The Ohio State Buckeyes have 2 losses on the season, and they both came at the hands of the two teams competing for the National Championship.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and for the Ohio State Buckeyes, a look back at the end of their season that ended in disappointment is starting to look a whole lot different.
In the final two times that Ohio State took the field, the program got punked by the Indiana Hoosiers and the Miami Hurricanes in back-to-back games. As fate would have it, those are the two teams that are competing for this year's College Football Playoff National Championship.
The main takeaway, at least personally, was that Ohio State simply wasn't able to match the two teams physically. In a close game that Ohio State probably feels like they should have won against Indiana, they were beaten on the offensive line pretty handily. Indiana got to Julian Sayin for five sacks in the game, and Ohio State showed its first crack.
Then, about three and a half weeks later, the Buckeyes went down to Jerry's World in Arlington, TX, and got dominated by the Miami Hurricanes. Miami turned that contest into a street fight, and the Buckeyes were unable to handle the Hurricanes' physicality.
They were dominated on both lines of scrimmage, and the main takeaway from the upset was that Ohio State just didn't have the foundational guys to compete this year.
I viewed the two losses in a very dire fashion. To me, they signaled that the current construction of the Buckeyes' team was not fit to be a National Championship contender and that they had a ton of work to do.
It's at this point that I must eat my words.
Ohio State lost by a combined 13 points to the two National Championship participants.
Indiana is absolutely killing their opponents. After beating Ohio State 13-10, they went on to blow out both Alabama and Oregon by a combined score of 94-25.
94-25.
Ohio State has a legitimate argument to say that they should have beat the Hoosiers but they came up short.
On the other side of the bracket, the Hurricanes survived an unbelievable performance by the Ole Miss Rebels that had them taking a chance at a 30-yard hail mary as time expired to win the Fiesta Bowl and punch their ticket.
Ohio State's roster this year was absolutely good enough to put together another run to the title. Ultimately, I believe they fell at the hands of a bad offensive line, an inexperienced quarterback, and a lack of continuity from the play callers.
The Buckeyes have work to do to get back to where they want to be, but as it always is in the game of football, the result is never as good or as bad as it seems in the moment. The 2025 Buckeyes are the case and point.