Skull Session: The Buckeyes Can’t Buy a Holding Penalty, Larry Johnson Says “It Wasn’t a Tough Decision” to Return to Ohio State This Season, Ryan Day Says Purdue Has “A Lot of Pride”

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REF, DO SOMETHING! The last time referees called a holding penalty on one of Ohio State’s Big Ten opponents was Nov. 4, 2023, when Rutgers offensive lineman Curtis Dunlap Jr. held Tyleik Williams in the Buckeyes’ 35-16 win over the Scarlet Knights.

Yes, that’s correct.

It hasn’t been 84 years, but it’s felt like it!

Fun fact: Today is the two-year anniversary of the last time a Big Ten opponent was called for holding against Ohio State.

The Buckeyes have played 17 Big Ten games since in which their opponents apparently havent held a single time. pic.twitter.com/ryZE5jUwBX
— The Silver Bulletin (@tSilverBulletin) November 4, 2025

The lack of holding calls against Ohio State’s opponents — both in and out of the Big Ten — has been a point of conversation since the 2024 postseason, when Buckeye Huddle’s Tony Gerdeman reported that the Buckeyes’ opponents had been flagged for holding three times in 13 games. Gerdeman shared that statistic with Williams before the Cotton Bowl.

“I think our whole D-line group gets held every game,” Williams responded. “I don’t know what the refs are saying or what’s going on with that. But you turn on the tape and really look at it, we’re held almost every play.”

When Gerdeman asked him how Ohio State’s defensive line could draw more holding calls, Williams didn’t have an answer.

“We can be actors, but we don’t really teach nothing like that,” Williams said. “I don’t know if it’s because we’re Ohio State they’re letting things go or what it is, but it’s been pretty bad. I know y’all see it, too. It’s every play, almost every game.”

Ohio State didn’t draw a holding call in the Cotton Bowl, but it finally did in the national championship game, breaking a streak of 728 consecutive snaps without an opponent being flagged for holding.

Still, the streak for Big Ten opponents has continued — even though I can think of at least two examples when it should have ended on Saturday, with the first being a blatant hold on Lorenzo Styles Jr. during Penn State’s first scoring drive, then this blatant hold on Kenyatta Jackson Jr.:

It's not talked about enough in the National Media just how dominate this DL is. Filthy rep from Kenyatta and Kayden McDonald.

Kenyatta's vertical penetration forces the cut-back into Kayden McDonald who ends up in a lag fit and is able to play lock-peek-shed off the ball.

For pic.twitter.com/pqmLjG0dQg
— The Ballmanac (@The_Ballmanac) November 4, 2025

The lack of holding calls is an Ohio State problem, but the lack of overall penalties is a Big Ten problem.

According to TeamRankings, 10 Big Ten schools are among the top 25 least penalized teams in college football: No. 1 Iowa (2.4), No. 3 Minnesota (3.1), No. 5 Penn State (3.4), No. 5 Northwestern (3.4), No. 7 Indiana (3.8), No. 8 Wisconsin (3.9), No. 9 Rutgers (4.1), No. 12 Ohio State (4.3), No. 17 Michigan (4.3) and No. 23 Nebraska (4.8).

Meanwhile, 11 Big Ten schools rank among the bottom 25 in opponent penalties per game: No. 135 Iowa (3.3), No. 135 Penn State (3.3), No. 134 Ohio State (3.6), No. 131 Purdue (4.1), No. 129 Michigan (4.2), No. 123 Nebraska (4.5), No. 123 Rutgers (4.5), No. 123 Wisconsin (4.5), No. 117 Washington (4.9), No. 115 USC (4.9), No. 115 UCLA (4.9).

That said, I’m not confident that Big Ten officials will all of a sudden call holding penalties each time Purdue snaps this football this weekend, but I hope to see at least one piece of yellow laundry hit the field when a Boilermaker offensive lineman inevitably holds Arvell Reese as he flies off the edge!

LIVING LIKE LARRY. Larry Johnson has coached football for a long, long time, but in his 29 years as a college football assistant, he’s had to answer one question more than any other: When do you plan to retire?

The question felt fair and unfair at different times, but it was the former this past offseason. Ohio State just won a national championship, and Johnson was about to turn 73 — why not ride off into the sunset?

