What Went Wrong at Ohio State: Ryan Day, Arthur Smith and the Buckeyes' 6-3 Season

Ohio State was supposed to be past this. A national title in the 2024 season was meant to end the arguments about Ryan Day. Instead, nine games into 2026, the Buckeyes are 6-3, their playoff hopes are on life support, and Ohio Stadium was booing on Saturday.

What follows is Undrafted's analysis of what went wrong, how long Ohio State's leadership is likely to tolerate it, and why Pittsburgh Steelers fans could have told Columbus exactly what the offense would look like when things got hard.

How a 6-1 Season Became 6-3

The record tells two stories. With Julian Sayin at quarterback, Ohio State went 6-1, and the only loss was a 24-23 decision at Texas in September. Sayin was completing 71.2 percent of his passes for 1,772 yards, 17 touchdowns and two interceptions when Indiana's Mario Landino landed on his right throwing shoulder in the fourth quarter of a 19-15 win in Bloomington on Oct. 17. Day said three days later the team was planning for him to miss the rest of the season.

With true freshman Luke Fahey at quarterback, Ohio State is 0-2. USC beat the Buckeyes 30-18 at the Coliseum on Halloween, and Oregon scored 38 straight points to win 41-28 in Columbus on Saturday.

The context makes it worse. According to USA Today's Paul Myerberg, this is the first Ohio State team since 2011 to lose more than twice, and the Buckeyes are 6-5 since last December, a stretch that includes a 10-point showing in the Big Ten title game loss to Indiana and the Cotton Bowl loss to Miami. Myerberg also noted that no team had put together a 38-point run against Ohio State since Wisconsin in 1999.

What Went Wrong

There is no single cause, so here is how Undrafted sees it.

The injury gets a real share. Losing a quarterback playing at Sayin's level would hurt anyone, and Fahey is a 5-foot-11 three-star freshman who had thrown 13 college passes before his first start. That part is bad luck.

The defense gets a share too. Matt Patricia's unit had allowed more than 20 points only once before Los Angeles. Since then it has given up 30 and 41, including touchdown plays of 69 and 70 yards at USC and a fake punt, a trick-play touchdown on the last snap of the first half and a 48-yard Dierre Hill Jr. run against Oregon.

But the biggest share belongs to the offense and the people who built it, because the problem is not just that Fahey is young. It is that the offense around him has not given him much help. Against USC, Ohio State outgained the Trojans 464 to 338, held the ball for 39:28 and still scored one touchdown, because nearly every trip inside the USC 35 ended in a field goal or a turnover. Against Oregon, the Buckeyes ran for 53 yards, went 0 for 4 on fourth down and, per Myerberg, Jeremiah Smith went nearly two full quarters without touching the ball.

Day said as much himself after Saturday's game. "If we're not going to run the ball consistently and give him easier throws... then things like this can come up," he said, according to Sports Illustrated. "It's our job to figure out how we can put our guys in a situation to be successful. Creativity is one of them."

That puts the spotlight on two people: the head coach who hired the offensive coordinator, and the offensive coordinator.

The Arthur Smith Hire

When Brian Hartline left to become South Florida's head coach, Day hired Arthur Smith, announced on Jan. 31, as his new offensive coordinator and play-caller. "He will bring immediate value to our program and was exactly what we were looking for," Day said in the school's announcement.

USA Today columnist Blake Toppmeyer put the second-guessing bluntly on Sunday: "Day hired Arthur Smith. He apparently needed Chip Kelly."

Smith's preseason message was simplicity. In an Associated Press story from August, receiver Isaiah West said Smith "is real big on being brilliant in the basics" and that "We don't have a thousand different plays." The AP noted Smith has leaned on two- and three-tight end sets at previous stops. As early as Oct. 2, Andrew Hughes of Scarlet and Game warned that the offense was "dangerously close to a one-man show" built around Jeremiah Smith, and wrote: "This isn't a sustainable offensive system when the opponents get tough."

None of that was a secret to anyone who watched Smith in the NFL.

What Steelers Fans Tried to Tell Us

Before Pittsburgh, Smith went 21-30 in three seasons as the Atlanta Falcons' head coach, with three straight 7-10 finishes, and was fired in January 2024. He was widely criticized in his final season for failing to get enough out of Kyle Pitts, Drake London and Bijan Robinson.

Mike Tomlin hired him as the Steelers' offensive coordinator less than a month later, and Pittsburgh fans spent two seasons describing the same problems Ohio State fans are describing now.

At the end of the 2024 regular season, Steelers Wire's Allison Koehler wrote that the criticism of Smith "centers on predictable play-calling, lack of creativity, and a seeming inability to adapt mid-game," and compared it to the Matt Canada era. SteelerNation wrote that the offense "seemed to collapse during the last five games of the season" and that fans were calling for Smith to be fired after one year. The Steelers finished 23rd in total offense that season at 317.2 yards per game.

