Ohio State won the marquee battle of Week 1 of the 2025 college football season after a hard-fought defensive struggle with the Texas Longhorns. Julian Sayin’s first college start was more successful than the first road start of his more hyped opposite number, Arch Manning. Sayin likely could have done more than he was asked to do, but the Buckeyes didn’t need it, thanks to the defense helping a conservative offensive game plan and the Alabama transfer’s poise and accuracy when called upon. It wasn’t a perfect performance, but most importantly, Sayin didn’t put the ball in harm’s way.

We broke down the game, which came just a few minutes shy of a shutout for the defense in Matt Patricia’s first game as OSU defensive coordinator, checked back on our score predictions and our picks to click, and went over all of the important stats from Ohio State’s victory over the No. 1 Longhorns.

As we usually do, we discussed the other games around the Big Ten, with Northwestern, UCLA, and Wisconsin not looking great, although the Badgers at least got themselves a W. Indiana wasn’t as sharp as expected, but the Hoosiers got the job done. Everything else went pretty much according to plan, although had Cincinnati played at home instead of in Kansas City, the Bearcats might have given Nebraska even more of a fight.

We also looked ahead at the games coming up around the conference this weekend.

One of those games is a curious matchup between the Buckeyes and the Tigers of Grambling State. This game was a scramble drill for the schedule makers after a previously scheduled game fell through. It’s not likely to tell us much about the 2025 Buckeyes one week after a win over Texas, but it will provide valuable reps for the new Buckeye starters and should provide playing time for plenty of backups.

We made our picks to click for the game, selecting the offensive and defensive Buckeyes we think will shine on Saturday afternoon, and we made similar predictions for the final score.

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As always, thanks for listening!

0:20 - There was no revenge for Texas from last year’s Cotton Bowl, as the Buckeye defense came to play!

33:01 - A look around the other results from Week 1 in the Big Ten.

48:03 - Grambling is coming to Columbus. The Buckeyes should feel no obligation to make the Tigers welcome in the Horseshoe, and they probably won’t.

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