The Scarlet and Gray

[Captain Canada]

Sheesh, what a prospect writeup, really breathed life

[toysoldier00]

Praise be! Kelly is gone!

I hadn't realized how little in the way you've got skill position guys on the offensive side of the ball in that '26 class.

yep, the roster had some freshman receivers and running backs, but was pretty weak on the offensive line

Sheesh, what a prospect writeup, really breathed life

it's my pet philosophy that it becomes more fun and enjoyable when you really feel like the players are fleshed out

[toysoldier00]

Game Preview: Ohio State’s Defense Meets Nico Iamaleava’s Tempo Test
By Zachary Anderson on November 14, 2025





Ohio State has spent most of 2025 turning Saturdays into quiet math problems: the defense hands the offense a short field, the offense cashes it in, and by the time the opponent realizes the game has shifted, the scoreboard is already unforgiving.

That’s the backdrop for Saturday’s matchup with UCLA, a noon kick in Ohio Stadium with the Buckeyes (9-0) favored by 27.5 and trying to keep their undefeated march intact. On paper, it’s a mismatch. In reality, there’s at least one variable worth circling: tempo.

UCLA’s season has been strange enough to make a clean narrative impossible. The Bruins opened 0-4, spiraled, then suddenly looked alive with three straight wins — including a 28-21 victory over Penn State, and even pushed No. 2 Indiana to the final possession in a 36-33 loss in Bloomington. That stretch is why Ohio State isn’t treating UCLA’s 3-6 record like a punchline.

“They’re better than their record,” Ryan Day said this week. “They’ve had injuries, they’ve had changes, but you watch the tape and you see a quarterback who can create, and you see an offense that can stress you with pace. We have to play fast and physical, and we have to be disciplined.”

The Bruins’ stress point is sophomore quarterback Nico Iamaleava, a familiar name in this building. Last season, he walked into Ohio Stadium wearing Tennessee orange in the playoff and left in a 42-17 loss. Now he returns as UCLA’s centerpiece, and the numbers only tell part of the story: 1,252 passing yards, 12 touchdowns, one interception in seven games, plus 412 rushing yards and five rushing scores. UCLA hasn’t been consistently efficient, but when it works, it’s usually because Nico is turning broken plays into first downs and pushing the pace until defenses are stuck in the wrong personnel.

“It’s a different challenge,” Iamaleava said. “Their defense is elite, everybody knows that. But tempo is what we do. We want to make them communicate, make them line up, make them play every snap. You can’t be perfect against a defense like that, but you can be aggressive.”

Aggressive is also the word for what Ohio State’s defense has been: best in the country in both yards allowed (262.1 per game) and points allowed (11.1 per game), with a run defense that borders on unfair (37.1 rushing yards per game). Edge rusher Caden Curry already has 9.5 sacks, linebacker Arvell Reese keeps showing up in the biggest moments, and safety Caleb Downs has been the eraser that turns “open” into “not anymore.”

If UCLA is going to hang around, it probably starts with Nico’s legs. The Buckeyes are built to suffocate traditional rushing attacks; the harder question is how they handle a quarterback who can extend plays and steal yards when coverage wins initially.

On the other side, Ohio State’s offense is still finding its cleanest version. Julian Sayin’s season line, 2,253 yards, 24 touchdowns, four interceptions, reflects a quarterback who’s steadily matured within an offense that can score in chunks. Jeremiah Smith remains the headliner (61 catches, 776 yards, 10 TDs), and the return of Carnell Tate (41-475-0) should widen the field again after he missed last week’s 41-7 dismantling of Purdue. Day said Tate practiced and is expected to play, potentially with a pitch count. Rotational edge rusher Joshua Mickens is also expected back.

UCLA will be shorthanded up front and in the middle of the field without tight end Jake Renda (foot) and right guard Noah Pulealii (broken fibula), which matters against an Ohio State front that lives in the backfield. And if UCLA’s defense has a problem, it’s that it hasn’t stopped much of anyone: 406.7 yards and 30.5 points allowed per game.

The quiet concern for Ohio State is the one that’s been there even in blowouts: red-zone efficiency. The Buckeyes have 29 touchdowns and eight field goals on 55 red-zone trips, productive, but not always ruthless. Against a team that wants to steal possessions with tempo, leaving points on the table can become the only way an underdog stays attached.

Still, the path is clear. If Ohio State matches UCLA’s pace with discipline, avoids self-inflicted stalls, and forces the Bruins to play from behind, the game should tilt quickly, the way most Ohio State games have this season. But if Nico gets comfortable, if the hurry-up turns into free yards, and if the Buckeyes’ red-zone frustrations linger, Saturday could be more annoying than the line suggests.

