After putting together my preseason All-American projection for Ohio State, the most interesting debate point wasn’t Jeremiah Smith (he’s the easiest lock on the roster). It was Julian Sayin, because quarterback is the one position where “elite” still doesn’t guarantee first-team preseason status.
Sayin already owns the exact resume voters lean on in August. He was a Heisman finalist, he quarterbacked a playoff team, and he put up the kind of clean, efficient stat line that makes people comfortable
penciling a QB onto a first team ballot.
The resume that preseason voters love
Sayin’s 2025 production is tailor-made for preseason honors conversations: 3,610 passing yards, 32 touchdowns, 8 interceptions, plus a 77.0% completion rate across 14 games. That combination of high volume, low mistake rate, elite efficiency, is exactly how quarterbacks climb into “safe pick” territory before Week 1 even kicks off.
The California native also finished the year with major national recognition as a runner up for the Heisman and a second-team AP All-American selection.
So why isn’t this a slam-dunk first-team preseason selection? Because QB is crowded every single year, and the preseason conversation is often driven by narrative gravity as much as last season’s tape or numbers.
Sayin will enter 2026 near the top of the Heisman market again, but he’ll be fighting for the same oxygen as a handful of headline quarterbacks.
The one name in his lane: Arch Manning
If there’s one quarterback who can block Sayin from the preseason first team spot, it’s Arch Manning. Not because Sayin lacks the resume, but because Arch carries the kind of national brand that dominates August ballots. He’s consistently listed near the very top of early Heisman odds, and that preseason momentum tends to spill directly into All-American projections.
The intriguing part is that Ohio State doesn’t have to live alongside that narrative, it gets to confront it head-on. A Week 2 trip to Texas will turn this discussion into something tangible, with a matchup that could function as an early in-season who’s in control moment for the national quarterback pecking order and set the tone for the rest of the season.
How Sayin turns preseason debate into first-team reality
The good news for Ohio State is that Sayin doesn’t require projection or imagination to justify his case. He already brings the baseline production, the Heisman finalist resume, and an efficiency profile that holds up against any peer in the country.
Preseason voters are being asked to trust what they’ve already seen, not what might happen. If Ohio State enters August viewed as an offensive juggernaut and Sayin is framed as its steady engine, he will be firmly in the first-team discussion regardless of the name beside his own.
And if that Week 2 trip to Texas looms as the season’s first quarterback referendum, the preseason logic is straightforward. Sayin doesn’t need hype, he just needs voters to recognize that he has already proven he belongs at the very top of the national hierarchy.
