Ohio State’s hire of Arthur Smith came with plenty of raised eyebrows, and it’s easy to see why. He hasn’t coached in college in 16 years. But his NFL track record is hard to ignore: he’s been both an offensive coordinator and a head coach, and he’s already had success building productive offenses around elite talent.
Smith’s best-known work came with the Tennessee Titans, where he helped steer an attack built around Derrick Henry, A.J. Brown, and Jonnu Smith.
In his first season as offensive coordinator, Tennessee posted its highest-scoring team in 16 years, with all three of those players turning in career years. The following season, the Titans finished fourth in the NFL in scoring and second in total yards.
His stint as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons was the more visible job, though the results never included a playoff berth in three seasons. Even with rookie Bijan Robinson in Smith’s final year in Atlanta, the offense never quite found the same level of juice. Beyond Kyle Pitts, Drake London, and Robinson - the team’s first-round picks in each of Smith’s seasons - there simply wasn’t enough firepower for Smith to fully unlock the unit the way he had in Tennessee.
That’s what makes the Ohio State job so intriguing. This time, Smith isn’t being asked to hunt for playmakers. They’re already there.
Julian Sayin is back at quarterback after a Heisman-finalist first season as a starter. Jeremiah Smith gives the Buckeyes the most dangerous receiver in college football. And the backfield looks ready to matter even more under this new setup, with Bo Jackson returning after a 1,000-yard freshman season and sophomore Isaiah West pushing for a larger role.
That personnel fits the kind of offense Smith has preferred throughout his NFL career. He’s generally leaned into a physical, run-first approach, using the ground game to create space through the air.
Ohio State looks built for that. If Jackson and West can force defenses to crowd the box, that opens things up for Jeremiah Smith, Brandon Inniss, Chris Henry Jr., Devin McQuin, Brock Boyd, and the rest of the receiving group.
And if defenses start leaving Sayin in favorable one-on-one situations, Ohio State has the kind of talent to make them pay quickly.
The real question is whether Smith can tie it all together. Matt Patricia showed last season that a former NFL coach can slide into a college coordinator role and get the most out of an elite roster, and Smith has already done that sort of thing before when the talent around him has been right. Still, the jump from the NFL to college is never automatic.
Ohio State gives him a chance to prove it with maybe the most talented roster he’s coached yet. Smith doesn’t need to rebuild the Buckeyes’ offense.
He just needs to get all those pieces humming at the same time. If he does, scarlet and gray could be in for something special.
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Ohio State's Stacked 2026 Roster Is Already Turning Heads Nationally
Ohio State is already drawing national attention before the 2026 season even gets going, and the reason is obvious: the Buckeyes are packed with players showing up on preseason honor lists across the sport. Jeremiah Smith and Julian Sayin are among the names landing on preseason All-American teams and watch lists from major outlets and awards groups, while the program keeps popping up in the kind of early buzz that usually signals a roster with real postseason expectations.
The reach goes beyond the headline names, too. Ohio State had a large contingent selected to the Shriners Children's East-West Bowl 1000 and the Senior Bowl 300, a reminder of how many Buckeyes are already being viewed as future pros. The bigger question now is how all of that individual recognition will translate once the season starts and the targets on this roster begin to matter more than the preseason applause. [Read more 🡒]
Ryan Day Just Put Fresh Eyes On One Ohio State Freshman
Freshman receiver Brock Boyd has kept himself in the conversation at Ohio State, and Ryan Day made it clear in a recent press conference that the staff expects him to get on the field in 2026. Day pointed to Boyds spring and fall camp work as a reason for the optimism, noting the young receiver has shown versatility and steady progress in practice.
The bigger picture for the Buckeyes is a receiver room that looks deeper than it did a year ago, which means there may be room for as many as six wideouts to see the field. For Boyd, the opportunity is there, but the exact role still has to sort itself out as the season approaches. [Read more 🡒]
Nick Sabans Ohio State Story Is Hard For Buckeyes Fans To Ignore
Before he became the face of a college football dynasty, Nick Saban had an Ohio State chapter that is easy to overlook now. He started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Kent State, worked his way through a string of assistant jobs, and landed in Columbus as Earle Bruces defensive backs coach from 1980 to 1981. For Buckeyes fans, it is one of those footnote connections that looks a lot bigger in hindsight, especially given the career that followed.
Sabans Ohio State run ended after the 1981 Liberty Bowl amid a reported disagreement in philosophy, but the split did not slow his climb. He went on to assistant stops at Navy, Michigan State and Toledo, along with NFL work, before becoming a head coach at Michigan State, LSU and Alabama. The rest of the story is familiar enough by now, with seven national championships in the background, which makes that brief, messy Columbus stop all the harder for Ohio State supporters to ignore. [Read more 🡒]