AUSTIN, Texas — Stuffed into a small room in the bowels of Darrell K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium on Saturday, dozens of reporters listened as Ohio State coach Ryan Day attempted to explain the almost unimaginable: How the No. 1 team in the country blew a 20-point fourth-quarter lead in a 24-23 loss to No. 4 Texas . "I can't really sit here and tell you exactly why that happened," Day said. "We all have to take accountability, and we have to get this thing fixed.
As Day spoke, a "Texas Fight" chant broke out on the other side of the door as Longhorns fans jubilantly departed the stadium after one of Texas' biggest victories in years. Teams were 0-223 against AP No. 1 teams since 2003 when trailing by 17-plus points before Saturday. Texas, with three straight-fourth quarter touchdown drives and three straight fourth-quarter stops, secured the unlikeliest of wins.
It's a potential launch pad for a Texas team seeking its first national title since 2005. For Ohio State, losers of three of its last four dating back to the 2025 campaign, it's another confounding loss in a game that slipped away. He's 83-13 as Ohio State's coach.
But of those 13 losses, six of them involved the Buckeyes squandering a second-half lead. As weird as it is to say a national championship coach has a troubled history of closing games out – Day does. Even the 2024 national title provided a scare.
The Buckeyes were up 31-7 in the third quarter and had to endure a 15-point barrage from Notre Dame before putting the game away. Consider this: Since Day's first full season as a head coach in 2019, the Buckeyes have played in 14 games decided by seven points or fewer. The Buckeyes are just 6-8 in those contests.
For all of Day's success, his teams have developed a troubling tendency to get conservative when games tighten, especially against elite competition. You could point to the amount of drop-eight coverage the Buckeyes played, which Texas picked apart in the fourth quarter after Arch Manning struggled against it early. There was a punt on 4th-and-5 from Texas' 39 yard line while up 20-3 that netted Ohio State all of 26 yards.
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