We now know which Ohio State players will be entering the 2023 NFL draft and which draft-eligible Buckeyes will be wearing scarlet and gray for another year. C.J. Stroud left us in suspense until Monday morning as to which camp he would be a part of, but he ultimately made the decision we expected all along when he opted to go pro. He now headlines a 2023 NFL draft class for Ohio State that includes three sure-fire first-round picks (Stroud, Paris Johnson Jr. and Jaxon Smith-Njigba), three more ...
Jan 18, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 172
The 2023 college football offseason is officially underway, and the outlook for Ohio State’s roster next season is starting to become more clear. The 2022 college football season officially ended Monday night with Georgia’s 65-7 shellacking of TCU in the national championship game, and we start this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays by sharing our reactions to Monday night’s blowout. We can’t help but think Ohio State would be celebrating a national title right now if a couple more plays had...
Jan 11, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 171
Ohio State’s 2022 season came to an end against Georgia, but the Buckeyes weren’t far off from advancing to the national championship game. That made Saturday’s loss in the Peach Bowl both devastating but also encouraging to a degree, as the fourth-seeded Buckeyes went toe-to-toe with the No. 1 seed and could be playing for a national championship on Monday if even one more play went their way. They proved they belonged in the CFP, leaving a far less negative vibe about the state of the program ...
Jan 04, 2023•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 170
Five weeks after its loss to Michigan, Ohio State will finally return to the field to play for a national championship game berth when it faces Georgia in the Peach Bowl on Saturday. Having already been in Atlanta for a couple of days for the start of bowl week, Dan and Griffin share their final thoughts entering the game, break down what Ohio State must do well and who must step up on both sides of the ball and make their predictions for whether the Buckeyes actually will beat the Bulldogs on t...
Dec 28, 2022•56 min•Ep. 169
It’s National Signing Day, which means we’re focused on recruiting and how Ohio State is building for the future on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays. Eleven Warriors recruiting analyst Garrick Hodge for the entirety of this week’s episode as we start out by looking at Ohio State’s new class of signees for the 2023 recruiting class, then take a look ahead to the 2024 class and discuss the impact of Dylan Raiola’s decommitment on the Buckeyes’ future at quarterback. We also talk about th...
Dec 21, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 168
At the exact halfway point between Ohio State’s regular-season finale against Michigan and the Buckeyes’ College Football Playoff game against Georgia, we thought today would be the perfect time to have Kyle Jones on Real Pod Wednesdays to break down what happened against the Wolverines and what could happen against the Bulldogs. Eleven Warriors ’ scheme expert joins us right from the jump of this week’s episode to dive into more than 30 minutes of X’s and O’s chatter, and we don’t beat around t...
Dec 14, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 167
Ohio State will make its first-ever trip to the Peach Bowl when it faces Georgia in the College Football Playoff semifinal. For a look at what awaits the Buckeyes and everyone else who makes the trip to Atlanta, Peach Bowl CEO Gary Stokan joins the show to talk about what it means for the Peach Bowl to finally host Ohio State, what makes the Peach Bowl unique and where fans need to visit while they’re in town for the game. That interview starts at the 30-minute mark of the show. Before that, tho...
Dec 07, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 166
For the second year in a row, Ohio State and its fans are left trying to figure out what went wrong against Michigan. While Michigan didn’t dominate in one phase of the game quite the way it did in the run game in 2021, the Wolverines ended up beating the Buckeyes by an even bigger margin this year as they scored five touchdowns of 45-plus yards while Ohio State mustered only three points of its own in the second half. Why did Saturday’s game snowball away from the Buckeyes and how do they move ...
Nov 30, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 165
It’s finally time for The Game we’ve all been waiting for. Following a full year of buildup for Ohio State’s shot at revenge after last year’s loss in Ann Arbor, the Buckeyes will look to prove they’re a different team than they were a year ago when they host Michigan at Ohio Stadium on Saturday. And the stakes couldn’t be higher, as the second-ranked Buckeyes and third-ranked Wolverines both enter the game with 11-0 records with a spot in the Big Ten Championship Game and a likely College Footb...
Nov 23, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 164
We had to start by talking about Kamryn Babb’s emotional touchdown, a moment that epitomized the brotherhood Ohio State often talks about. But Babb was far from the only Buckeye who impressed us against the Hoosiers, as we were also struck by Xavier Johnson’s playmaking ability, Marvin Harrison Jr.’s latest spectacular catch and Lathan Ransom’s continued elite play among other standouts. We also address the one big concern coming out of this past weekend’s game – the health of Ohio State’s runni...