The 2025 season had better numbers on paper. Pittsburgh went 10-7 and won the AFC North, and the offense scored its most touchdowns since 2020. But the same cracks showed up when it mattered. The Steelers lost four games they led at halftime, tied for the most in the NFL. They ran for 103.3 yards per game, 26th in the league, according to SteelerNation, citing Fox Sports. After a 13-6 loss at Cleveland on Dec. 28, Jacob Punturi of Steelers On SI wrote that "The play calling was tepid, timid and tiresome" and that the team "over-relied on screen passes." Blogging Dirty's Grayson Freestone headlined his column "Steelers are finally learning what Falcons fans have always known about Arthur Smith."

Pittsburgh's season ended with a 30-6 wild-card loss to Houston. Tomlin stepped down on Jan. 13 after 19 seasons, and the team told his assistants they would not be retained unless the new head coach chose to rehire them, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Gerry Dulac. Mike McCarthy took over and hired Brian Angelichio as offensive coordinator. By August, SteelerNation was describing McCarthy's job as fixing "years of predictable performances and stalled development," including "failing to create easy completions."

How We Could Have Seen This Coming

Line up the Steelers complaints next to Ohio State's last two games and the overlap is hard to miss.

Predictable and conservative when protecting a quarterback: in Pittsburgh it was screens and fear of the sack, and at USC it was a game plan built on quick throws that produced no completion longer than 27 yards until the final minutes.

A run game that did not hold up: 26th in the NFL in 2025, and 53 yards against Oregon.

Leads that did not hold: four blown halftime leads in Pittsburgh, and a 14-0 first-quarter lead in Columbus that turned into 38 straight Oregon points.

Not enough for the best player: Pitts, London and Robinson in Atlanta, and nearly two quarters without a touch for Jeremiah Smith on Saturday.

To be fair to Smith, his offense looked fine for seven weeks with a Heisman finalist at quarterback and the best receiver in the country. The knock on him was never that he cannot run an offense with elite talent. It was that his offenses have struggled to adjust when the talent or the script breaks down. That is exactly what happened when Sayin went down.

The Killer Mentality Question

This is the part that sticks to Day. The criticism, fair or not, is that his teams play not to lose in the biggest moments. Before last season, Day had lost four straight to Michigan. His 2025 team scored 10 points in the Big Ten title game and 14 in the playoff. This season, Ohio State lost by a point at Texas and gave away a 14-0 lead at home to Oregon.

Day has talked the right way. "We're not allowed to lose games, and when that happens there's consequences," he said after USC, according to the Associated Press. "That's just the way it is, and if you don't like it, then don't come to Ohio State." After Oregon he said, "To lose three games is unacceptable, and I own that," and "There needs to be accountability for all of it."

The counterargument is real. Day won a national title in the 2024 season and beat Michigan 27-9 last November. But Toppmeyer pointed to what Ohio State's roster costs, writing that "A $50 million roster ought to be able to respond to an injury to QB1 better than Ohio State did the past two weeks." Several former Buckeyes went public after Saturday too, with CBS Sports collecting their reactions under the headline "Clean house."

How Long Will Ross Bjork Wait

Athletic director Ross Bjork arrived from Texas A&M in January 2024, replacing Gene Smith, the AD who promoted Day in the first place. That matters. Bjork inherited Day, and the title run gave him every reason to commit to him, which Ohio State did in February 2025 with a seven-year contract through 2031 worth $12.5 million a year, according to CBS Sports.

In July 2025, Bjork told the Columbus Dispatch the title had taken the pressure off. "Let's lift the lid off that," he said, according to Sports Illustrated. "Coach feels that. Now we can go." Undrafted did not find any public comment from Bjork on Day's status since the Oregon loss.

The money is the first reason not to expect anything sudden. CBS Sports reported the buyout as $11.5 million for each year remaining on the deal. By Undrafted's math, that is about $57.5 million if Day were let go after this season, before any offset if he took another job.

National reporting points the same way. For The Win's Cory Woodroof wrote Saturday that Ohio State "most likely won't fire Day" after the Oregon loss, but that "It's very possible Smith could be the scapegoat for Day by season's end if the school wants to keep its head coach." Myerberg wrote that "At a minimum, this swoon will lead to an offseason reevaluation of the Ohio State coaching staff."

Here is Undrafted's read. Day is safe this season, and probably into next fall. The first change, if one comes, is far more likely to be on the offensive staff than in the head coach's office. Smith was hired to raise the floor of an offense that went cold in big games, and the floor is exactly what fell through.

But patience has a shape. Northwestern visits on Nov. 14, Ohio State goes to Nebraska on Nov. 21, and Michigan comes to Columbus on Nov. 28. Losing that last one, with this season already gone sideways, would turn the offseason into a referendum. And if 2027 looks like the last two weeks, with a healthy Sayin back and a new play-caller in place, we do not think a title three seasons earlier will buy Day much more time with an athletic director who did not hire him.

Sources: USA Today (Paul Myerberg, Blake Toppmeyer), For The Win (Cory Woodroof), CBS Sports, Sports Illustrated, The Spun, Associated Press, Ohio State Athletics, Scarlet and Game, Steelers Wire, SteelerNation, Steelers On SI, Blogging Dirty, Behind the Steel Curtain, Pro Football Rumors, On3 and Wikipedia. More college football coverage on Undrafted.

Photo: Ohio State Athletics.