ARLINGTON, Texas — Ohio State walked off the field at Michigan Stadium on Nov. 29 with all the confidence in the world.

The Buckeyes had just beaten their rival for the first time since 2019, and their offensive line had put together its best performance of the season: 419 total yards without allowing a sack. They were 12-0, widely regarded as the best team in the country and poised to make another national championship run.

A month later, that same team walked off the field against Miami after a 24-14 loss in the College Football Playoff quarterfinal at the Cotton Bowl, its season over due to back-to-back losses in which it gave up five sacks to the defense of a fellow title hopeful.

The bottom completely fell out for the Buckeyes, and not because their favorable regular-season schedule left them untested or oblivious to their weaknesses. Ohio State had a plan for handling Miami’s elite defensive line with a reshuffled O-line, just like it had a plan against Indiana in the Big Ten title game with the CFP’s top seed at stake, but neither worked and the Buckeyes took too long to make adjustments.

“We put ourselves behind the eight ball,” head coach Ryan Day said. “We worked really hard during the last three weeks leading up to this game to come out of the gates and win the first quarter, win the first half, be ready to go. I thought we had an excellent plan. … I think the guys bought into it, but at the end of the day, we didn’t get it done, and that starts with me and goes down from there.”

Ohio State wasn’t without some in-house adversity in the last month. Three days before the Big Ten title game, news broke that offensive coordinator and play caller Brian Hartline was taking the head coaching position at South Florida. That sent Ohio State into a frenzy, and after Hartline’s unit sputtered in the 13-10 loss to Indiana, Day reclaimed play-calling duties for the first time since the 2023 Cotton Bowl loss to Missouri.

Despite all of that, Day is right; the blame for Ohio State’s December drop-off falls squarely on him. Against Indiana and Miami, Ohio State had 11 first-half drives and tallied 301 yards and just 10 points. In the second halves, Ohio State had 361 yards and 14 points on just six drives. His coaching staff has to look itself in the mirror and figure out why it took so long to adjust.

Ohio State is running Day’s offense. He made the decision to promote Hartline to play caller after Chip Kelly left for the NFL last winter. Now, after taking back play-calling duties and losing, everything that follows goes back to the head coach who won a national championship not even a year ago, but will still feel the heat from a fan base that expects perfection. These two losses, and the entire season, emphasize the importance of his next offensive coordinator hire.