24-23 road loss Saturday night<\/a>.<\/p>\nOhio State coach Ryan Day watches his players leave the field following the NCAA football game against the Texas Longhorns at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. Texas won 24-23. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
Ohio State could have had the ball down one with anywhere from roughly 50-83 seconds to operate on offense and with a potential timeout, but the Buckeyes instead surrendered a rushing score on third down and began its next possession with zero timeouts and 25 seconds remaining.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe talked about it,\u201d Day said after falling to 1-1. \u201cWe decided that we were going to play defense on second down and when we got the stop there, we said, \u2018Alright, we\u2019re going to take our chances, put the ball down for one yard see if we can stop them for two downs to win the game.<\/p>\n
\u201cI considered it but I felt like at that point we were going to go play defense and see if we could get off the field. It didn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Buckeyes led 23-3 entering the fourth quarter before they ultimately allowed three straight touchdown drives to Arch Manning in a loss that will knock the team off its No. 1 perch.<\/p>\n
After Ohio State missed a field goal that would have made it a nine-point game, Manning drove the Longhorns to the Buckeyes\u2019 one-yard line with1:23 remaining<\/p>\n
Day had one timeout to use and could have burned it there and told his team to let Texas score, which would maximize the amount of time Ohio State had the ball on its next possession.<\/p>\n
Texas running back Hollywood Smothers (2) scores the game-winning touchdown during the NCAA football game against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas. Texas won 24-23. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
Bill Belichick employed this tactic during Super Bowl 2012 against the Giants, letting Ahmad Bradshaw score without pushback although New England did not win.<\/p>\n
Ohio State stuffed Hollywood Smothers with 53 seconds remaining and Day used his final timeout, but his team continued to play defense and stopped Smothers again.<\/p>\n
Smothers finally scored with 25 seconds remaining and the Buckeyes had no timeouts in a quest to navigate roughly 45 yards.<\/p>\n
Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day looks to the scoreboard during the NCAA football game against the Texas Longhorns at Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, Sept. 13, 2026. USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect<\/p>\n
A holding penalty, five-yard pass and interception then sealed Ohio State\u2019s loss.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think today we played well for three quarters and then didn\u2019t play well enough in the fourth quarter,\u201d Day said. \u201cWe stalled on some offensive drives, I felt we had them on the ropes and didn\u2019t finish. We have to go back and figure out why that was. \u2026 This one hurts.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ryan Day put his faith in a defense that hadn\u2019t shown itself worthy of that belief in quite…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345862,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[30211,11590,9,11,10,49,51,50,7460,129496,319,1777],"class_list":["post-345861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-arch-manning","tag-college-football","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-ohio-state-buckeyes","tag-ryan-day","tag-sports","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345861\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}