Without an Ohio State game over the weekend, the Grumpy Old Buckeye has the week off. However, your Land-Grant Holy Land Buckeye content, like the spice from Arrakis in Dune, must flow.
To that end, let’s
get into the holiday spirit today and celebrate the 12 days of an Ohio State football Christmas — countdown style.
Day 12: Twelve Vulture Touchdowns
Senior running back C.J. Donaldson may have 10 rushing touchdowns on the season (and one receiving score), but he wears No. 12, and he’s become the Ohio State touchdown vulture.
The West Virginia transfer has made a living this season carrying the ball the final one or two yards necessary to get the ball into the end zone after the rest of the Buckeyes have moved the ball down the field (colloquially known as “vulturing”).
Bo Jackson and Isaiah West may have passed him in terms of carries outside the red zone in the second half of the season, but Donaldson has been the battering ram at the goal line, and if he scores in the Cotton Bowl (or a subsequent game this season), his number of total touchdowns will match (or surpass) his jersey number.
Day 11: Eleven Silver Bullets
The Buckeyes have played 13 games in the 2025 season and Ohio State’s defense — eleven warriors, brave and bold, whose fame will indeed ever stand — has been incredible.
The Silver Bullets are the nation’s only unit conceding less than 10 points per game (8.2). Ohio State is also No. 1 in total defense by yielding on average just 213.5 yards per contest, which is 34 yards better on average than No. 2 James Madison and almost 40 yards better than the next Power 4 defense (Oregon at 251.6). The Buckeye defense is also No. 1 against the pass and No. 6 against the run.
What a gift Matt Patricia’s group has been.
Day 10: Peoples Leaping
James Peoples wasn’t meshing well with the offensive line early in the season and Jackson and West gained more playing time as the season wore on, but the sophomore from Texas gave fans one of the most electrifying moments of the 2025 regular season when he took to the skies and scored against UCLA.
No description I can provide would do it justice, so just watch this video:
Day 9: Nine Holds on Jackson
One of the greatest compliments a player can get is when the opposition must cheat to stop him.
Kenyatta Jackson had a fantastic year — to the point that it seems criminal that he was only an All-B1G honorable mention. Jackson often suffered the indignity of getting the Chase Young/Joey Bosa treatment by opposing offensive tackles.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the Big Ten Championship Game, when Indiana decided to simply tackle him until the refs threw a flag (which never came). Instead of 100 yards in holding penalties, it turned out to be a wise move, which kept Fernando Mendoza upright multiple times when he would otherwise not have been.
I’m not sure if the Hoosiers held him nine times (it might have been more), and that alone wasn’t responsible for Ohio State’s loss, but Jackson’s entire night was one of the most blatant cases of ignoring a rather important rule of the game that I’ve ever seen.
Day 8: Eight Out There Beastin’
Everyone expected Arvell Reese to have a big year in 2025 after he began to flash a year ago, but perhaps outside the locker room, nobody really knew we were going to see…well that from the junior out of Glenville.
No. 8 in Scarlet & Gray was in full beast mode all season, often used as a spy to run down mobile quarterbacks. His unique blend of size and speed absolutely wrecked opposing teams’ game plans.
He’s played his way into a high draft position and that’s great for him, but it means we’re almost certainly not getting another year of watching him blow up plays for the Buckeyes, including 6.5 sacks from the linebacker position.
Day 7: Seven Bo’s A-Runnin’
The number of this one is meaningless relative to the traditional Christmas carol, but I had to find someplace to discuss Ohio State’s phenomenal freshman running back.
It became clear to everyone early this season that Jackson just looked different toting the rock than anyone else in the OSU running backs room. His emergence took carries from Donaldson and Peoples, and he seized the RB1 role, becoming just the fifth true freshman to gain 1,000 rushing yards for Ohio State.
Jackson joined Robert Smith (1990), Maurice Clarett (2002), J.K. Dobbins (2017), and TreVeyon Henderson (2021).
Day 6: Six Styles’ A-Stylin’
Sonny Styles wore No. 6 before earning the Block O jersey for his final season, and it was an outstanding final campaign. But we would be remiss in dismissing his brother’s contributions to the 2025 season.
Lorenzo Styles Jr. earned and kept the second starting corner spot and while there were some hiccups, he had a solid season and even made some big plays, including the Buckeyes’ first kickoff return for a touchdown in 15 years in the same game as People’s hurdle touchdown vs. UCLA.
He also had a big play against Indiana that led to an interception.
