With just one week to go until the first game week, it’s time to look ahead at the season as a whole and make some predictions about how Ohio State’s 2022 season will play out.

To start things off on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays, Dan and Griffin each rank Ohio State’s 12 regular-season games from the game we’re most confident the Buckeyes will win to the game we believe is most likely to be an upset. While we agree on which five games we’re most confident Ohio State will win, our lists diverge from there, as Dan is more confident than Griffin about wins over Michigan and Notre Dame while he sees Michigan State and Iowa as bigger threats than Griffin does.

Beginning at the 29:42 mark, we make some additional predictions for Ohio State’s 2022 season, including:

• What Ohio State’s record for the season will be
• Whether C.J. Stroud will win the Heisman Trophy and if Jaxon Smith-Njigba will join him in New York
• Which Buckeyes will earn first-team All-American and first-team All-Big Ten honors
• Why we believe Marvin Harrison Jr. will be Ohio State’s second-most productive receiver and Emeka Egbuka will be Ohio State’s third-most productive receiver
• Why Tommy Eichenberg and Ronnie Hickman are our defensive MVP selections
• Who we think will lead the Buckeyes in tackles, sacks and interceptions
• Why we believe Ohio State will have the No. 1 offense in the country but won’t have a top-five defense

In the final segment of the show (49:16), we talk about our takeaways from Ryan Day and Jim Knowles’ Monday press conference and what Gene Smith had to say after the Big Ten announced its new TV deal last week. We’re not expecting to see Chip Trayanum play at running back unless necessitated by further injuries, but we do believe a divisionless Big Ten and College Football Playoff expansion could both happen within the next couple of years.