Either way, it’s a new kind of Big Ten game now: UCLA in the Horseshoe, conference stakes attached, and the Buckeyes chasing perfection with everyone else waiting for a slip.

Date	Opponent	Stadium	TV	Result
Aug. 30	Texas Longhorns	Ohio Stadium		W, 31-13
Sept. 6	Grambling State Tigers	Ohio Stadium		W, 46-6
Sept. 13	Ohio Bobcats	Ohio Stadium		W, 40-10
Sept. 20	BYE
Sept. 27	Washington Huskies	Husky Stadium		W, 37-16
Oct. 4	Minnesota Golden Gophers	Ohio Stadium		W, 53-22
Oct. 11	Illinois Fighting Illini	Memorial Stadium		W, 38-6
Oct. 18	Wisconsin Badgers	Camp Randall		W, 38-7
Oct. 25	BYE
Nov. 1	Penn State Nittany Lions	Ohio Stadium		W, 31-13
Nov. 8	Purdue Boilermakers	Ross-Ade Stadium		W, 41-7
Nov. 15	UCLA Bruins	Ohio Stadium		12:00 PM
Nov. 22	Rutgers Scarlet Knights	Ohio Stadium
Nov. 29	Michigan Wolverines	Michigan Stadium

[Soapy]

starting to pick up the pace, let's get it

playoffs soon

[toysoldier00]

Ohio State 40, UCLA 17: Buckeyes Shakes Off a First-Half Scare, Pull Away From UCLA
By Zachary Anderson on November 15, 2025


Each of Ohio State's top three running backs had a touchdown against the Bruins on Saturday.



Ohio State has made a habit out of landing the first punch this season, and on a cold November noon in Ohio Stadium, the Buckeyes somehow found a new way to do it.

UCLA took the opening kickoff and tried to settle into its tempo, the kind of hurry-up rhythm that can make a game feel messy if you let it. Five plays in, before the Bruins could even test the edges of Ohio State’s defense with their quarterback’s legs, Eddrick Houston drifted into coverage from his defensive tackle spot, read Nico Iamaleava’s eyes, and watched a slant come straight into his chest. The interception was jarring not just because of who made it, but because it instantly felt like the story Ohio State has been writing all year: defense creates a moment, offense turns it into points, the game tilts.

One snap later, James Peoples took a handoff, pressed left, found daylight behind the first wave, and ran 40 yards down the sideline for a touchdown. Sixty seconds into the afternoon, the No. 1 Buckeyes led 7-0, and the stadium roared with the familiar certainty of a team that keeps forcing opponents to play from behind.


James Peoples' early 40-yard touchdown run opened the scoring for the Buckeyes.

And then, for a while, Ohio State looked human. Not bad. Not panicked. Just… stuck. The next four Buckeye drives ended punt, interception, punt, punt, and the early touchdown started to feel less like a runway and more like a tease. Julian Sayin had been sharp most of the season, but his timing wobbled through that stretch, and the Buckeyes’ offense kept leaving the field too quickly to let the game settle in their control. UCLA, to its credit, didn’t flinch.

The Bruins had started 0-4 and spent the season trying to stitch together an identity that could survive a brutal schedule and a new conference, and the version that walked into Ohio Stadium brought enough belief to make things uncomfortable. They ran their offense with urgency, they used Iamaleava’s mobility to keep Ohio State honest, and they found pockets of space in the intermediate passing game that suggested the Bruins had come with a plan to stress Ohio State horizontally, then steal shots down the seams when the linebackers widened.

That plan paid off early in the second quarter. On the first play of the period, Iamaleava found Titus Mokiao-Atimalala in the back of the end zone for an 11-yard touchdown, a clean red-zone rep that tied the game at 7-7 and introduced the first real tension Ohio Stadium has felt in weeks. UCLA’s sideline had juice. Ohio State’s crowd, so used to watching games become blowouts by the second quarter, felt something closer to uncertainty.


Despite a few early turnovers, Nico Iamaleava was able to engineer a lead for the Bruins in the second quarter.

Iamaleava kept them believing even after the next mistake. With 9:10 left in the second quarter, Ohio State took the ball back again, and this one was chaotic, the kind of turnover that looks like a simple interception on the stat sheet but feels like a car crash in real time. True freshman safety Faheem Delane arrived with violence as Rico Flores Jr. secured a catch, separating ball from body with a hit that turned the pass into a live grenade. Lorenzo Styles Jr. was in the right place at the right time, collecting the fluttering ball for the interception, but the credit belonged to Delane’s timing and fearlessness. It was the sort of play that makes you remember Ohio State is not just surviving injuries and absences in the secondary, it’s developing answers in real time.

