No. 11 Ohio State’s 2026 season is absolutely dead, utterly crushed on November 7. Their College Football Playoff dreams? Gone. Wiped out by No. 23 Oregon, who dropped a brutal 41-28 win on the preseason No. 1 overall Buckeyes, a game that was honestly way worse than that final score even hints at.
The Ducks Weren’t Playing Games in The Shoe
Talk about a gut punch. Fans were bailing with 12:51 left after overwhelmed quarterback Luke Fahey took a sack on the wrong side of the 50. But honestly, the damage was already done. Oregon didn’t just win, they stomped. They hung 38 consecutive points on Ohio State, a streak the Buckeyes haven’t seen from an opponent since way back in 1999. By the end, The Shoe was practically swimming in green Oregon jerseys as Ducks fans celebrated their road upset. Ohio State coach Ryan Day summed it up best himself, looking bewildered and lost: “We didn’t expect any of this to happen.”
The real turning point, the one that probably had Day sweating bullets on the sideline, came from Oregon coach Dan Lanning. Down 14-3 and with nothing working, Lanning pulled out a gutsy fake punt on 4th-and-10 from the Ducks’ own 37-yard line. That’s a high-risk, high-reward call, the kind the truly great coaches make. It ignited Oregon, who then scored 14 points in less than two minutes and took a stunning 17-14 lead into halftime. Ohio State never saw the lead again. That’s big-time coaching against a team that looked utterly lost.
A $40 Million Roster, And What Exactly Are We Doing?
This defeat guarantees Ohio State will have three losses on or before November 7 for the first time since Luke Fickell’s rough 2011 season. They’re sitting at a dismal 6-3 now, with games against Northwestern, Nebraska, and Michigan still on the schedule. And here’s the kicker: this is a roster that cost *more than $40 million*, according to CBS Sports sources, making it one of the most expensive in the entire country. Rival personnel executives and talent evaluators pegged them as the most talented team in the nation before the season kicked off! So what happened? Against Oregon, they looked like a team with “a few stars” like Jeremiah Smith, and “a lot of players who could be classified as just another guy.” For a team with that kind of investment, that is absolutely unacceptable.
Day’s 2024 national championship grace period is officially over. He told his team in the locker room they’d have to “weather the storm” coming, and he’s not wrong. The fan conversation about whether he’s the right man for Ohio State is about to go into overdrive. After a performance like this, on top of being preseason No. 1 and now being out of the CFP race so early, you’ve gotta wonder what’s next.
Next up, Ohio State faces Northwestern. What’s at stake? Maybe just Ryan Day’s entire future, for starters. This team needs to show *something* before Michigan rolls into town, or that storm Day mentioned is going to hit like a hurricane.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by CBS Sports.
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