Ohio State’s transfer portal class is no longer a group that’s simply getting its feet under it. Ryan Day says the Buckeyes are already leaning on those additions, and the results are starting to show.
The 2026 roster has 17 players who arrived through the portal, and plenty of them are in real roles right now. Defensive linemen Qua Russaw and John Walker, linebacker Christian Alliegro and safety Earl Little Jr. are starting on defense.
Devin McCuin is starting at wide receiver. Ja'Kobi Jackson is splitting carries with Bo Jackson at running back.
Connor Hawkins was brought in to handle the kicking job, Marcello Diomede won the kickoff specialist role and Dalton Riggs is the long snapper. Others are working into rotation spots and special teams duties.
“I think they're starting to build confidence now. That was sort of what we talked about last week, trying to build momentum for each person individually, but then also collectively,” Day said Tuesday.
“And for each of those guys, while they had success at their previous place, you're trying to prove yourself to your coaches and your teammates here. And some of these guys are now starting to show up.”
Day has made the same point repeatedly this season: the transfers, like the 27 freshmen who enrolled in January, aren’t really newcomers anymore. They’ve gone through winter workouts, spring practice, summer work, fall camp and now five games. In Day’s view, that’s enough time to stop treating them like arrivals and start treating them like Buckeyes.
He said Ohio State has been counting on them since the day they got on campus, and that expectation only grows as the team pushes deeper into the season and nears the halfway point with Maryland coming up Saturday.
“We're counting on these guys to be those players that filled the roles of guys that left,” Day said. “And that doesn't just happen.
There's a lot that goes with it. So that's a step in the right direction, but now we've got to continue to get better, and this is the next step this week.”
That expectation ties directly into another theme Day has emphasized: trust. He has talked often about needing to trust players before giving them significant snaps, and that conversation has included younger players such as Khary Wilder and Legend Bey. The same standard applies to the portal additions, who have had to absorb a new system and prove they can handle it quickly.
“It’s different when you have guys who have been in the program for three and four years. They know how things are run.
They know the routine. They know what comes with the season,” Day said after practice Wednesday.
“And when you don't have those guys, they're learning all those things. You don't have time to learn on the job here.
You've got to get them up to speed fast. That's really important.
All these guys come from different programs, whether it's somebody who comes in as a transfer or somebody who comes in as a freshman, and they have pride in where they've been, and they have pride in what they've done.”
That pride, though, has to get set aside once they’re in Columbus.
“They have to quickly jump in with two feet and say, 'OK, this is what we're doing, and this is how we do it.' And they're going to get pushed in a lot of different ways.
When you look at the guys historically in our program who are in year three or year four, that's really when you see them take off because they've got a couple years in the program,” Day said. “They understand how things go.
And the development really kicks in at that point. We don't have the luxury of doing that anymore.
That is very, very different. How we've practiced, how we've organized things, we've adjusted in certain ways.
I wouldn't say that there's major adjustments, but there are certain things that you've got to do that are different for this group that are different than the past couple of years.”
For Day, there isn’t a fixed answer for how Ohio State will build its roster going forward. He said there is “no blueprint” for the Buckeyes’ portal approach over the next several seasons.
This year brought one kind of roster construction, with immediate-impact players filling important spots. Next year could look similar, or it could be completely different depending on what Ohio State needs after this season.
What isn’t changing is the expectation that the portal class will keep mattering. The 2026 group is already making an impact, and that will continue this season, next year and beyond as college football keeps changing around the portal.
Day said Ohio State is ready for that.
“It’s kind of like that in college football right now. They change this, they change that, they change this, they change that, they change this, they change that.
And then 10 years later you look up and you're like, 'Wow, this is a completely different game.' This is a completely different way to put a roster together.
It’s a different way to motivate your group. The coaching staff is different,” Day said.
“There’s so much about it that’s different. So we have to continually adapt over time.
And we’ve always talked about if you don't adapt, you die, because nobody cares. And we have to continue to have success.
So that's our challenge, and we've embraced it.”
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