As for Sonny, well he was an All-Big Ten linebacker and the captain and glue for Patricia’s defensive unit, leading Ohio State in tackles, with 80 so far, with a team-high 45 solo stops. He’s also chipped in five tackles for loss, half a sack, an interception, three pass breakups, four quarterback hurries, and a forced fumble.
Day 5: Five Golden Pants
Michigan had claimed four straight iterations of The Game after staging a sickout in 2020 to break Ohio State’s period of dominance. But Game five since the global pandemic did not go the way of the Wolverine.
That fifth game of the 2020s belonged in nearly every conceivable way to the Buckeyes, despite a slow start on both sides of the ball. Ohio State held its rivals to field goals, even when the defense was put in a difficult position by an early Julian Sayin interception.
Both Carnell Tate and Jeremiah Smith made big plays in the passing game, the defense put a vise grip on Bryce Underwood and the Michigan run game (especially in the second half), and a group that had never experienced a win in The Game finally earned its gold pants to cap a perfect regular season.
Day 4: Four Calebs Clamping
Speaking of putting a vise grip on opponents, Caleb Downs did that all season long from his safety spot.
Patricia was able to use the versatile defensive back in a number of ways throughout the season, keeping opposing offenses guessing where he might be and where he might go after the snap. Downs made the top 10 in Heisman Trophy voting despite teams trying to avoid him like the plague.
The 20-year old won the Lott Trophy, the Jim Thorpe Award, Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year, Big Ten Defensive Back of the Year (for the second straight year), and first-team All-American honors. Like Reese, Downs will be a high NFL draft pick in the spring.
Day 3: Three Tight Ends
OK, it only kind of rhymes with three French hens, but I’m trying over here.
This one isn’t necessarily a good thing to get for Christmas, depending on the situation. Late in the season, Ohio State decided to take either Tate, Smith, or both off the field and go with three (or more) tight ends.
This strategy allowed opposing defenses to crowd the middle, leading to some red zone issues. It was a massive factor (combined with brutal playcalling in short yardage) in the loss to Indiana. Hopefully, the OSU coaching staff will learn from what went wrong before starting the College Football Playoff run.
With three downs to get one yard, rushing only once is criminal negligence, and not spreading teams out to run seems unwise.
As for the tight ends themselves, one can hardly overlook their contributions to the Ohio State offense in 2025.
Max Klare has a chance to surpass John Frank’s school single-season record for catches by a tight end. Klare is two receptions shy of Frank’s 45 set in 1981 and equaled by Frank in 1983. He has an outside shot at Frank’s single-season yardage mark of 641, sitting at 448 with a potential deep playoff run helping him get there. It will obviously be in more games than Frank needed, but a record is a record, and Klare has been great.
Meanwhile, Will Kacmarek has chipped in timely catches and two touchdowns while helping block in the run game. Bennett Christian and Jelani Thurman have also found the end zone from the tight end spot this season.
Day 2: Two First-Round Wideouts
Tate and Smith have been ridiculously good all season and both were first-team All-B1G.
While being slowed by injuries late in the season may have cost Smith a chance at being a Heisman finalist, he still finished in the Top 10 in voting. And a case could have been made for most of the season that Tate was just as good as Smith, with his spectacular, toe-tapping sideline catches and explosive touchdown catches.
Smith surpassed 1,000 receiving yards and caught 11 touchdowns, while Tate missed three games and still caught nine scores and may yet still reach 1,000 yards if he can get 142 more in the College Football Playoff. It’s been a joy to watch this tandem together.
For a school that has recently had Marvin Harrison Jr., Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Chris Olave, and Garrett Wilson, it seems ludicrous to say that this has been the best tandem in school history, but here we are.
Day 1: The Most Accurate Passer in the Nation
Fernando Mendoza is deserving of all his awards this year, but it can’t erase the fact that several of the Indiana quarterback’s stats are not as good as, or equal to, Sayin’s.
Even in the head-to-head matchup, Sayin’s numbers were better overall, but the OSU signal caller’s side was outcoached, securing no points from two second-half drives that combined to cover more than 150 yards. In the end, playcalling and a missed chip-shot field goal cost Ohio State the Big Ten title game and may have cost Sayin the Heisman Trophy, or at least a better finish than fourth in the voting.
Sayin is the nation’s most accurate passer — in his first year as a starter — completing an insane 78.4% of his passes. He also leads the nation in quarterback rating (182.15), while throwing for 3,323 yards, 31 touchdowns, and only six picks.
With a strong finish, Sayin could set a new college record for completion percentage, as he currently leads Bo Nix’s all-time mark of 77.45%.
There you have it, a 2025 Ohio State spin on an old blog trope. May the gifts keep coming to Buckeye fans after Dec. 25.
