Each week at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day meets with the media ahead of the Buckeyes’ matchup that following weekend. Each week here at Land-Grant Holy Land, we will be bringing you three of the biggest storylines from said press conference.
These are three takeaways from Day’s Week 11 press conference discussing the loss to Oregon and previewing the matchup against Northwestern on Saturday at Noon ET.
1) Luke Fahey will remain the starting QB
Despite losing each of his first two starts, Ryan Day said on
Tuesday that Luke Fahey will remain Ohio State’s starting quarterback against Northwestern.
It isn’t entirely clear whether the program completely whiffed on its evaluation of five-star quarterback Tavien St. Clair or if Day is trying to save face by doubling and tripling down on his decision to start Fahey, but either way it seems unlikely that the true freshman gives the Buckeyes the ‘best chance to win’ as the head coach claims.
To be clear, this is not Fahey’s fault. The California native was the No. 586 player overall and the No. 35 quarterback in the 2026 recruiting class. Fahey was never expected to be thrust into a starting job at Ohio State, especially with Julian Sayin at the helm this season.
However, it is the fault of the coaches for both not having a single backup quarterback ready to lead an offense that features the best player in the sport, and for failing to develop the No. 3 QB and No. 4 overall player from the 2025 class.
There can’t possibly be any harm in getting a look at St. Clair. The Buckeyes had every opportunity to get him some reps in the Oregon game after it had gotten out of hand, especially as Fahey continued to struggle. Instead, they let Fahey take every single snap in the 41-28 loss, and will continue to trot him out there for the foreseeable future.
Again, while it isn’t his fault, Fahey has done nothing to show that he is capable of leading this Ohio State offense. The 5-foot-11 QB looked fine if not spectacular against USC, but followed it up with a lackluster-at-best performance against the Ducks.
From the end of the first quarter, when the Buckeyes held a 14-0 lead, until the start of the fourth, when they trailed 38-14, Fahey completed 13 of his 20 pass attempts for a grand total of 55 yards. That is an average of 4.2 yards per completion, with an interception also coming during that span.
Has he really shown anything to warrant him keeping the starting job over St. Clair, or is Day simply too embarrassed to admit that he made the wrong choice and too stubborn to make the change?
2) Getting the ball to Jeremiah Smith is ‘always a priority’
Ohio State went more than 32 minutes of game time without a single target for Jeremiah Smith in the loss to Oregon. Drowning offensively and with a freshman quarterback clearly struggling, Day and Arthur Smith elected to willingly remove the best player in program history from the game plan entirely.
Adding insult to injury, the Buckeyes immediately scored twice the second they decided to get Smith involved in the offense again. Smith caught a 13-yard touchdown pass in the final four minutes of the game, and on Ohio State’s very next offensive play he caught a 57-yard pass to set up another touchdown on the ensuing play.
There was nothing that Oregon did to prevent Smith from being the focal point of the offense. Despite a double team being sent his way on most snaps, the superstar receiver was open more often than not, but for whatever reason the ball did not go his way for more than two entire quarters.
Smith finished the game with only nine targets — the same amount as running back Bo Jackson and less than the 13 for fellow receiver Devin McCuin. Of those nine targets, four of them came in the fourth quarter when the game was already out of reach.
It is completely indefensible for the Buckeyes not to pepper Smith with targets throughout every game, especially playing without their starting quarterback. You are doing your opponents a tremendous favor by taking Smith off the field or not looking his way on virtually every critical down.
Day claims that getting the ball to Jeremiah Smith is “always a priority,” but we are not seeing those words put into action on Saturdays.
With the way that things are going for Ohio State offensively right now, if Smith is not getting more than his fair share of touches each week, then the Buckeyes are absolutely going to lose more football games this season.
3) ‘We’re not getting enough of a pass rush. That’s the bottom line.’
Ohio State is among the worst teams in the country at generating pressure against opposing quarterbacks. The Buckeyes have only totaled a paltry 11 sacks on the season through nine games, and rank next-to-last among all Power 4 defenses in sack rate at 3.6%, trailing only Stanford in that category nationally.
In the last two weeks, Jaden Maiava at USC and Dylan Raiola at Oregon have dropped back to pass a total of 78 times. Among those 78 dropbacks, Ohio State has generated only one, single sack, and it came from defensive back Jermaine Mathews Jr. on a corner blitz.
To say that the Buckeyes aren’t getting enough of a pass rush is a colossal understatement by the head coach.
Larry Johnson’s defensive line has been worse than anemic. Only Kenyatta Jackson Jr. has registered more than one sack this year among defensive linemen, and he leads the team with three total. In fact, only two other linemen (Qua Russaw and Epi Sitanilei) have even managed one full sack.
Despite playing more than 100 snaps this season, Beau Atkinson has only half a sack this season, and only 1.5 sacks in 20 total games at Ohio State since transferring from UNC prior to last season. Zion Grady, the only other defensive end besides Jackson, Russaw, and Atkinson with at least 100 snaps, has zero sacks and zero tackles for loss.
With seemingly nobody up front capable of winning one-on-one matchups in the pass rush, defensive coordinator Matt Patricia has done virtually nothing to create pressure in other ways.
Riley Pettijohn is second on the team with two sacks, but has only played 53 total snaps as a pass-rusher, per PFF. The Buckeyes have done very little in terms of scheming up different blitz packages for players at other defensive positions outside the defensive line, and haven’t even really tried to do something as simple as running stunts and twists with their linemen up front.
In fact, Patricia has actually done the complete opposite!
Ohio State has made a habit of rushing only three on obvious passing downs, dropping eight into coverage and allowing opposing quarterbacks to sit in the pocket forever until a receiver eventually gets open. They have somehow also found a way to leave the entire middle of the field open even while dropping eight guys, allowing easy completions and long third-down conversions time after time.
With so little pressure up front, the explosive plays against this defense are really starting to pile up.
Oregon tallied nine passing plays of at least 15 yards and four rushing plays of at least 10 yards, including a 48-yard touchdown run on a 2nd-and-13. Of those 13 big plays, eight of them came on third or fourth down, mostly with the Buckeyes bringing only a three-man rush.
USC had eight big plays against Ohio State, four passing and four rushing. The Trojans had a 69-yard touchdown on a catch-and-run screen pass in addition to a 70-yard reception by tight end Mark Bowman, who evaded multiple tacklers on his way down the field. USC also had a pair of runs for more than 20 yards, including a draw play that moved the sticks on third-and-19.
It is hard to do anything on defense when you cannot get remotely near the quarterback, and teams have begun taking advantage of a dismal Ohio State pass rush in a huge way.
