There’s been a decent amount of content about the upcoming college football video game this summer on this website the past few days.
And well, when Ohio State’s star wide receiver, star safety and head coach all make the cover of EA Sports College Football 26, that’s to be expected. But whether you’re a hardcore fan of the game or haven’t even touched a controller in your life, the concept of the game that appeals the most to a large audience is individual player ratings.
Whenever the ratings are released, it inevitably causes a minor uproar on the interwebs about how a certain player’s ratings are too low, and how a rival star’s ratings are far too high. It is summer, after all, and people need football concepts to talk about before their teams put on the pads for the first time for training camp.
With the game coming out July 10, individual ratings should be released sometime next month if EA Sports follows the same release info drip it did for last year’s edition. But why wait that long? Instead, we’re going to take our best shot at predicting who the highest-rated Buckeyes will be. In particular, trying to guess the top five and what their overall rating will be.
We’ve listed each in ascending order below, but dropped a few honorable mentions before we get started. A full disclosure: I picked these based on my best guess on what EA Sports will do, not my individual opinion. If a player’s rating feels stingy, remember that not a single player last season received a 99 overall rating at launch.
Honorable mentions
Quarterbacks
I’m guessing how Ohio State’s quarterbacks will be rated purely from a curiosity standpoint, considering I don’t expect any of them to be in the Buckeyes’ top 10 player ratings to begin the season. The 2025 edition of the game had Julian Sayin as an 80 overall, so we’ll guess he gets bumped to an 82. Poor Lincoln Kienholz was in the mid-70s last year, but he’s getting moved up to an 80 overall in our projection. As for Tavien St. Clair, he’s a five-star freshman, and while in real life he’s a distant third behind the other two scholarship quarterbacks, on talent alone he’ll also probably be rated an 80 overall.
Devin Sanchez, cornerback, 83 overall
For what it’s worth, I feel like a ton of players on this year’s roster are going to be rated between 80 and 85 overall. It just seems like the rating range you give players with lofty recruiting shine but only a limited amount of snaps. I’m choosing to highlight Sanchez here because I’d expect he’d be the Buckeyes’ top-rated true freshman in the game. Jeremiah Smith was an 85 overall at launch last season, and he was the No. 1 overall recruit in the country, so I am going a smidge lower and forecasting 2025’s No. 1 cornerback will come in as an 83.
Beau Atkinson, defensive end, 86 overall
Now that those two superlative-ish descriptions are out of the way, I guess we could call this my projected top eight highest-rated Buckeyes. Atkinson has proven production from his time at North Carolina, racking up 7.5 sacks a year ago. Whether it’s fair or not, I’m projecting him to be the highest-rated OSU defensive lineman in the game to start, though in fairness, I’d guess a lot of the other Buckeyes in contention to start at that position will be somewhere in the low to mid-80s.
Jermaine Mathews, cornerback, 87 overall
Mathews was an 85 overall last year, and he had a nice 2024 campaign. He still had to rotate snaps because the Buckeyes’ defensive back room was so loaded, so I don’t imagine they’ll bump him up too much this season. Still, he’s proven enough on the field that he should be considered one of Ohio State’s top players for this season.
Max Klare, tight end, 87 overall
Klare is a player I feel could fight his way into the top five with a big season and honestly was arguably the hardest individual for me to leave off the top five. The developers will surely take into account that he had nearly 700 receiving yards.
The projected top five
Sonny Styles, linebacker, 89 overall
Styles returns as one of the top players on the Buckeyes’ 2025 defense and we expect him to get a three-point bump from his 86-overall mark from last season. Though the developers probably don’t care that he’s the frontrunner to be the Block O recipient, they will care that he racked up 100 total tackles a year ago.
Davison Igbinosun, cornerback, 90 overall
Though Igbinosun can get a little grabby in coverage, he’s still one hell of a defensive back. He finished as a 89 overall last year, and as OSU’s projected No. 1 cornerback heading into fall camp, I’m guessing he’ll get a slight tweak to his ratings.
Carnell Tate, wide receiver, 90 overall
Call it the Brian Hartline bump. Tate took a giant leap statistically in year two, catching 52 passes for 733 yards and four touchdowns on a team with a guy who got drafted in the first round and a guy who will be a first-rounder in two years. Tate's performance in the Cotton Bowl showcased how much of a weapon he can be, catching seven passes for 87 yards against elite competition. Ohio State gets the benefit of the doubt when it comes to wide receivers, and Tate has earned a rating that starts with a nine heading into his junior year.
Caleb Downs, safety, 97 overall
Not a whole lot of mystery of how No. 1 and No. 2 were going to go, right? As we said in the intro, EA Sports is pretty stingy with handing out 99 overalls, but Downs is arguably not only the best safety in the country, but the best defensive player in the nation. A 97 overall seems fair under the circumstances, but knowing Downs he’ll just take that to mean there’s room for improvement.
Jeremiah Smith, wide receiver, 99 overall
If anyone in the country deserves a 99 overall, it’s Smith, EA Sports’ cover guy. The phenom prospect shattered Ohio State and Big Ten records as a true freshman, catching 76 passes for 1,315 yards and 15 receiving touchdowns. Perhaps the developers give him a 98 overall considering that’s what Travis Hunter, last year’s Heisman Trophy winner, was rated to start the year. But we’re projecting Smith will be the first 99 overall in the modern version of the college football franchise.
