Jaylen McClain didn’t need much room to make the kind of play that can change a game. Against Indiana, the Ohio State safety came off the edge on a blitz he wasn’t even used to seeing, found quarterback Josh Hoover exposed on fourth down, and delivered the shot that jarred the ball loose. The Buckeyes recovered, rode that break to a 19-15 win, and snapped the nation’s longest winning streak at 22 games.
For McClain, it was a first in a three-year college career: his first sack and his first forced fumble.
And in a family that’s built around defense, it wasn’t hard to see the resemblance.
Twenty-four years earlier, McClain’s father, Maurice, delivered a defining takeaway of his own. After coming back from a broken leg just two weeks earlier, he picked off Virginia Tech’s third-overtime possession on the opening snap and sealed a 50-42 upset. That was senior Maurice McClain’s first interception, too.
"It was a long recovery back," Jaylen said of his father. "... When the play came to him, he just had to make that play."
So did Jaylen.
There’s even a coaching thread tying the two eras together. Syracuse’s defensive backs coach in 2002 was Tim Walton, while Matt Patricia was there as a graduate assistant working with the scout team. Today, Patricia coordinates Ohio State’s defense, and Walton coaches McClain’s secondary.
"[Patricia] is the same guy that he was back then," Maurice McClain told CBS Sports. "He was the guy that when he saw a player down, he'd pick him back up.
He was hugging guys. That's just him."
Maurice said Walton had "a lot more fire to him" back then. Now, in his eyes, Walton is "more like a teacher, if anything. He's a life coach."
McClain’s emergence comes at a time when Ohio State needs it. The Buckeyes may be without starting quarterback Julian Sayin for the rest of the season after he injured his throwing shoulder in the fourth quarter at Indiana.
Ryan Day had not named a starter Tuesday for Saturday night’s game at USC, with freshman Luke Fahey and Tavien St. Clair both in the mix.
Day said both could play.
Whoever gets the nod will be trying to join a small list: Ohio State has only had three quarterbacks since 2000 win their first career start in a true road game, with C.J. Stroud doing it most recently in 2021.
Sayin’s injury puts even more onus on Jeremiah Smith, the Heisman Trophy frontrunner, and on a defense that was rebuilt with eight new starters. Day put it plainly this week.
"We all have to step up, coaches, players. And what does that mean?"
Day told reporters this week. "Well, we've got to be on our game more and more.
I mean, the margin for error certainly has tightened up. There's no question."
The margin is getting slimmer in the Big Ten race and the chase for the College Football Playoff. No.
2 Ohio State is 6-1 overall and 4-0 in the league, with its only defeat a 24-23 loss at Texas in September. The Buckeyes have won 13 straight regular-season conference games, the longest active streak in FBS, and now head to USC on Halloween before hosting Oregon on Nov.
The USC trip carries its own layer of irony for McClain’s family story. Maurice said Jaylen initially wanted to commit to the Trojans, but they took another player from California.
Oregon also went another way. Ohio State was the school "he really wanted," and "it opened up to him at the end."
USC, meanwhile, comes in at 6-2 and 3-2 after a 24-7 loss at Wisconsin in which it ran for minus-17 yards. Even so, Day called the Trojans "as talented a team as I've seen on film."
Ohio State’s defense, though, has already shown it can carry weight. Patricia’s first Buckeye unit allowed 9.3 points and 219.1 yards per game in 2025, the lowest marks in FBS since Alabama in 2011.
Eight starters from that group are gone, including Caleb Downs, Arvell Reese and Sonny Styles, but the replacement crew has held up well. The Buckeyes entered their bye week giving up 13.4 points per game, tied for fifth nationally, and a nation-best 5.2 yards per pass attempt.
None of their three October opponents scored more than 15 points on offense.
McClain has been central to that stability. Playing with Downs last season gave him a front-row view of what high-end defense looks like, and Downs told him before leaving for the NFL to "take that next step," McClain said.
He’s done that and then some. Through seven games, the junior has 32 tackles, two interceptions, four pass breakups, a sack and a forced fumble.
Against ranked opponents, he has turned into a turnover machine: interceptions at Texas and Iowa, then the strip-sack at Indiana. This week, he was named a semifinalist for the Thorpe Award, which Downs won a year ago.
"I feel as though he's the same player. It's just that now he's being seen, you know," Maurice said of his son.
"I always said that when I watched Caleb Downs at Alabama, I always told people they had the same type of game. But now it's just that people actually had an opportunity to see him play."
The family theme doesn’t stop with Jaylen and Maurice. His younger brothers are defensive players too: KJ is a safety at Tennessee, and Cameron is a defensive end at Seton Hall Prep.
For the McClains, making big plays on the back end or in the backfield seems almost hereditary.
"It's cool to score touchdowns," said Jaylen, "but the dark side is better."
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