Three Pressing Questions About Ohio State

The Ohio State Buckeyes have a few pressing questions that need answering before they're ready to be placed as national title contenders.

The Ohio State Buckeyes are coming off a College Football Playoff berth in 2022 and were arguably one point away from a national championship victory.

This season they are delving into uncharted waters where there are multiple questions on the offensive side of the football — a unit that has been one of the best in the country since head coach Ryan Day took over in 2019. As Day starts his third starting quarterback in his fifth year at the helm, Ohio State is looking to win its first game against Michigan since 2019 and the first Big Ten Championship since 2020.

CBS Sports and 247Sports' Josh Pate analyzed Ohio State's 2023 outlook on "Late Kick with Josh Pate" with three pressing questions the Buckeyes need to answer.

"Did we just address offensive tackle as much as we needed to?"

Ohio State lost starting tackles Paris Johnson Jr. and Dawand Jones, who were taken with first- and fourth-round picks of the Arizona Cardinals and Cleveland Browns, respectively.

This season, the Buckeyes thought they had a left tackle option in Ben Christman, but he transferred to Kentucky in May. Ohio State still has Tegra Tshabola, Zen Michalski, Josh Fryar and George Fitzpatrick to work out throughout summer and fall camp, but added San Diego State transfer Josh Simmons as well.

"I cannot stress enough the importance of him staying healthy and him working out big time," Pate said. "He's got 799 snaps over the last two years at right tackle. He has to come through. That's not optional for them. Especially with their quarterback situation, them breaking in someone new no matter who it's going to be, he's got to come through. There are a lot of variables on that team; that's got to be a definite guy that comes through for them."

"Can their defense actually win them games early? Because I think they may need to."

In defensive coordinator Jim Knowles' first year, the Buckeyes' defense improved from 59th to 14th in yards allowed per game and 38th to 24th in points given up per contest.

"That's improvement, statistically, but what's the rest of the story?" Pate said. "The rest of the story is in their two losses — the Michigan game, the [Georgia] game — gave up an average of 43.5 points and 8.9 yards per play. So, a Buckeye fan would say it really doesn't matter what our stats say if that's what we do in the big moments, which is a fair assumption. That's a fair take."

Pate said that the front seven will be "pretty incredible this year" with projected starters of defensive linemen J.T. Tuimoloau, Jack Sawyer, Mike Hall Jr. and Ty Hamilton and linebackers Tommy Eichenberg and Steele Chambers.

Pate said "the secondary will ultimately tell the tale" on how Ohio State's season will go, and in the Buckeyes' four games in which they either lost or were in a dogfight — Georgia, Michigan, Penn State and Maryland — the defensive backfield allowed their highest passing yards totals to opposing quarterbacks.

"You got a quarterback? You got a real QB1?"

The biggest question in Columbus.

Ohio State hopes either Kyle McCord or Devin Brown will emerge as a clear-cut favorite for the starting job to avoid a 2015 situation where J.T. Barrett and Cardale Jones were constantly looking over their shoulder after each drive with a mistake.

The past three quarterbacks Ohio State has had under center: Dwayne Haskins, Justin Fields and C.J. Stroud. All three went on to become first-round draft picks, but Pate is "not sure" whether or not McCord or Brown are of that caliber.

"Do we need to have [a first-round pick] for Ohio State to win this year? I'm also not sure of that," Pate said. "The danger that some fans have gotten into with Ohio State is just assuming you're going to have some level of quarterback play. I was listening to Ryan Day talk with (Greg) McElroy the other day and he said, 'You cannot assume that stuff.' There's a lot of hard work, a lot of good recruiting and hard work and development that goes into maintaining that standard of play. 

"You don't just get to say, 'Well, if you're starting a quarterback at Ohio State, you're going to be a certain level of good.' Are you? That's not an automatic. And you can't assume it's going to be this year. That's why I asked you: can they win games defensively?"

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