel Boston.
Husky Stadium is a tough environment for a first-time starter in his first road game.
They're at Illinois in game six, a 10-win team a year ago with senior starter Luke Altmyer at quarterback. November 1, they host preseason No. 1 Penn State.
The rivalry game with Michigan is at the Big House this year.
The FanDuel win total for the Bucks is 10.5. They'll be favored in nearly every one of these games.
The floor is 8-4, the historical precedent is 11 wins, but it's not impossible for this team to stumble to a 9-3 season.
Only a fool would bet against the Buckeyes, or Day, acknowledged widely as one of the best coaches in college football after winning his first national championship. Even with their obvious advantages, it's hard to repeat, particularly with just seven returning starters.
They might win them all. But it's not impossible to see Ohio State losing close games to Texas and Penn State, dropping one other contest among the tough road games at Washington, Illinois and Michigan.
Prediction: 10-2, and a return to the playoffs.