Good analysis by Ramzy Nasralla for 11W of what went wrong in 2025:
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Four Reasons Why
The NFL Combine was a healthy dose of confirmation bias.
Everything that transpired in Indy over the weekend simply reinforced what you've either heard, read or said yourself for weeks. How did the Buckeyes lose back-to-back games to end its season with
these guys on the team?
This is the type of angst that can consume you forever, like all of those other seasons piled up in Ohio State's reviled Squandered Season cabinet that leak out every offseason. So let's bury 2025. A righteous cleansing, because lot of you (not
you, reader) are way into your feelings too often.
We'll start with the hardest lesson in 136 years of Ohio State football, which is that even if the lessons of 2025 are learned and retained, college football is now changing at a velocity which may render them artifacts rather than principles in short order. Planning to build something meaningful in two or three seasons is a wasted effort.
Win now is every program's mandate.
The Buckeyes are not going to solve how last season collapsed in winter so that 2026 turns out differently, because it's a whole new team, which will have a seasoned OC calling plays and an actual proven coordinator for the third unit, which has been an anchor on the program since the pandemic. Those NFL Combine highlight machines will be wearing different helmets.
The head coach, several faces and all of the expectations remain the same. It's time to cleanse ourselves of 2025 - here are the four reasons the Buckeyes didn't go back-to-back as CFP champions:
- Special Teams [Field Goals, punting, a just-get-off-the-field mentality creating a huge deficit of hidden yards and costly penalties - a mediocre dynamic now as entrenched in the program as Wide Receiver U]
- Remedy: Robbie Discher hired. First qualified hire for that role since Matt Barnes in 2019.
- Offensive Philosophy & Execution [failing to accommodate for an inexperienced QB against talent-equated opponents, chronic Red Zone inefficiencies not involving the aforementioned Field Goal kicker, sticking with long-developing routes while OL was in shambles, dialing up a critical 3rd down conversion for TE4 while benching WRs, sticking with a silent count vs. Miami, lack of game control agility vis a vis When It's Time to Turn Up the Gas, We Will]
- Remedy: Arthur Smith hired, Cortez Hankton hired.
- Talent Evaluation [critical misses, notably Ethan Onianwa as the program's biggest whiff in the portal era, inflated impression of TE room's capabilities, RB4 was RB1 to start the season, a walk-on was WR4 at WRU to end the season]
- Remedy: A work in progress, always.
- Personnel Decisions[allowing a first-time play-caller to run the offense, which had negative effects on his position group and the offense, his departure the week of the B1G championship, hiring an OL coach who is more specialized in other elements of the offense than OL coaching]
- Remedy: Prepare for uninvited chaos.
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