Ohio State’s loss to USC on Saturday felt like an amalgamation of bad luck and mental mistakes. The bad luck came in the form of injuries, namely that of starting quarterback Julian Sayin in the Oct. 17 game against Indiana.
Perhaps that misfortune exacerbated the Buckeyes’ mistakes against the Trojans, but if we’re being honest, the mental mistakes didn’t start this weekend. Instead, in many cases this season (and even further back), the Buckeyes have often won, not because they didn’t make any major
mistakes, but despite them.
Without Sayin, that becomes much harder. This is not commentary on Luke Fahey’s talent or potential, but experience is a major factor in collegiate football, and Fahey essentially has none. It’s a bitter pill to swallow for us fans used to a certain level of production from OSU and specifically its quarterback position, but with the starter in a sling, this is a very different Ohio State football team than the one that was a legitimate national championship contender just a few weeks ago.
We saw this play out Saturday in Southern California: it was an embarrassing amateur hour against a good-but-not-great USC team. Fahey’s inexperience required his teammates to take some of the pressure off him, and instead, they seemed to be crushed beneath the weight of it. Their lack of spark was not only palpable, but it felt like they didn’t want to be there.
Throughout the game, the team looked undisciplined, failing to convert red zone opportunities, committing costly penalties, and making sloppy mistakes like dropped passes and execution errors. But it was not the first time this season the Buckeyes played with no sense of urgency or energy — it was just the most obvious. We’ve seen similar errors even in games they won, including that Indiana game.
Were the mistakes costly on Saturday? Absolutely. But I’d go so far as to say the pressure and the mental mistakes are not the root cause of the Buckeyes’ problems, but instead, they are a symptom of something larger.
What it ultimately boils down to for me is that there is a tremendously talented team out there (heck, one of them is good enough that he should win the Heisman), but that team looks like it’s forgotten that football is supposed to be fun. Absolutely, this is a job, especially in the NIL era, so I am by no means suggesting that players or coaches shouldn’t take games seriously.
But you can take the game seriously without forgetting why you wanted to play in the first place.
In most jobs, people who enjoy what they do are going to do a better job. The same principles apply to athletes at the top of their games. Sure, you want to keep your eyes on the prize (which for Ohio State should always be the playoffs and a national title), but you’re allowed to have fun and get hyped in the process. This team doesn’t seem to have a lot of that outside of Jeremiah Smith, who seems to be enjoying every moment of his record-breaking season.
Take the 2024 National Championship team for comparison. The second they lost that game to Michigan, something clicked for them. They started playing for each other. They started playing for themselves. They started playing to prove it to the people who said they couldn’t. When you watch those playoff games back, the guys are smiling throughout; they’re having fun, and it shows up in the way they play the game. No one touched them the rest of the season, and they brought a trophy back to Columbus as a result.
Because they were enjoying themselves, they were able to get out of their heads and execute at a higher level.
This 2026 team needs to find that spark as well. If they felt like the pressure was too great last week against the Trojans, what does that mean for the rest of the season, where they have absolutely no room for error if they want to make the playoffs? It’s not the pressure itself that worries me. It’s that unless they find a way to have a little fun out there, they might not be able to release that pressure.
My hope for this team is that they manage to get out of their own way by remembering why they wanted to do this in the first place. The same is true for the coaches. Play for the younger version of themselves who had big dreams. Play for their teammate who deserves a Heisman but needs his teammates to help him get there. Play for the teammate who is injured on the sidelines and can’t play right now. And play for themselves — whether they have four games left or a long playoff run ahead of them, this season is coming to a close faster than I care to admit — and they deserve to feel fired up about what’s left of it.
I have a hunch that if they can manage to do that, a playoff run might take care of itself.
