The first round of the 2026 NFL Draft has come and gone. For the first time since what feels like the Clinton administration, the Big Ten led the way with 10 picks. In terms of the most picks by one school, Ohio State topped the leaderboard with four. The team that ended the Buckeyes’ season had the second-most, with three, while seven programs right behind had two picks.
For the first time since the 1967 NFL Draft, one school produced four top-11 picks. The Buckeyes were loaded in 2025. So, what happened? There was one question that kept bouncing around on social media from the Lunatic Fringe™ to fans of contenders and poverty programs alike: “Ohio State had four top-11 picks, how did they not win anything?”
75% of those tweets are engagement bait, but for the 25% of folks who are genuinely asking, let’s dive in.
This isn’t going to be about making excuses. Excuses would be like blaming the non-call on the Marvin Harrison Jr. targeting in the Peach Bowl vs. Georgia or the overturned scoop-and-score against Clemson in 2019 for the losses. Ohio State lost to Indiana and Miami (FL) fair and square. But how?
How Did Ohio State Fall Short Despite All That NFL Talent?
Better Players But Not Better Teams
Ohio State did have the most talented team on paper in 2025. However, games are not played on paper. Indiana and Miami exploited a weakness and derailed everything the Buckeyes wanted to do on offense.
Remember, in 12 regular-season games, Julian Sayin was sacked six times. He was sacked 12 times against Indiana and Miami.
The offensive line was an issue all year, but Ohio State was able to get by on sheer talent. The only exception would have been that win over Texas, but Ryan Day and Brian Hartline still had the training wheels on Sayin and only trusted him to throw it 20 times as compared to 34 runs.
Add that to the fact that Ohio State was playing all season slowly for load management. Day said that when it was time to turn it up, they would. They didn’t. That was the concern all year. The Buckeyes bled the play clock to suffocate opposing teams by dominating the time of possession. The strategy was great against teams like Wisconsin and Minnesota that don’t have viable offenses. But it created a sense of urgency that Ohio State had to score on every possession. Every mistake was amplified.
It came to a head. Indiana won, 13-10, after drives ended with an interception, a turnover on downs, and a missed field goal in plus territory. Ohio State turned it up in the two drives before half, resulting in 10 points off 80 yards and 10 plays. But that was it.
Against Miami, it was more of the same. A pick-six, a missed field goal, and a game-ending interception (after punting with under six minutes to go) capped off three drives. The Buckeyes got bullied by the Hurricanes. There are no excuses there.
Lights Too Bright
In reality, the biggest issue down the stretch was inexperience. Sure, Sayin and the rest of the underclassmen had played an entire season to that point, but Indiana was the first real test in months.
Both of these games laid the groundwork for the Fringe™ to want a quarterback competition, often likening Sayin to Kyle McCord. He did not have his best games when the lights were the brightest. Three of his eight interceptions on the year came in those final two games, plus they were two of his middle-of-the-road performances in terms of yards. However, in terms of completion percentage, the Miami loss was his worst (62.9%), and Indiana was his fifth-worst (72.4%). For most quarterbacks, those are fine numbers. For Sayin, they were disappointing.
He has plenty of great football ahead of him, but he was hung out to dry and did not respond well. Sayin missed open tight ends down the seam, and that pick-six in the Cotton Bowl was inexcusable.
At the same time, it was the first season for Hartline actually calling plays. Could it be that the slow tempo was more of Hartline’s doing/Day trying to protect Hartline rather than trying to hide offensive line deficiencies? Was it a mixture of both? Either way, it looked like Hartline had plenty of on-the-job learning.
A Little Whataboutism
Day was preceded by a Hall of Fame, multiple championship-winning head coach, Urban Meyer. Obviously, a coach as great as Meyer never disappointed like Day, right? At no point did he squander an elite collection of individual athletes when his team was the best in the country on paper, right?
Let’s take a trip down memory lane, way back when Coach Day was a quarterbacks coach for the Philadelphia Eagles. In 2014, Ohio State ran through the first-ever College Football Playoff by dispatching the overwhelming favorite Alabama and throwing around Oregon in the championship. The team was led by a host of underclassmen and returned the overwhelming majority in 2015.
But what happened?
Ohio State couldn’t decide on a quarterback, looked royally discombobulated on offense all year, and finally fell to Michigan State in a game started by an Ohio-born quarterback with 285 passing yards to his name heading into the matchup. Ezekiel Elliott declared for the draft after the game despite having one more game to go. Ohio State thrashed Michigan, did not go to the Big Ten Championship Game, and drew Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl.
In total, that roster produced 42 NFL Draft picks. Five of those were first-round picks (all in the first 20 picks) in the 2016 NFL Draft. In total, of those 42, 11 ended up being first-round picks. We may look back on the 2025 season in a similar light, but time will tell. With four this year, plus players like Jeremiah Smith and Sayin expected to be first-round talents, there will have to be a considerable amount of breaking out to meet that mark.
All of this to say, it’s not uncommon for teams to disappoint. Georgia recruits as well as any and hasn’t won a CFP game since the end of the 2022 season. Oregon brings in talent left and right from high school and the portal, and hasn’t made the championship game since 2014.
Bottom Line
It happens. Football is hard. Repeating as champions is hard. College football fans became accustomed to repeat champions because it felt like Nick Saban won every two out of three tries. It became even harder with the expanded College Football Playoff. Sure, Ohio State won thanks to the expanded playoff after the 2024 season, but they were met with a team with the same momentum in Miami.
Casual observers of the game may not know this, but college football is a team sport. Yes, Ohio State had a collection of the best individual athletes, but it was not the best team. Even then, losing to the Heisman Trophy winner on the eventual national champion and then losing to a stacked defense with two first-round EDGEs on the national runners-up isn’t exactly something to hang your head over.
It happens.
Needless to say, however frustrated Ohio State fans are with the 2025 team falling short, the players and coaches are exponentially more frustrated.
