Ohio State’s fourth-quarter collapse against Texas wasn’t just one side of the ball going bad. It was the kind of breakdown that takes a whole team to pull off, even if the offense did most of the damage. The defense still played its part in the mess, and the biggest issue wasn’t simply that Texas kept coming - it was that Ohio State kept putting its own defense in impossible spots.
That’s where the frustration starts. The Buckeyes didn’t just get worn down by a long night on defense.
They made avoidable mistakes, failed to adjust their personnel, and in one case didn’t even have enough players on the field. Those are coaching errors, and they don’t disappear because the offense had already put the defense in a bad place.
Texas deserves credit for staying steady and finishing the comeback. But this wasn’t some dramatic transformation from the Longhorns.
They looked a lot like the same team Ohio State had already handled the past two years. In 2024, Texas put up 341 total yards, turned it over a couple of times, and lost 28-14.
In 2025, it managed 336 yards of total offense and lost 14-7. This year, Texas again finished with 336 total yards and a couple of turnovers, only this time it escaped with a 24-23 win.
The difference was not that Texas suddenly became something else. The difference was that Ohio State couldn’t close the door without help from a defense that had already been stretched too thin.
In the previous two meetings, Ohio State needed late defensive heroics to finish the job. In 2024, Texas got all the way to the Ohio State 17-yard line and was threatening to tie the game before Jack Sawyer delivered the strip-sack and scoop-and-score that preserved the win. In 2025, the Buckeyes were up 14-0 in the fourth quarter and still had to survive a fourth-down stop with 1:27 left to seal it.
This time, there was no late rescue. After the Buckeyes’ offense produced just 12 plays, 49 yards, and no points over its final three possessions, Texas answered with 40 plays, 236 yards, and 21 points.
Ohio State’s defense was asked to hold up after playing 47 snaps in the second half, including 40 in the fourth quarter. That kind of workload catches up fast.
And this wasn’t some one-off. It fits a pattern that has shown up over and over in the Ryan Day era.
Ohio State gets a big lead, the offense stalls, the game tightens, and suddenly the defense is left carrying the whole thing. That pressure builds, the snaps pile up, and the cracks start showing.
The list of examples is a long one. Against Clemson in 2019, Ohio State led 16-0 before the offense faded and the defense gave up 29 points.
Against Oregon in 2021, the offense stayed involved, but the defense couldn’t stop the same Oregon running play and let a touchdown lead slip away. The 2022 Georgia game was even worse: Ohio State blew a two-touchdown fourth-quarter lead in a national semifinal while repeatedly sticking with man coverage and no help, even as it kept getting burned.
Then came Oregon in 2024, when a 21-14 lead vanished because the defense wouldn’t adjust to matchups being exploited in man coverage.
Texas followed a different script, but the result came from the same place: Ohio State’s defense was exhausted, the personnel wasn’t getting fixed, and the burden kept getting shoved onto the unit least able to carry it.
The strangest moment came with 1:23 left, when Texas had first and goal at the Ohio State 1-yard line. Instead of taking a timeout, managing the clock, letting Texas score, and giving the offense roughly 1:20 to chase a go-ahead drive, Ryan Day chose to leave the game in the hands of a defense that had just given up 235 yards on 37 plays. That defense had already been failing to get stops, and it was doing it without three top-15 draft picks.
The decision made the ending feel inevitable. Ohio State had already lived through versions of this story before. This one just ended the same way the others had warned it might.
In Other News...
Ryan Day Just Put Ohio State's Punt Decisions On Notice
Ohio States special teams already had a spotlight on them after the loss to Texas, and Ryan Day only sharpened it when he revisited the punt decision from Texas 39-yard line. The Buckeyes chose to kick on 4th-and-4, and the result was a 26-yard net that left plenty of room for second-guessing. Day still defended the call, while also pointing to punter Joe McGuires talent and framing the issue as more about execution than philosophy.
Robby Discher was brought in this offseason as special teams coordinator with the expectation that this phase would get cleaner, and Days comments suggested the Buckeyes are watching closely to see whether that happens. If the operation stays inconsistent, the comfort level on similar fourth-down decisions may start to change, especially in the kinds of high-leverage spots that can swing a top-end game. The message was clear enough: the punts are not automatic if the returns keep coming up short. [Read more 🡒]
Ohio State May Have Found A Young Defensive Difference Maker
Riley Pettijohns role in Ohio States loss to Texas was one of the quieter bright spots for a defense that spent much of the night under pressure. The young linebacker logged a career-high 37 snaps while moving around to multiple spots, and he flashed enough disruption to stand out even in a tough result. He also fit in with a broader theme from the game, as other young Buckeyes like Jay Timmons and Khary Wilder showed they may be ready for bigger chances too.
Ryan Day has already signaled that Pettijohns workload should keep growing, and it is easy to see why the staff is intrigued. The linebacker has shown a knack for slipping blocks and finding the football, the kind of trait that can change how a defense feels from one week to the next. Ohio State still has to sort out the bigger picture after the loss, but Pettijohns emergence gives the Buckeyes something real to build on. [Read more 🡒]
Ohio State's Texas Loss Exposed A Passing Problem Fans Feared
Jeremiah Smith gave Ohio State the kind of explosive outing that usually settles an offense down, and Bo Jacksons running helped make the ground game look better than many expected against Texas. But the broader passing picture was harder to ignore, because the Buckeyes leaned heavily on Smith while Julian Sayin kept the ball from spreading much beyond him, leaving the offense a little too easy to track for a defense that was already a difficult matchup.
What makes that imbalance matter is what it says about the rest of the receiving room. Ohio State needs more than one reliable target if it wants the passing game to hold up in the games that matter most, especially with the secondary also showing cracks on the other side of the ball. The Texas loss did not just expose one off day, it reinforced a concern fans had already been carrying into the season. [Read more 🡒]