Depth is good. Ohio State’s linebacker room has that. But the bigger problem for opponents is the versatility, because that’s what turns a deep unit into a headache.
On the latest Buckeye Talk episode, Stephen Means, Stefan Krajisnik and Andrew Gillis dug into a group that could become one of college football’s most disruptive heading into the 2026 season. The discussion kept circling back to the same idea: Ohio State doesn’t just have bodies at linebacker. It has interchangeable pieces.
Christian Alliegro was the place to start. He’s spent a lot of his development on the outside, but in fall camp he’s been moving inside. What stood out to Krajisnik wasn’t only Alliegro’s own game, but what Alliegro said about Riley Pettijohn.
“He said like everything that he can do, Riley Pettijohn can do. And I was just like, how difficult does that make it to like read you guys pre-snap? Like how like what’s it like disguising knowing that you and Riley can be out there together?”
That’s the kind of comment that should make offensive coordinators sweat. If two linebackers can do the same things and line up in the same spots, the offense loses the easy tells it usually leans on before the snap. Suddenly, the read becomes much less about recognition and much more about survival.
Gillis pushed that point even further, laying out how it can look when those pieces are on the field together.
“Just the interchangeability of, you know, Christian and Riley, let’s say, on the field at the same time, you know, if you have four down linemen, let’s say, and you have three backers like kind of stacked on top of one another, either one of those guys can kind of bump down and play off the edge.”
That’s a lot for an offense to sort out in a hurry. Four down linemen.
Three stacked linebackers. And any of those backers can suddenly become the guy coming off the edge.
Payton Pierce is part of that mix too, and the conversation made clear he’s basically locked into the picture. TJ Alford is another name drawing attention, especially with his work at Mike linebacker and his confidence about making plays from sideline to sideline.
Means pointed to another revealing detail from camp: every linebacker has been getting a crack at Mike to see who handles the green dot best.
“TJ Alford was saying everybody’s had a chance to play Mike and it’s because you want to see who’s comfortable with the green dot and who’s not.”
That tells you a lot about where this room stands. This isn’t a staff scrambling for answers.
It’s a staff with enough options to let the competition play out and sort out roles by who can handle the mental load as much as the physical one. The green dot, after all, goes to the linebacker trusted to receive the defensive calls.
Eli Lee also keeps popping up in the camp chatter. Alliegro said Lee has forced the most fumbles so far, which is exactly the kind of detail that suggests more than just depth-chart filler.
That’s production. That’s disruption.
And all of it fits what Matt Patricia wants on defense. He’s made it clear that more players are going to see the field and that rotation will matter.
For Ohio State, that means fresh legs late in games. It means more ways to manipulate matchups.
And when four linebackers can realistically do the same jobs, it gives the Buckeyes a chance to make opposing offenses guess from the opening snap to the final whistle.
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