Skull Session: Ohio State is the Best Team in College Football, Julian Sayin’s Accuracy is Historically Good and the Buckeyes Put a Beatdown on the Badgers

Welcome to the Skull Session.

WR1A, WR1B.

The Zone 6 Dynamic Duo is the Only Power 4 Duo ranked in the 20 for Receiving Yards Per Game
@Jermiah_Smith1 x @carnelltate_ pic.twitter.com/1drLoZFMj5
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) October 20, 2025

Have a good Tuesday.

I’M TIRED OF THIS GRANDPA! The national media is obsessed with asking, Are there any good teams in college football? Yes. Ohio State. They ain’t played nobody, Pawwwwwwl! I don’t care. That’s not their fault. The schedule is the schedule, and the Buckeyes have beaten each of their opponents handily.

This season, Ohio State ranks No. 23 in scoring offense (36.4 points per game) and No. 36 in total offense (431.4 yards per game), but the Buckeyes will continue to look better and better as Ryan Day and Brian Hartline put more on Julian Sayin’s plate.

Day and Hartline served Sayin a full plate against Wisconsin. He responded with 36 completions on 42 attempts for a career-high 393 yards and four touchdowns, connecting with Jeremiah Smith nine times for 97 yards, Carnell Tate six times for 111 yards and two touchdowns, and eight other pass catchers (!) 21 times for 185 yards and two scores.

On the other side of the ball, Ohio State is generational. The Buckeyes rank No. 1 in scoring defense (5.9 points per game) and No. 2 in total defense (216.3 yards per game). Their 41 points total allowed are the fewest by an FBS team through seven games since 1993 Florida State (38), which featured ACC Defensive Player of the Year Derrick Brooks and second-team All-American Corey Sawyer. (Seminoles quarterback Charlie Ward won the Heisman Trophy that season… interesting!)

Considering the Buckeyes will have at least two All-Americans (Caleb Downs and Arvell Reese) and have the potential for more (Caden Curry, Kayden McDonald and Sonny Styles), I like Ohio State’s chances to end the season with a lower point total than that Florida State team, which allowed 75 in 12 games for an average of 6.25 points per contest.

I could share more information and statistics to prove Ohio State’s status as college football’s elite team, but I don’t need to. I know I’m preaching to the choir on elevenwarriors.com.

Ohio State is ranked No. 1 in both polls — soon to be another with the initial CFP rankings on Nov. 4. The Buckeyes don’t face another ranked opponent until No. 25 Michigan in the regular-season finale, which will be used to discredit them, but so long as Day and Co. continue to take care of business until Nov. 29, Ohio State deserves its flowers as the best team in the nation. The Buckeyes are good, great and grand, and I’m tired of people pretending like they’re not!

NEW YORK, NEW YORK! I don’t know if Julian Sayin will win the Heisman Trophy, but if he continues to perform down the stretch like he has all season, he’ll at least be in New York City in December.

How do I know?

Let’s look at the top-five all-time single season completion percentage leaders:

Julian Sayin, 2025: 80 percent
Bo Nix, 2023: 77.4 percent
Mac Jones, 2020: 77.4 percent
Colt McCoy, 2008: 76.7 percent
Joe Burrow, 2019: 76.3 percent

And then let’s look at the Heisman voting for Nix, Jones, McCoy and Burrow:

Nix: Third behind LSU’s Jayden Daniels and Washington’s Michael Penix Jr.
Jones: Third behind Alabama’s DaVonta Smith and Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence
McCoy: Second behind Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford
Burrow: First ahead of Oklahoma’s Jalen Hurts and Ohio State’s Justin Fields

One winner, one second-place finisher and two third-place finishers — and Sayin is more accurate than all of them!

DID WISCONSIN REALLY GET BEAT THAT BAD? Yes, it did.

According to Parker Fleming — the statistician, not the former Ohio State special teams coordinator — the Buckeyes had a net success rate of (approximately) +0.500 in their 34-0 win over Wisconsin.

DID WE REALLY GET BEAT THAT BAD?
NET SUCCESS RATES IN WEEK 8 pic.twitter.com/SZCJ6PboiK
— parker fleming (@statsowar) October 20, 2025

To put that in perspective, Ohio State had a net success rate of (approximately) -0.050 against Illinois, +0.350 against Minnesota, +0.100 against Washington and -0.100 against Texas. So, in other words, the Buckeyes’ beatdown of the Badgers was its best performance of the season against a Power Four opponent, according to an advanced metric Fleming writes can “strip out some noise and present a view of how two teams compared in the down to down business of moving the football.”

That’s encouraging as Ohio State enters its second bye week. Also encouraging: the Buckeyes had their best performance of the season, and both Day and Sayin told us there’s still stuff to clean up and improve!

FICKELL IS SAFE — FOR NOW. Despite the Badgers being held scoreless for the second straight game, Wisconsin athletic director Chris McItosh backed Luke Fickell as the football team’s head coach. In fact, he even announced plans for the school to invest more resources into the football program.

#Badgers AD Chris McIntosh with a message to fans. Talks about supporting Luke Fickell and additional financial investment in the program. pic.twitter.com/zA1gz6O3MN
— Zach Heilprin (@ZachHeilprin) October 20, 2025

“Coach Fickell sees the potential in what this team can be, as do I, and he shares the same disappointment and frustration,” McIntosh wrote in a letter to Wisconsin fans. “Our student-athletes continue to stand and fight with character and pride as they battle through this moment of adversity, and they deserve all of our support.”

Later in his letter, McIntosh added, “In this new era of collegiate athletics, the clear reality is that high expectations must be matched with an equal level of support. The results of this elevated support may not be immediate, but we are confident the direction will be positive and long-term.”

A former Wisconsin offensive lineman and team captain, McIntosh hired Fickell from Cincinnati in 2022. Fickell is under contract through the 2031 season, and the Badgers would owe him $25 million if McIntosh fired him this fall. That said, I think Wisconsin has realized it would be cheaper to invest more resources in the program than to pay Fickell not to work.

Still, I wonder: are the dollars saved worth the fans lost? With minutes until kickoff on Saturday, Camp Randall Stadium looked about half-full, with most of the spectators being Ohio State supporters. Soon after kickoff, the “Fire Fickell” chants started, and at the end of the third quarter, a staple college football tradition in “Jump Around” lacked considerable juice.

So, it’s one thing to invest in the program on paper. It’s another to win back the hearts of the fans who keep the fandom alive. Money can buy support in theory, but passion? That’s earned on the field — and for now, Fickell still has work to do.

SONG OF THE DAY. "Olivia" - Rayland Baxter.