Ohio State’s next 3 games provide perfect opportunity for veterans to prove experience still matters

For me, there have been two main takeaways from the last three College Football Playoff national champions. The first is that the Big Ten is unequivocally and indisputably the best conference in the sport, and no one, not even the media's beloved SEC, is anywhere close.

The second is that in college football's current landscape, where NIL can incentivize NFL-caliber players to stay in school even as the transfer portal creates unprecedented roster fluidity, having an experienced, veteran-led team is increasingly vital to winning a national title. College football might be getting younger, faster, richer, and more transient by the minute, but the trophy keeps ending up in the hands of old guys.

So it has been a bit concerning that, through Ohio State's first three games, nearly all of the positives — aside from one otherworldly wide receiver — have centered on young, unproven talent, despite a slew of upperclassmen who waited their turn to start and a handful of experienced transfer additions.

Jay Timmons looks like he was created in a laboratory specifically to play cornerback for the Buckeyes . Khary Wilder has flashed the potential to be Ohio State's next great pass rusher. Brock Boyd and Chris Henry Jr. have, despite a few hiccups, looked like the next great Buckeye receivers, while Riley Pettijohn and Tarvos Alford have been revelations at linebacker.

By their nature, college football fans are always excited about young talent, especially those who come to campus following highly publicized recruitments. Because of the short-term, transient nature of the sport, it makes sense to always have an eye on what's next.

And in Ohio State's case, the excitement surrounding this year's crop of young players is absolutely warranted, and I want to see even more of them as the season progresses. But as the Buckeyes move into Big Ten play, I think the next three weeks provide an opportunity for the veteran core of the roster to become a much bigger part of the season's story.

Ohio State hosts Illinois on Saturday, travels to Iowa the following week, and then welcomes Maryland to The Horseshoe for Homecoming. After that three-game stretch, the Buckeyes head to Bloomington to face the defending national champions, and the back half of the season presents a pretty formidable challenge for the Buckeyes. However, the three games preceding the trip to IU feel like a nearly perfect runway for Ohio State's veterans to begin playing their best football.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want those guys to push out the youngsters; I just want them to raise their game so Ohio State can get the best from both groups at the same time. If this team is ultimately going to accomplish what we all hope it can, then it is going to need both groups bringing what they uniquely have to offer.

The freshmen and sophomores bring athleticism, explosiveness, and the type of fearlessness that comes with not yet knowing all of the ways a college football season can go sideways. They also have the type of collective and individual upside that makes you wonder what they might look like by the time the postseason comes around and they have 12 games under their belts.

The veterans — regardless of recruiting profile — are supposed to provide the ballast: consistency, physical maturity, leadership, and the accumulated knowledge that comes from having played hundreds — and in some cases thousands — of snaps of college football. Despite everything that has changed about the sport over the past few years, there is plenty of evidence that experience still matters.

The last three national champions — the Big Ten's Michigan, Ohio State, and Indiana — all relied heavily on veteran players. The 2024 Buckeye title clearly does not happen without the group of players — Jack Sawyer , J.T. Tuimoloau, TreVeyon Henderson , Tyliek Williams, Donovan Jackson , Emeka Egbuka , Denzel Burke , et al. — who refused to allow their Ohio State careers to essentially end with the 2023 Michigan loss. Michigan's championship team the year before was similarly built around players who had been through multiple seasons together before finally reaching the top of the mountain.

Indiana went about it differently, assembling much of its experience through the transfer portal, but the larger point remains the same: Turns out, for all of the five-star freshmen and seven-figure portal acquisitions in modern college football, there is still enormous value in having grown men on your team who have played a whole heck of a lot of football.

That is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain in the NIL and portal era. Players good enough to reach the NFL leave when they can, while players buried on depth charts no longer have much incentive to spend three or four years waiting for an opportunity that might never come. Coaches are essentially being asked to rebuild meaningful portions of their rosters every winter, whether they want to or not. In modern college football, continuity has become a luxury. Fortunately, Ohio State isn't exactly shopping on a budget.

Ohio State lost an extraordinary amount of experience to the NFL following its national championship and then another sizable group after last season. But this isn't an inexperienced football team.

Seven veterans were voted captains before the season: Brandon Inniss, Kenyatta Jackson Jr., Jaylen McClain, Payton Pierce, Julian Sayin, Austin Siereveld, and Smith. There are players who have spent years working on their skills in backup roles in Columbus, and the Buckeyes brought in established veterans from elsewhere as well. James Smith arrived from Alabama as a senior; Earl Little Jr. is in his fifth collegiate season after stops at Alabama and Florida State; Ja'Kobi Jackson is in his seventh season of college football after transferring from Florida.

I still would have liked to see a greater investment in the offensive line, but broadly speaking, OSU recognized what has been winning national championships and went into the portal looking for proven veterans rather than simply chasing upside.

What Ohio State needs now isn't for those players to push the youngsters back to the bench. It needs the veterans to play well enough that the coaches don't have to choose between experience and upside. That, to me, is what makes this next stretch so important.

Illinois and Maryland aren't Ball State and Kent State. These are Big Ten games, and the trip to Iowa City will provide a legitimate road challenge against an extremely talented team. But none carries quite the same weight as Texas did or Indiana will.

That is why these next three weeks are so important. Illinois, Iowa, and Maryland are the runway; by the time the Buckeyes get to Bloomington, they need to be ready to take off.

They are an opportunity for the veteran defensive linemen to turn pressures into sacks and start making opposing quarterbacks uncomfortable. They are an opportunity for the experienced offensive line to prove its worth in short-yardage situations and establish an identity on the ground. And they are an opportunity for the veteran pass-catchers to give Julian Sayin reasons to occasionally remember that throwing to someone other than Jeremiah Smith is, in fact, permitted by NCAA rules.

For the experienced transfers, these games provide another three weeks to move beyond simply being talented college football players doing their best to fit into their new surroundings and to become fully immersed contributors to everything the Buckeyes are doing on the field.

The most exciting possibility for this Ohio State team isn't that Timmons or Wilder or Pettijohn eventually becomes so good that they make the veterans irrelevant. It's that the veterans find another gear while the kids keep getting better.

Imagine arriving in Bloomington with the best version of both groups: freshmen and sophomores who have seen enough Big Ten football that they no longer play like freshmen and sophomores, paired with juniors, seniors, and fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-year players finally performing with the confidence and consistency all of those years are supposed to provide.

The young Buckeyes have already shown us why the future is so exciting. Over the next three weeks, the veterans have an opportunity to remind us why experience still matters. If the kids can keep raising Ohio State's ceiling, it's up to the veterans to provide a foundation sturdy enough for the Buckeyes to reach it.