Two months into the season, Ohio State’s defense still hasn’t looked like the kind of unit that can carry a championship run.
That was the takeaway again Saturday night in Los Angeles, where the Buckeyes turned in their roughest performance of the Matt Patricia era and walked out of a 12-point loss to USC having allowed 30 points, their highest total in a game since the 32-31 loss to Oregon in October 2024. The same issues that showed up a month ago were still there, only louder.
The most damaging blows came early and came in chunks. Ohio State entered the night as one of just two teams in college football that had not surrendered a play of 40 yards or more, alongside North Dakota State.
USC blew past that clean slate almost immediately. On the second play of the game, Trent Mosley turned a screen pass into a 69-yard touchdown.
Later, freshman Mark Bowman ripped off a 70-yard catch-and-run that set up a touchdown two plays later.
Ryan Day pointed to those two snaps as the defining moments on defense, and he wasn’t wrong. Strip them away, and USC managed only 199 yards on its other 48 plays. The Trojans’ other touchdown drive also came with help, starting on a short field after a 44-yard punt return and a late-hit penalty on Beau Atkinson that moved the ball to the 32-yard line.
Still, the bigger picture was hard to miss. Ohio State needed its defense to steady things with first-time starting quarterback Luke Fahey in the spotlight, and that didn’t happen. The Buckeyes couldn’t generate the kind of stops that would let the offense breathe.
Pass rush remains a glaring problem. After Wisconsin had sacked Jayden Maiava five times a week earlier, Ohio State never even got a quarterback hit against USC at the L.A.
Coliseum. The Trojans also found enough room on the ground, running for 116 yards and two touchdowns on 27 carries.
That came out to 4.3 yards per attempt, well above USC’s season average of 3.9 entering the game.
Ohio State did force one meaningful turnover. Earl Little Jr. recovered a fumble to halt a USC drive at the 42-yard line midway through the second quarter.
Beyond that, though, the defense never consistently flipped the field. The Buckeyes didn’t get the offense the ball back any closer than its own 33-yard line, leaving Fahey and company to fight uphill all night.
The absence of nickelback Jay Timmons mattered, too. Timmons had been the standout in Ohio State’s previous game against Indiana, and even as a true freshman he has been one of the team’s best defenders this season.
But after tweaking the hamstring injury he suffered against Illinois in the fourth quarter of the Indiana game, he wasn’t cleared to play against USC. That raised fresh questions about how much the injury could linger.
His absence also underscored the larger issue with this defense: it doesn’t have the same star power it has had the past two seasons, when Ohio State was the best defense in the country. There isn’t a Caleb Downs, Arvell Reese, Sonny Styles or Kayden McDonald playing at an All-American level on this group.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t bright spots. Little finished with five tackles, a tackle for loss and the fumble recovery.
Jermaine Mathews Jr. made his presence felt with two tackles for loss, a sack and a pass breakup that nearly turned into an interception before his foot landed out of bounds. Kenyatta Jackson Jr. was credited with the forced fumble on Little’s takeaway and added four tackles with 1.5 tackles for loss.
Riley Pettijohn also came up with a strong third-down breakup over the middle and finished with five tackles.
But against top competition, the cracks keep showing. Texas closed the fourth quarter by staying on the field for its final three possessions, fueling a 21-point comeback in a 24-23 win over Ohio State. Against Indiana, the Buckeyes came within a step of giving up the game-winning touchdown when Nick Marsh stepped out of bounds on the Hoosiers’ final offensive play - and even then, Ohio State allowed more touchdowns to Indiana than the Hoosiers had scored in regulation in their previous two games combined.
On paper, the numbers still looked strong going into Saturday. Ohio State ranked fourth nationally in scoring defense and sixth in total defense, though both marks are set to fall after the USC game. But the broader truth is harder to ignore now: this is not the same level of defense that powered the Buckeyes to a national championship in 2024 or the historically dominant group they fielded in 2025.
And with Julian Sayin injured and an inexperienced quarterback now carrying the offense, Ohio State’s path gets a lot narrower if the defense doesn’t rise closer to that standard.
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