Still, UCLA didn’t fold. The Bruins responded by driving again, and this time Mateen Bhaghani drilled a 46-yard field goal to give UCLA a 10-7 lead over the No. 1 team in the country. For a few minutes, the game had the shape of a trap: Ohio State was favored by nearly four touchdowns, and yet here it was, trailing late in the second quarter, with an offense that hadn’t found rhythm since the opening minute. The murmur in the stadium wasn’t panic, but it was the first hint of it, the sound of a fan base doing math it hadn’t expected to do.

Then Carnell Tate changed everything.

With 1:51 left before halftime, facing third-and-10 from its own 40, Ohio State finally got the look it wanted. Tate, back in the lineup after missing last week, flashed open on a post route. Sayin stepped into the throw and hit him in stride, the kind of ball that demands a receiver do something with it. Tate did more than that. He slipped a tackle attempt from corner Andre Jordan Jr., turned upfield, and sprinted the rest of the way for a touchdown that didn’t just flip the score, it flipped the mood. Ohio State was back in front 14-10, and the game suddenly looked like it was being played on Ohio State’s terms again.

“Carnell’s a competitor,” Ryan Day said afterward. “You can feel his presence. He’s been battling that shoulder, he wanted to be out there for his teammates, and when you get him the ball in space, he can change the game. That play was huge for us.”


The momentum swing came from a crucial play by Carnell Tate that opened up Ohio State's offense.

It didn’t stop there. UCLA went three-and-out, and Ohio State got the ball back with 45 seconds left in the half, the kind of possession that great teams treat like a gift. Sayin and the Buckeyes took it seriously. A pass interference call on a target to Jeremiah Smith moved the chains and widened the field. Then Sayin zipped a 25-yard dart to Max Klare that set the tone for the drive: aggressive, precise, confident. Smith added another 11-yard gain, and suddenly Ohio State was in position to turn a shaky first half into a two-score lead. With 13 seconds left, Sayin found Brandon Inniss for a 6-yard touchdown, and Ohio State jogged into halftime up 21-10, the crowd exhaling as if it had been holding its breath for 29 minutes.

From there, the second half became the kind of Ohio State game that’s felt inevitable all season: a defense that suffocates, an offense that finds solutions, and an opponent that runs out of time before it runs out of effort. Sayin settled into a rhythm, using quick game and intermediate throws to keep UCLA from loading the box, and Ohio State’s run game, quiet for stretches, started to hit at the moments it mattered. Midway through the third quarter, with the Buckeyes driving again, Day dialed up an unexpected wrinkle: CJ Donaldson, who hadn’t touched the ball much in weeks, got the carry from the 1-yard line and powered in for a touchdown. It was simple, blunt football, and it pushed the lead to 28-10.

Early in the fourth, Ohio State struck again. Bo Jackson took a carry and muscled in from four yards out, extending the lead to 34-10, though a blocked extra point kept it from feeling completely final. The Buckeyes added a field goal with 9:04 left to make it 37-10, and for a while it looked like UCLA’s best moments would remain confined to the first half, when the Bruins’ tempo and Iamaleava’s legs had forced Ohio State to stay honest.


True Freshman Bo Jackson scored his fourth touchdown of the season in the fourth quarter against the Bruins.

To UCLA’s credit, they kept playing. They finally created a bizarre, memorable moment late, the kind of play that makes a game recap feel like fiction. Jaivian Thomas took a run into the heart of the defense and met Arvell Reese, and in the collision Delane arrived again, cracking Thomas and forcing a fumble. But the ball didn’t bounce to a Buckeye. It squirted forward, almost politely, into the path of tight end Jack Pederson, who found himself in open space and rumbled 58 yards before Caleb Downs tracked him down at the Ohio State 11. Three plays later, Iamaleava found Thomas for a 5-yard touchdown pass, trimming the score to 37-17 with 5:27 left and giving UCLA something tangible to show for the way it kept attacking.

Afterward, Iamaleava didn’t shy away from the mistakes that decided the game. “You can’t give a team like that extra possessions,” he said. “Two picks, that’s on me. I thought I could fit one, didn’t see the D-lineman, and the other one, we’ve got to secure the ball. You do that in this stadium, against that defense, it’s going to get away from you. But I’m proud of how we kept fighting. We came here to compete.”

