You’re Nuts: What was the most important good thing we learned from the Texas game?

The No. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes took care of business on Saturday in Ohio Stadium as they blew out the Ball State Cardinals 56-3. However, following the win, the team’s attention immediately turned to Texas as the Scarlet and Gray will head south to Austin on Saturday for the first major marquee matchup of the season.

Unlike last season, when the two teams played in the opener, Ryan Day and his staff have 60 minutes’ worth of film to break down before the big game. In this week’s You’re Nuts, Gene and Matt each break down what they think was the biggest thing we learned from the lopsided game.

In You’re Nuts, two LGHL staff members will take differing sides on one question and argue their opinions passionately. Then, in the end, it’s up to you to determine who’s right and who’s nuts. Read the arguments and then head to the comments at the bottom of the page and jump into the debate.

If we’re being truthful, the biggest thing we learned in Saturday’s loss to Texas is that Ryan Day is simply never going to change. If he takes a decent lead over a similarly talented team early on, he will attempt to sit on it and run out the clock rather than keeping the foot on the gas, ultimately ending up in a loss more often than not.

The losses seem to always follow the same script. The offense goes stale and becomes ineffective, the defense plays on its heels and gets worn down as they remain on the field, the special teams are flat-out awful, and the time management decisions are puzzling.

A lot of these things happened in Ohio State’s national title victory over Notre Dame; the Buckeyes just luckily had built out a big enough lead and made a key play to Jeremiah Smith to ice it late. Even in Day’s biggest win of his coaching career, these issues still found a way to creep in, and he has yet to learn his lesson despite several eerily similar losses.

We will have no shortage of referendums on Day and this coaching staff this week as we sort through the wreckage of an embarrassing loss. So, as far as what we learned from this game, I want to talk about the personnel decisions that also aided in the Buckeyes letting it slip against the Longhorns.

We only have two games to go off thus far in the 2026 season, but it is already blatantly apparent to me that some of Ohio State’s best players, especially on defense, are their youngest, and those guys are not playing enough.

That sentiment is the most apparent at linebacker, where Riley Pettijohn and Tarvos Alford simply need to be the starters.

Payton Pierce has given shades of Tuf Borland over these first two weeks, and his athleticism is unfortunately not up to par with what Ohio State needs. Pierce looked good in limited action last season behind Sonny Styles and Arvell Reese, but that has not translated over to his starting role in 2026.

The two younger backers give Ohio State a much better chance of winning over Pierce and Christian Alliegro. James Laurinaitis has done a fantastic job of recognizing talent and putting his best guys on the field during his short tenure as the Buckeyes’ position coach, and it is time for him to make the switch to help the team.

Elsewhere, freshmen Jay Timmons and Khary Wilder have been making their presence felt.

Timmons obviously earned a starting role out of camp and has run with it, looking like Ohio State’s best corner through the first two games of the season. Wilder, though, puzzlingly, has not cracked the top of the depth chart despite being clearly Ohio State’s best pass rusher.

The Buckeyes got virtually nothing from their defensive line against Texas. Arch Manning had all day to sit back there and throw throughout the second half, and he made the plays needed given that time. Kenyatta Jackson recorded one sack, but that was basically it from the unit, and there was little pressure outside of that.

Wilder played only five snaps in the game, and he was more noticeable in those five snaps than every other player that took the lion’s share of the playing time.

Speaking of the young players, it was crazy to see Legend Bey only see the field once against the Longhorns.

Bey showed how dynamic he could be with the football in his hands in Week 1. Albeit against much lesser competition, Ohio State could have used a spark on offense from anyone other than Jeremiah Smith, as it sputtered for the entirety of the second half.

Instead, Bey rode the bench while Brandon Inniss, Devin McCuin, and others did nothing but run cardio out there.

There is a ton of blame to go around for this monumental collapse, both among the coaches and the players, but it all starts with putting your best players on the field. If you have to hurt the feelings of a few veterans because the younger players are simply better, you have to be willing to make that sort of decision at a place like Ohio State.

We will see how the depth chart takes shape over the next few weeks against overmatched opponents before the Buckeyes travel to Bloomington on Oct. 17 for a rematch against Indiana.

Look, there are approximately 175 different lessons that Ohio State has to learn from Saturday night’s 24-23 loss to Texas, many of which I have already written about and will undoubtedly continue to do so until Ryan Day gets out of his own way and fixes them. But if I’m looking for the most important thing we actually learned about this team, rather than the most frustrating thing that we already knew and had painfully confirmed for the umpteenth time, I keep coming back to the secondary.

