Jeremiah Smith and Julian Sayin give Ohio State permission to win differently

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For the past two seasons, Ohio State’s formula for winning football games has been pretty easy to understand: Have an elite defense, surround it with an offense full of NFL players, and wait for one side or the other to eventually overwhelm whoever is standing across the line of scrimmage. Four games into the 2026 season, however, I think it is becoming increasingly obvious that this team is going to have to win differently.

While very little is objectively bad, at this point in the season, nothing Ohio State is doing right now — offensively or defensively — is even in shouting distance of the level at which Julian Sayin and Jeremiah Smith are playing. And while that is obviously less than ideal, it is certainly not a death knell for the Buckeyes’ College Football Playoff aspirations. It just means that the players, coaches, and fans are going to have to adjust their expectations for what winning football is going to have to look like this season.

It would be great if every other position group could somehow become as dominant as Smith and Sayin have been through four games, but I think any objective observer can tell you that that’s unlikely to happen this season. Instead, the goal should be for everything else on the team to become reliably good enough to complement Julian and J.J.‘s greatness, which is essentially how Ohio State beat Illinois 42-19 on Saturday.

The biggest adjustment that I have struggled to get used to thus far has been with the defense. In each of the past two seasons, the Buckeyes led the country in both scoring and total defense, allowing 12.9 points and 254.6 yards per game in 2024 and a frankly ridiculous 9.3 points and 219.1 yards last year.

At this same point in those seasons — immediately following Ohio State’s first Big Ten game — the difference is even more pronounced. In 2024, the Buckeyes were allowing just 196.5 yards and 6.8 points per game. Last season, those numbers were 229.3 and 5.5. Through four games this year, they have ballooned to 274.3 yards and 12.3 points per game. Those numbers are still pretty impressive, don’t get me wrong, but not historically so.

After losing an absurd amount of NFL talent over the past two offseasons, perhaps expecting anything else was unfair. I assumed there would be an inevitable reversion to the mean, but I was hoping that the veterans brought in the portal, the experienced players who stuck around Columbus and waited their turn, and the athleticism of the young Buckeyes would be enough to keep the defense amongst the country’s best.

Of course, there is still plenty of time for improvement, particularly as young players get more comfortable with their responsibilities, but Saturday illustrated just how far the unit still has to go. Illinois piled up 462 yards, including 199 on the ground and 6.0 yards per carry. Aidan Laughery alone had 113 yards on just 11 attempts. No one with double-digit carries and without a 75-plus-yard run should ever average 10.3 yards per carry against a Buckeye defense.

The defensive line is still searching for the right combination of players, and the linebackers are contributing to the problems against the run. Riley Pettijohn and T.J. Alford have both had moments this season where you can see exactly why the coaching staff is so excited about them, but there were also some substantial assignment failures against Illinois: missing run fits, failing to properly set the edge, over-pursuing ball-carriers, etc.

The secondary has probably been the defense’s most consistent unit, yet even there, busted coverages and penalties continue to pop up. So no, this probably isn’t going to be a defense that suffocates opponents for 60 minutes every Saturday; it just has to become one that gets enough stops to give Smith and Sayin room to win the game.

The same principle applies offensively. The offensive line was perfectly serviceable against Illinois. Sayin wasn’t sacked, and when the pocket did break down, he showed the mobility that we have been waiting to see consistently since his first start. I still think Sayin has room to improve as both a runner and a passer, but his connection with No. 4 has already reached a level of greatness that nothing else on this team even approaches.

On the ground against Illinois, Ohio State ran for 151 yards on 32 carries, which works out to 4.7 yards per carry; serviceable, I suppose, but hardly the type of production that should dictate the identity of the offense.

And I think that is something Ryan Day and Arthur Smith have to accept. Coaches love talking about establishing the run to set up the pass, but with this team, that equation needs to work in reverse. Ohio State needs to establish the pass to set up the run.

Bo Jackson or Ja’Kobi Jackson touched the ball on the first six plays against Illinois, seven of the first eight, and seven of nine on the opening drive. It worked against an overmatched Illini defense, but I am still far from convinced that the Buckeyes’ offensive-line personnel and the skill sets of their running backs are enough to change the game against quality opponents.

But the thing is, I don’t think they need to be; after all, Jeremiah Smith exists, and he wears scarlet and gray. Illinois inexplicably decided to cover Smith one-on-one far more often than I ever would have considered sane on Saturday, and Sayin punished them for it. Smith finished with career highs of 12 receptions, 217 yards, and four touchdowns, while Sayin threw for 367 yards and four scores without an interception.

J.J. was targeted on nearly half of Julian’s 36 pass attempts Saturday. Any time Smith is single-covered, he should be Sayin’s first option. Hell, he should probably be his second and third options too. Establish Smith early. Force the defense to abandon whatever machismo convinced it that one defender could handle him. Make safeties shade toward No. 4, make linebackers worry about throwing windows behind them, make defensive coordinators devote an unreasonable percentage of their game plan to one human being. Then let everybody else breathe.

That — combined with Sayin’s newfound tough-guy running persona — was essentially the offensive formula I was talking about at halftime on Saturday: Make opponents prove that they can stop the best quarterback-wide receiver connection in college football before voluntarily moving away from it.

Ohio State doesn’t need its running game to become dominant. It doesn’t need its defense to replicate the historically great units of the past two seasons. While those things would certainly be nice, it doesn’t need every position group to become elite overnight. The Buckeyes just need 20 players on the field to be pretty good, because if they can manage that, Jeremiah Smith and Julian Sayin are great enough to handle the rest.

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