While they may have college football’s best offensive player in receiver Jeremiah Smith, defense was the catalyst for top-ranked and defending national champion Ohio State’s 24-6 win over Washington in the Buckeyes’ Big Ten opener.
Ohio State’s defense, led by new defensive coordinator and longtime NFL coach Matt Patricia, contained Washington dual-threat quarterback Demond Williams Jr. The Buckeyes sacked him six times that included three by defensive end Caden Curry. Ohio State’s success against Williams set the tone for the Buckeyes’ first road win of the 2025 season.
“It started with our defense,” Day told CBS Sports afterward. “I thought we played really well, especially with the coverage. You could see that our guys made Williams — who’s a heck of a player — double touch a few times.”
Washington entered the game with the nation’s top-ranked scoring offense. A big reason for that success was the play of Williams, who in addition to his high-percentage passing also entered the game as the Huskies’ second-leading rusher.
A Bill Belichick disciple, Patricia’s game plan on Saturday was an ode to his mentor: take away what the opposing offense does best and force them to beat you with their less preferred method of attack.
From the onset, it was clear that Patricia was going to try to force Williams to beat his defense from the pocket by minimizing his impact as a runner. The result was Williams rushing 13 times for -28 yards as the Buckeyes held Washington to a paltry 61 yards on 30 carries.
With Williams’ running a moot point, Washington was forced to beat the Buckeyes’ defense through the air. And while Williams completed 82% of his passes, he threw for just 173 yards, over 86 yards less than his average during Washington’s first three games.
The Buckeyes’ ability to get home with the front-four paid major dividends Saturday. Curry and fellow defensive lineman Kayden McDonald combined to record five sacks, 16 tackles and eight tackles for loss. As Day alluded to, the Buckeyes’ pass rush was aided by a secondary that forced Williams to hold onto the ball.
“We definitely know when he gets out of the pocket, it puts so much stress on our back end to plaster on their guys,” Curry told WBNS-TV. “We knew that if we did our job today, we’d have plays come out of it, and we definitely did that.”
Ohio State’s success was also predicated on containing Washington’s other offensive playmakers in running back Jonah Coleman and Denzel Boston. Coleman, who led the entire FBS in rushing touchdowns entering Saturday’s game, ran for 70 yards on 13 carries with 34 of those yards coming on one carry. Boston, Washington’s leading receiver, was a non-factor Saturday with just 26 yards on three catches.
The defense provided one of the game’s biggest plays midway through the fourth quarter. Washington, trailing 17-6, decided to go for it on fourth-and-2 from the Buckeyes’ 47-yard-line. The play ended with McDonald’s second sack of Williams, which helped set up Ohio State’s game-clinching score on a Julian Sayin touchdown pass to CJ Donaldson.
Speaking of Sayin, the Buckeyes’ first-year starting quarterback credited his defense when he was asked after the game about his early success.
“When you play against Caleb Downs, Sonny Styles and those guys, and Coach Patricia, it makes your life so hard in practice that it makes the game a little bit easier,” he said. “You can see things a little more clearly.”
While they scored 24 points, Ohio State’s young offense is still very much a work in progress. The unit started the game with a turnover on downs and didn’t get on the board until Sayin hit Smith on an 18-yard pass with just over a minute left in the first half.
The Buckeyes’ offense (which after their first drive saw marked improvement in the red zone on Saturday) is going to get better as the season progresses. Along with Sayin and Smith, the unit appears to have another rising star in running back Bo Jackson, who on Saturday led both teams with 80 yards on 17 carries.
While the offense may be a work in progress, the Buckeyes’ defense appears to already be in midseason form, with Patricia being a big reason why.
