Losing eight starters to the NFL draft is supposed to be a one-time gut punch, the kind of offseason that forces a program to take a step back before it takes two forward. Matt Patricia has now done it twice in a row.
Safety Caleb Downs, linebackers Sonny Styles and Arvell Reese, defensive end Caden Curry, defensive tackle Tywone Malone Jr., cornerback Davison Igbinosun, linebacker Lorenzo Styles Jr. and defensive end Kayden McDonald all departed for the NFL after Ohio State's 2025 season, the second consecutive year that eight starters left a Patricia-coached defense for the professional ranks. It's a level of roster turnover that would concern most coordinators. For Patricia, it has become something closer to a routine.
The results speak for themselves so far. Ohio State's defense has ranked No. 1 nationally in each of the last two seasons, first under Jim Knowles in the 2024 championship season, when the Buckeyes allowed roughly 200 yards per game, and then under Patricia in his debut year running the unit. Even Eleven Warriors' own preseason analysis acknowledged that matching that mark a third straight year, with this much turnover, might not be realistic, projecting a "top-five defense nationally" as the more sensible bar for 2026 rather than another No. 1 finish.
A Different Kind of Rebuild
What makes the current rebuild different from last year's is who's doing the replacing, not the scale of the losses. A year ago, Patricia was inheriting Jim Knowles' returning pieces and adapting them to his own scheme on the fly. This time, the roster reflects a full recruiting and transfer cycle built specifically around what Patricia wants from a defense. Alabama's James Smith arrived as the No. 1 defensive tackle in the transfer portal. Florida State's Earl Little Jr. came over after earning second-team All-ACC honors. Wisconsin's Christian Alliegro and UCF's John Walker joined a linebacker and defensive line rotation that Patricia has described as built on collective strength rather than any single standout name.
Patricia doesn't dance around how different this year's roster looks. "We had, like, 51 new players, I think, overall on the team, and certainly with the young guys and the transfer guys, it's just a completely different group," he said during fall camp. That's not a defensive line problem or a secondary problem, it's the entire two-deep. "I think there are different skill sets on the field now than maybe what we had last year," he added. "Not better or worse, just different. So it is really trying to figure out what they do well now."
That evaluation process is only half the job. The other half, in Patricia's own words, is making sure a defense full of new pieces can actually operate as one unit once the lights come on. "The biggest thing for me when you lose the players that walked out the door last year has to be the communication," he said. "Last year we were really blessed to be able to do that with those guys. I think everybody knows that. This year, I think we're trying to figure that out." Ball State didn't expose any cracks there. Texas, with a far more sophisticated passing attack, will be a considerably tougher test of whether that communication has caught up to the talent.
The Season Opener as Early Evidence
The season opener offered an early answer. Ohio State held Ball State to 165 total yards, forced a turnover and racked up seven tackles for loss in a 56-3 win, the kind of dominant defensive performance that suggests the standard hasn't slipped even with an almost entirely new cast of starters. One game doesn't settle the question of whether this group can sustain a third straight elite season on defense, especially with Texas and its Heisman-caliber quarterback arriving in Week 2. But it's a reminder that Patricia's version of Ohio State's defense has been rebuilt twice now and has yet to look like it.
For a program that operates at a championship standard, there's no small amount of pressure in replacing that much talent in back-to-back offseasons. Matt Patricia keeps choosing to treat it as an opportunity instead.
Part of what makes that possible is the partnership underpinning it. Ryan Day has said he wants Ohio State to keep running its own defensive identity regardless of who's coordinating it, and Patricia has embraced that continuity rather than fighting it, adapting his own preferences to the program's culture instead of the other way around. Two rebuilds into that arrangement, with a national championship on the resume and a 56-3 season opener to show for this one, the partnership looks like exactly what Day was hoping for when he made the hire.
