Ohio State's gritty road win came with a great cost. Now the Buckeyes have to try to survive without star QB Julian Sayin

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Ryan Day was sitting at a table underneath the grandstand of Memorial Stadium, maybe 130 yards from the end zone where 3 1/2 hours of tension melted into helplessness and emotional contradictions. 

Ohio State had won the game but lost its quarterback. It messed up the definitive play of its season but didn’t pay a price. It had gotten to 6-1 with a dramatic 19-15 victory here, ending Indiana’s 22-game unbeaten streak and banking arguably the most important win of the year in college football, but left with a much harder road ahead than anyone could have imagined. 

So as Day tried to process it all — the decisions that led to victory, the coin-flip nature of the result, the injury that will keep starter Julian Sayin on the sidelines for “several weeks” most likely — he said the word “opportunity.”

Followed by the slightest smile. 

“This is the stuff that stories are made of,” he said. “So, you know, we’ll see.”

There are, in fact, already two stories that deserve equal scrutiny as we assess what happened here Saturday and what it means going forward for a team that finally accomplished something worthy of its preseason No. 1 ranking. 

The first is how badly Ohio State needed to hang on to this win, which required them to defend every single inch of the field before relief and celebration. The second is what it will ultimately cost the Buckeyes, with the possibilities ranging from nothing to missing out on a College Football Playoff bid and Jeremiah Smith’s chance to win the Heisman Trophy.

“We may have to look a little different,” Day said. “But that’s OK. There’s a lot of teams doing it a lot of different ways.”

In the immediate aftermath, here’s what we know: With 8:05 remaining, Sayin got sacked by Indiana’s Mario Landino, an awkward hit from the side that jammed his right arm and appeared to bend his elbow beyond its natural range of motion. By the time he came back to the sideline in a sling, the game was in the hands of freshman quarterback Luke Fahey, a freshman from California who had not played a meaningful snap all season.

The exact nature and extent of Sayin’s injury was not clear. But after talking to Ohio State’s trainers, Day did not seem to think this would be a quick recovery — which is notable since the Buckeyes play at Southern Cal on Oct. 31, face Oregon on Nov. 7 and a surprisingly good Northwestern team on Nov. 14.

Though it’s not fair to judge Fahey on what he did against Indiana — which wasn’t much, to be honest — it is a complete mystery whether he’ll be ready to keep the Buckeyes afloat against a demanding portion of their schedule. 

Fahey is at Ohio State in the first place, of course, because he’s talented. But in this era of college football, where few teams want to allocate significant resources to an experienced backup quarterback, there’s not much of a blueprint for trying to win a title with a team this talented and a quarterback this unknown. 

The closest comparison might be Georgia two years ago, which lost starter Carson Beck to injury during the SEC championship game, forcing Gunner Stockton to make an ill-fated debut as a starter against Notre Dame in the CFP quarterfinals.

Will Sayin come back before the end of the season? Will Fahey be a competent stand-in when they travel to USC in two weeks? Suddenly, an Ohio State season where the destination seemed certain is among the biggest mysteries in the sport. 

“He’s always in the facility, always asking why, always wants to learn,” offensive lineman Luke Montgomery said. “He’s got a certain moxie about him as a quarterback. He’s going to be a heck of a player and we’re gonna have his back. If he’s the starter in two weeks in California, what better way to have your first start back at home?”

Said Smith: “We’ve got two weeks until we play a game, so it’s going to take time to build [chemistry]. A lot of practice, a lot of reps.”

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It certainly helps when the best player in college football is on the receiving end of that connection. While Indiana threw everything at Smith and limited him to four catches for 68 yards, he was the main character of both Ohio State touchdowns. On the first, near the goal line at the end of the first half, he served as a decoy that drew four defenders and sprung running back Bo Jackson wide open. On the second, which occurred on a fourth down with 12:46 remaining, Smith said he ran the wrong route but deployed pure physical superiority to recover and snag a ball between two defenders that probably no other player in the country could have gotten. 

“Unbelievable catch,” Day said. “He’s so tall that if you just give him a chance, he’s going to make some plays.” 

He was the difference between victory and defeat. But so was Ohio State’s defensive pressure and, ultimately, Nick Marsh’s toe.

Marsh, the Indiana receiver, had sprung open down the sideline near Indiana’s bench with just a tick more than a minute to go. It was essentially the final play of the game: Either the Hoosiers were going to take the lead or the Buckeyes were going to stop it and run out the clock. 

Down the stretch, Day’s message had been about staying aggressive and putting Indiana quarterback Josh Hoover under duress — especially important against an opponent that has been the best fourth-quarter team in college football for two years running. 

“We wanted to win the game on defense,” Day said. “We made decisions to be more aggressive in those moments, especially when Julian went down.”

And so the final decision was to bring pressure on fourth down, with Indiana still 27 yards from the end zone. It worked in the sense that Hoover had to make the delivery while backpedaling, impacting his throw just enough. But it also left Marsh without a defender anywhere near him. 

As the ball cradled into his hands, fireworks went off from the scoreboard on the opposite end of the field. Everyone in the building thought it was a touchdown — except for the referee who spotted that Marsh hadn’t quite gotten his left foot down inbounds. 

“Listen, if he catches the ball in the corner of the end zone and his foot is a yard in, we’re all sitting here in a different spot,” Day said.

Welcome to the new version of college football, a sport where even a juggernaut like Ohio State has to operate on the finest of margins. After 60 minutes of football, the official margin between these two teams is a shoe size. 

It was a delicious enough matchup that we probably need to see it again.

“I think we needed this win a lot just to get momentum going to the end of the season,” Jackson said. 

But will the Buckeyes actually have momentum without Sayin? Ohio State hopes it becomes a blessing in disguise.

A year ago, Ohio State cruised through the season with so little competition or adversity that they seemed shocked when it finally arrived. As a result, their stay in the College Football Playoff was a short one, losing to Miami in the quarterfinals.

What we have learned through the first eight weeks this year is the Buckeyes will take a much different path, having already played games against Texas and Indiana that came down to one or two plays in the fourth quarter. If they can simply stay afloat until Sayin comes back, look out the rest of the way. 

“I think back on some of the years we’ve had here where we didn’t find ourselves in games like this,” Day said. “You don’t always know as much about your team as I think we do right now and they’re challenged. They feel much more comfortable playing in the fourth quarter than I think they did to start the season. Also half the guys on the team weren’t here last year, so I think every week we’re getting more cemented as a team.”