Ohio State’s response to the late score was calm and professional. The Buckeyes tried to bleed the clock, got stopped at the UCLA 12, and kicked a 29-yard field goal with 1:21 remaining to reach the 40-17 final. The score read like a comfortable win, and in the end it was, but the path there wasn’t as smooth as Ohio State’s recent Saturdays.

The numbers captured the full shape of it. Ohio State piled up 494 yards of offense, while UCLA managed 368 and 21 first downs, moving the ball well enough to make the Buckeyes work, especially before halftime. UCLA ran for 4.5 yards per carry, a quietly impressive figure against a defense that has erased most run games this season, but the Bruins weren’t sharp enough in the moments that mattered most, going 8-for-19 on third down and committing two turnovers that Ohio State turned into separation.

Ohio State, meanwhile, got a massive day from Sayin, who finished 31-of-44 for 392 yards, two touchdowns, and one interception, a stat line that reflected both the early wobble and the late command.


Jeremiah Smith was held out of the end zone, but he still put up 118 yards on 7 catches.

Peoples finished with eight carries for 69 yards and a touchdown, plus six catches for 51 yards, continuing the theme of Ohio State backs becoming real weapons in the passing game. Jackson had 10 carries for 36 yards and a touchdown, Donaldson had one carry for one yard and a score, and the Buckeyes’ receiving core looked like itself again with Tate back in the mix. Jeremiah Smith went for 118 yards on seven catches, Tate posted six receptions for 117 yards and the momentum-flipping touchdown, Klare added six catches for 51 yards, and Inniss scored on four catches for 31 yards.

For the first time all season, Ohio State finished with zero sacks, a weird footnote that said more about UCLA’s tempo and Iamaleava’s ability to get the ball out than it did about Ohio State’s pass rush.

UCLA’s stat line was a testament to how much pressure Iamaleava put on the game even in a loss. He finished 34-of-56 for 283 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions, adding 38 rushing yards and repeatedly forcing Ohio State to defend the full width of the field. Thomas ran 13 times for 47 yards and lost a fumble, but he also caught seven passes for 37 yards and a touchdown, a versatile workload that kept UCLA’s offense functional. Mokiao-Atimalala led the receivers with eight catches for 74 yards and a touchdown, and UCLA showed enough creativity and pace to offer a reminder that the Bruins are closer to an identity than their 3-6 record suggests.

For Ohio State, the story was both familiar and instructive. The Buckeyes’ defense created points at the start, and then it created stability when the game drifted into discomfort, with the early Houston interception and the second-quarter takeaway sparked by Delane’s hit serving as the structural beams that kept the house standing. Tate’s return mattered not just because of the stat line, but because his presence reopened the middle of the field and punished UCLA for the attention it wanted to give Jeremiah Smith.


Eddrick Houston's early interception on Nico Iamaleava showed his tremendous athleticism and versatility.

Day also had to navigate some unexpected lineup shuffling: starting right guard Ethan Onianwa did not play, replaced by sophomore Gabe VanSickle without explanation, and safety Jaylen McClain was out, forcing Delane into a bigger role, one he handled with the kind of impact that will be remembered inside the program long after the box score is filed away.

“We got tested,” Day said. “That’s a good thing in November. There were moments we didn’t execute the way we expect to, and then there were moments where you saw what we can be when we do. Our guys responded. That’s what I’ll remember from this one.”

Ohio State rolled again, as it almost always does, but not without a reminder that even for the No. 1 team in the country, dominance isn’t a constant state, it’s something you reassert when the game demands it. On Saturday, the Buckeyes did exactly that, pulling UCLA into the deep end for a half, then swimming away when it mattered, leaving Ohio Stadium with another win, another lesson, and another week of runway toward the games that will define the season.

Qtr	Time	Team	Result	Play	OHST	UCLA
1st	11:51		TD	James Peoples, 40 Yd run	7	0
2nd	12:55		TD	Titus Mokiao-Atimalala, 11 Yd pass from Nico Iamaleava	7	7
2nd	4:00		FG	Mateen Bhaghani, 46 Yd FG	7	10
2nd	1:41		TD	Carnell Tate, 60 Yd Pass from Julian Sayin	14	10
2nd	0:09		TD	Brandon Inniss, 6 Yd Pass from Julian Sayin	21	10
3rd	6:03		TD	CJ Donaldson, 1 Yd run	28	10
4th	12:57		TD	Bo Jackson, 5 Yd run	34	10
4th	9:03		FG	Jayden Fielding, 48 Yd FG	37	10
4th	5:22		TD	Jaivian Thomas, 5 Yd pass from Nico Iamaleava	37	17
4th	1:17		FG	Jayden Fielding, 28 Yd FG	40	17

[Count]

Nico just ain’t that guy