Nov 16, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 163
That’s the big question we seek to answer on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays. We were in Evanston on Saturday and experienced firsthand just how windy it was, so we know it’s no excuse to say the weather had a major impact on the game. Still, there are some valid concerns to be raised by the Buckeyes’ struggles to pull away from Northwestern – most notably, the run game struggling for the third week in a row and the potential for Ohio State to have to play in more bad weather as Novem...
Nov 09, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 162
Penn State gave Ohio State a little bit more trouble than we expected, which raised some concerns about the Buckeyes’ national championship hopes even though there was still plenty to like. Most importantly, Ohio State found a way to beat Penn State for the sixth year in a row, earning a 44-31 win in a series that has been decided by 13 points or fewer in seven straight seasons. J.T. Tuimoloau and Marvin Harrison Jr. were both spectacular, and the Buckeyes improved to 8-0 with the win, setting t...
Nov 02, 2022•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 161
Ohio State wasn’t perfect against Iowa, but its defense sure came close. Even though the Buckeyes didn’t have their best offensive day against Iowa, they still scored more points than a Kirk Ferentz-led Hawkeye team has ever allowed. Given that, the good certainly far outweighed the bad in Ohio State’s 54-10 win over Iowa, especially on defense – where Dan’s prediction that the defense would outscore Iowa’s offense came true – though there are reasonable questions to be asked about Ohio State’s ...
Oct 26, 2022•58 min•Ep. 160
It was a quiet weekend for Ohio State football, but it certainly wasn’t a quiet weekend across college football. No Buckeye game gave us the opportunity to watch many of college football’s other top teams play on an eventful Saturday in which Tennessee took down Alabama, Michigan blew out Penn State and Utah upset USC. We spend the first half of this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays talking about our observations from the weekend, including why Tennessee might present the most dangerous hyp...
Oct 19, 2022•1 hr•Ep. 159
Ohio State looked like a national championship-caliber team during the first half of the regular season. The Buckeyes have been the most dominant team in college football so far this year, winning all six games before their bye week by an average of 33.2 points, the highest in the country. Ohio State currently ranks in the top 15 nationally in scoring offense (1st), total offense (2nd), passing offense (14th), rushing offense (14th), total defense (7th), scoring defense (15th), passing defense (...
Oct 12, 2022•59 min•Ep. 158
It no longer feels like a hot take to say Miyan Williams is Ohio State’s best running back. Williams hasn’t just been Ohio State’s best running back this season, he’s been one of the best running backs in college football this year. TreVeyon Henderson remains great, too, but after Williams’ 189-yard, five-touchdown performance against Rutgers, we’ve become increasingly convinced that the Cincinnatian is Ohio State’s RB1 right now. That’s just one of many topics we cover on this week’s episode of...
Oct 05, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 157
While both of us expected Wisconsin’s defense to make life a little more difficult for Ohio State’s offense than Toledo could, the Buckeyes kept things rolling against the Badgers, scoring touchdowns on their first four possessions to race out to a 28-0 lead before ultimately cruising to a 52-21 victory. There were no shortage of standout performers for the Buckeyes in Saturday night’s conference opener, from Miyan Williams, Cade Stover and the entire run-blocking unit on offense to Jyaire Brown...
Sep 28, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 156
Ohio State’s offense couldn’t have been much more impressive in its win over Toledo. The Buckeyes dominated by both air and ground against the Rockets, scoring 77 points on 763 yards – the second-highest total in school history. In the process, Ohio State went from being ranked 40th in the country to total offense to leading the entire country in yards per game, while Toledo plummed from fourth to 80th in total defense. We begin this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays by discussing all the wa...
Sep 21, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 155
On this week’s Real Pod Wednesdays, we give our overall assessment of Ohio State’s 45-12 over the Red Wolves, which Buckeyes stood out in their second game of the season and why a wild second weekend of college football should serve as a reminder to appreciate what was ultimately a convincing win. We also look ahead to Saturday’s game against Toledo, which we think might also be at least a slightly more competitive game than the point spread suggests. A rundown of some of the many topics we talk...
Sep 14, 2022•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 154
Although Ohio State’s season opener against Notre Dame didn’t go quite the way we expected, we came away with plenty of positive impressions from the Buckeyes’ performance. Ohio State’s defense exceeded our expectations while we expected more from the Buckeyes’ offense against Notre Dame, but overall, we think there was more to like than dislike from Ohio State’s season-opening 21-10 win over the Fighting Irish, who entered the season ranked fifth in the country. In nearly a full hour of discuss...