Despite the loss in Austin, I think Ohio State might be really, really good back there, and that wasn’t necessarily a given entering the season. The Buckeyes had talent, obviously, because it’s Ohio State, but there were legitimate questions about how all of those pieces would fit together, especially with true freshman Jay Timmons stepping in to start at nickelback, Earl Little Jr. transferring in from Florida State at safety, and Devin Sanchez being asked to take another step forward as the Buckeyes’ No. 1 corner.

Against Texas, those concerns looked considerably less concerning. Timmons announced himself immediately; on the first play from scrimmage of his first career start (OSU played with an extra linebacker on the first play against Ball State), the freshman punched the ball away from Texas running back Raleek Brown, recovered the fumble himself, and handed the Buckeye offense possession at the Texas 18… they only got three points out of it, but that’s not Timmons’ fault.

And it wasn’t just Timmons; senior corner Jermaine Mathews Jr. was excellent, including one of the defensive plays of the night late in the second quarter. Texas tried to get the ball to Ryan Wingo via a reverse on fourth down, and Mathews diagnosed it immediately and dropped him for a 10-yard loss that resulted in a turnover on downs. That stop ultimately set up Ohio State’s touchdown just before halftime and helped send the Buckeyes into the locker room with a 20-3 lead, which I, for one, thought was just the beginning of a historic butt-kicking of epic proportions.

Sanchez didn’t have the same sort of splash play, but that is not necessarily a bad thing for a cornerback. Returning to his home state and facing one of the deepest groups of receivers Ohio State will see all season, he quietly held up for 76 defensive snaps. After spending much of the offseason hearing about Sanchez’s potential to become Ohio State’s next great corner, this was the type of matchup in which I wanted to see whether the sophomore could hold his own when the degree of difficulty dramatically increased, and for the most part, he did. While he allowed receptions on six of the seven targets that came his way, they only resulted in a total of 27 yards (4.5 ypc).

Mathews earned the highest PFF grade among Ohio State’s corners at 70.3, while Timmons played 62 snaps in his first start and graded at 65.3. Sanchez came in at 60.7 over those 76 snaps, but his 83.2 tackling grade was second-best on the team, trailing only Jaylen McClain among Buckeye defensive backs. At safety, Little played 71 snaps and was Ohio State’s highest-graded run defender at 74.9. I don’t often attribute much stock to PFF grades, but they can be helpful to gauge the general lay of the land.

Ultimately, Texas quarterback Arch Manning never really got much going against the Buckeye secondary. Some of that was the fact that his accuracy was suspect at best, air-mailing multiple wide-open receivers. But a lot of it was the fact that for most of the game, BIA locked up his receivers. Manning finished 23-of-37 (62%) for 196 yards, one touchdown, and one interception (even though that wasn’t wholly his fault). By comparison, OSU’s Julian Sayin threw for 192 yards in the first half on 12-of-16 passing (let’s not talk about his second-half stats).

Obviously, I understand what happened in the fourth quarter. Texas eventually figured some things out, Arch got comfortable, the Buckeye defense was stuck on the field for what felt like six consecutive hours, and the Longhorns put together touchdown drives of 91, 72, and 73 yards to wrestle away the victory. So I’m certainly not pretending that everything was perfect. But I also don’t think those final 15 minutes erase what we saw before them.

Ohio State went on the road against an incredibly talented Texas offense and, for three quarters, made the Longhorns look completely ordinary. More importantly, the Buckeyes did it with Timmons looking nothing like a freshman, Mathews looking like the veteran presence this secondary needs, Sanchez looking comfortable as the next featured corner in BIA, and Little showing that he can provide physicality from the safety position.

I’m not sure that collectively they will be able to fully replace Lorenzo Styles, Davison Igbinosun, and Caleb Downs, but Sanchez, Mathews, Timmons, Little, and Jaylen McClain don’t appear to be nearly as far off as some of us might have feared.

There are plenty of things about Saturday night that should keep Ryan Day and his staff awake this week (and have already caused me to lose hours of sleep), but the secondary shouldn’t be one of them. If anything, the Texas game showed us that this group might eventually become one of the biggest reasons Ohio State can still accomplish every one of the goals it set for itself this season.