There are three games left on Ohio State’s regular-season schedule, but as far as I’m concerned, only one of them truly matters; only one of them has the power to define what I will remember about this increasingly maddening season. And, as is so often the case, it is the last one.
Before anybody gets all chest-puffy in the comments, of course I want the Buckeyes to beat Northwestern and Nebraska; I will be insanely salty if they don’t. But after watching the back-to-back disasters against USC and Oregon
that have all but eliminated the Buckeyes from playoff contention, I cannot pretend that every remaining Saturday carries the same emotional weight. There is only one game left that I will be truly, madly, deeply devastated to lose, and that is Michigan.
Now, this isn’t an argument for throwing away the next two weeks. Ohio State is 6-3 overall and 4-2 in the Big Ten, which means the conference championship game is still mathematically within reach. The Buckeyes would almost certainly need to win out, get some help from UCLA and Indiana — currently ahead of them in the standings — and survive what could be a complicated series of tiebreakers against the other two-loss teams. Win the Big Ten, and the College Football Playoff’s automatic berth is theirs. The door isn’t locked, but the Buckeyes have spent the past two weeks doing an impressive job of pushing it shut.
I want them to chase that opportunity with everything they have; we have written them off in the past only to be delightfully shocked by how they responded. Now, I don’t think this team is built — either physically or emotionally — quite like the 2024 team, and I just don’t have much faith in their ability to completely turn things around after the uninspired, disorganized, and occasionally downright baffling football we’ve watched lately. The coaching has looked lost, the execution unreliable, and a supposedly talented roster far less than the sum of its parts.
So, yes, a loss to Northwestern would infuriate me, as would a loss at Nebraska. But would one of those losses fundamentally alter how I feel about the 2026 Buckeyes? At this point, I don’t think it would. My disappointment has already reached a point at which there’s precious little room left for it to grow. Losing to Michigan, however, would open up a heretofore unseen 10th and maybe even 11th circle of hell.
Look, I understand that rivalry games don’t always follow the logic of records, rankings, or relative talent. But Michigan is 5-4, has lost four of its six Big Ten games, and just managed six points in a home loss to “little brother” Michigan State. The Wolverines are averaging fewer than 20 points per game, and their comical quarterback carousel has been bringing me much-needed rays of sunshine on otherwise dark days. This has been an abysmal season by that program’s standards, and even allowing for Ohio State’s own considerable problems, there would be absolutely no excuse for losing to that team at home. If Ross Bjork thinks fans are fed up with Ryan Day’s stubbornness and complacency now, if they lose to That Team Up North for a fifth time in six years… whoooo boy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Beating Michigan wouldn’t erase what happened against USC or Oregon, or magically make this a “good” season, but it is damn near the only preseason goal left for this team to accomplish, and it is the only one that remains a nonnegotiable. Regardless of anything else that has gone wrong this season, beating Michigan will always cure — or at least lessen — some of the ills plaguing the Buckeyes.
In the meantime, there is one other sidequest that I want Ryan Day and offensive coordinator Arthur Smith to devote themselves to: Spend the next three weeks doing everything humanly possible to put Jeremiah Smith back at the top of the Heisman Trophy race.
He deserves it, and they owe it to him. Smith is the best player on this team, and his production should not be held hostage by offensive indecision and the program’s inability to have a competent backup prepared for a moment similar to the one the Buckeyes find themselves in currently. He caught seven passes for 133 yards and a touchdown against Oregon (much of that in the first quarter and garbage time), yet somehow went more than two quarters without a target as the Ducks turned a 14-0 Ohio State lead into a rout. How does that happen? How does any offensive staff look at a player of J.J.’s historic abilities and decide, for that long, that the best approach is apparently to try anything else?
And then, remarkably, some media members decided that the real problem was Smith’s visible frustration. A young man who has devoted himself to this program, who wants desperately to win, and who watched the offense, at best, forget about him, and, at worst, downright ignore him, while the game slipped away was supposed to stand there smiling politely? Grow up. There are reasonable conversations to be had about composure from college athletes, but this ain’t it.
I understand that certain members of the beat feel compelled to cape for Day and the coaching staff at every opportunity, but turning on arguably the best player in program history (I have him second only to Orlando Pace) for something as simple and commonplace as being frustrated that he was being underutilized in a must-win game that turned into an embarrassing ass-kicking is ludicrous.
But beyond my annoyance with media members, the more serious rationale for this is that feeding Smith isn’t some sentimental campaign for an individual award. It is the most obvious way to give Ohio State the best chance to win. Scheme him open, move him around, give Luke Fahey easier throws, create touches that don’t require a perfect read or a miraculous contested catch. If the defense insists on devoting extra attention to him, make it pay somewhere else, or just throw it up and let J.J. do J.J. things. Just don’t let the best player on the planet disappear from the offense while everyone stands around hoping something changes.
These next two Saturdays should be opportunities to rebuild some competence, some confidence, and maybe even a little swagger before the Corn and Blue come to town. That game always matters, whether a conference championship remains a possibility or not. There is still a standard worth defending, and there are still goals to achieve, and there are still players who deserve better than three more weeks of wasted potential.
When I think about what from this season will stay with me years from now, I’m not going to remember whether Ohio State finished with seven, eight, or nine regular-season wins. I’m going to remember whether this group, after everything that has gone wrong, found enough pride, focus, and resolve to beat their most hated rivals.
Three games remain. Two of them can help salvage the season. The last one can keep it from becoming completely unforgivable.