Sep 07, 2022•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 153
After eight months of looking ahead to Ohio State’s 2022 football season, it’s finally game week in Columbus. Come next week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays, we’ll have an actual football game to recap and a much better feel of how good this year’s Ohio State football team actually is and what it still needs to work on. This week, though, it’s all about looking ahead to the first and one of the biggest games of the year as we break down how things could play out when the Buckeyes finally take t...
Aug 31, 2022•55 min•Ep. 152
With just one week to go until the first game week, it’s time to look ahead at the season as a whole and make some predictions about how Ohio State’s 2022 season will play out. To start things off on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays, Dan and Griffin each rank Ohio State’s 12 regular-season games from the game we’re most confident the Buckeyes will win to the game we believe is most likely to be an upset. While we agree on which five games we’re most confident Ohio State will win, our l...
Aug 24, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 151
Two weeks into preseason camp, it’s becoming more clear which Ohio State players could be trending toward breakout years and where the Buckeyes still have concerns as the season draws closer. Running back depth emerged as a concern this week when Evan Pryor suffered a season-ending knee injury in practice, and that’s where we begin this week’s show. Is there reason to worry about Ohio State having only three scholarship running backs, and do the Buckeyes need to move someone else to running back...
Aug 17, 2022•57 min•Ep. 150
Preseason camp is in full swing at Ohio State, and we’ve had plenty of access to the Buckeyes over the past week as a result. After watching a portion of the first two practices and attending four interview sessions at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center over the past week, we reconvene on this week’s Real Pod Wednesdays to discuss the biggest things we learned from the first six days of camp. We start by talking about what we heard during Jim Knowles’ interview session on Tuesday, when he made seve...
Aug 10, 2022•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 149
We’re officially one month away from Ohio State’s first football game of the 2022 season and one day away from the start of preseason camp. We’ll have the chance to watch the Buckeyes practice – well, at least a little bit of practice – on both Thursday and Friday as Ohio State holds its first two practices of preseason camp, and we’re excited to see them up close, in person and on the field again. What will we be watching and listening for as camp begins? We start this week’s episode of Real Po...
Aug 03, 2022•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 148
This week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays is coming to you one day later than usual, but we hope it will be worth the wait. We recorded this week’s episode from Indianapolis, where we spent the past two days covering Big Ten Media Days. And we were joined by a special guest while we were there. Dan talked to Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith on Tuesday about a wide variety of topics including Big Ten expansion, College Football Playoff expansion, NIL, Ryan Day and Chris Holtmann’s contrac...
Jul 28, 2022•58 min•Ep. 147
Ohio State’s first official media availability of the preseason will be held one week from today when Ryan Day, C.J. Stroud, Jaxon Smith-Njigba and Ronnie Hickman will meet with reporters at Big Ten Media Days. With that in mind, we start today’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays – after Dan gloats for a bit about winning last week’s draft – by looking ahead to next week’s Big Ten Media Days in Indianapolis, where representatives from all 14 Big Ten teams will meet with the media between Tuesday an...
Jul 20, 2022•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 146
It’s draft week on Real Pod Wednesdays. As we’ve done every year since we started this podcast, we held an Ohio State football team draft this week, selecting 44 total players from the current roster – 11 on offense and 11 on defense each – to build lineups for a hypothetical matchup of Buckeyes vs. Buckeyes if they were to play each other this fall. Through this exercise, we made our picks for who Ohio State’s most valuable players will be this year, based not only on their individual talent bu...
Jul 13, 2022•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 145
Landmark news broke in the world of college sports this past week. USC and UCLA are coming to the Big Ten in 2024, and the move will have ripple effects for years to come. With Dan Hope on vacation this week, Garrick Hodge joined Griffin Strom to break down how the Big Ten’s latest expansion efforts will impact Ohio State and college athletics as a whole. We started by stating our initial reactions (2:35) to the news before assessing the pros and cons from several perspectives, and also dug into...
Jul 06, 2022•46 min•Ep. 144
It’s been a huge week for Ohio State in recruiting – specifically, for wide receiver recruiting. Ohio State landed commitments from five-star wide receivers on back-to-back days when Carnell Tate and Brandon Inniss committed to the Buckeyes on Monday and Tuesday. To help us put it all into context and explain how the Buckeyes pulled it off, Eleven Warriors recruiting analyst Garrick Hodge joins us on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays. We break down how Ohio State’s success recruiting wi...
Jun 22, 2022•58 min•Ep. 143