Johnson answered that question in an interview with The Athletic’s Cameron Teague Robinson:

“Because what do you do? Like, I’ve done this for so long, (retiring) scares me a little bit,” Johnson said. “I get up in the morning, like, what am I going to do?”

Robinson’s article continued:

For the first time in his career, he watched all four of his starters get picked in the same NFL Draft. It would have been a fitting way to go out as he faced the challenge of replacing them.

“Can I do it again?” Johnson said. “Can I bring the same energy of passion I had all those years? Do you still have it, Larry?”

As he thought about returning to Ohio State, he realized the answer to that last question was yes. It would just take some sacrifices.

It led to an offseason of intentional work by Johnson. He lost around 50 pounds to get in better shape and skipped a week of vacation to work with his players, all in an effort to get them up to speed and also make sure a new group of players knew he was committed.

The efforts have paid off: Even with so many new players in starting roles, all Ohio State has done is rank first in the FBS in yards per play and points allowed heading into Saturday’s game against former defensive coordinator Jim Knowles and Penn State.

“I would have felt bad because I kind of let them down, even though I’ve got a personal life and I enjoy what I do in my off time,” Johnson said of returning. “It wasn’t a tough decision. I will know when the time comes, but right now I’m having fun.”

Good for Larry. He’s the greatest defensive line coach in college football history, so if he wants to be here, I want him to be here — and if he’s having fun, I’m having fun!

“THEY HAVE A LOT OF PRIDE.” Ryan Day was Ohio State’s offensive coordinator on one of the darkest days in program history — a 49-20 loss to Purdue on Oct. 20, 2018. When asked about his team’s trip to West Lafayette this Saturday, Day said he’s not taking the Boilermakers lightly because he remembers how that night felt.

“I was part of the 2018 team, so I know what that was like,” Day said. “They have a lot of pride in that (Purdue) program. I think Barry Odom is a very, very good coach. These guys are well-coached, and he is a good man and a good football coach. And I know he has a good staff there. Put the film on and watch them play last week (against Michigan). We know we have to continue to get better this week. We have to bring it at 1 p.m. on Saturday. … They have a lot of pride, and that’s not gonna be any different when we play them on Saturday.”

Day didn’t use his trademark “It’s about us” line when he discussed Purdue, but I know he wanted to. As he looked ahead to this weekend, Day said the Buckeyes have to avoid distractions like conversations surrounding individual awards and the College Football Playoff rankings.

“Just win the game. That’s it. We gotta get better and win the game,” Day said. “If individual honors show up at the end of the season, they do, but that’s not the No. 1 goal. That’s part of the unselfishness of all of this. I’ve mentioned it before, and it’s the same thing right now: our goal has to be winning as a team, and when we do, you can see that guys start getting attention, which is well-deserved.

“But we have to make sure we stay focused on what matters, and that’s winning games. So we’ll do what’s best for the team in those moments, but it’s all about getting the first first down and focusing on Purdue on the road. That’s it. Any time we get focused on anything other than that, it becomes a distraction, and we can’t do that. We have to continue to work to play our best game and master our process.”

And what is Ohio State’s process?

It’s the process, of course!

“We got to keep the process the process,” Day said. “You probably get tired of hearing me say that, just like some of the guys in the program do. But I keep telling them not to get tired of me saying it, because that’s what really matters. In today’s age, it’s like, ‘What’s new about this week? What’s different about this week?’ We can try to find ways to make it a little fresh, but at the end of the day, we have to be OK with doing the same mundane, boring things over and over again — chopping wood and carrying water, that’s the book we read this summer. We’re chopping wood every day, we’re carrying water every day, and that has to do with our routine. The minute we try to tempt fate, we’re gonna get it. We can’t do that. We have to continue to fight.

“It’s the little things that will get you in the end. There was a reflection recently about David vs. Goliath, and what was the thing that got Goliath? It was the stone. It was a little thing. Goliath didn’t wake up that day and think it was the stone that was gonna get him, but it was. What are the things we’re doing on a daily basis that can get us? What are the issues? The issues are always there, and we have to continue to address them. And if we think that we’ve got it, we’re about to get it. That has to be the mindset every week.”

Coach Day is locked in!

NO MIRAGE HERE. Ohio State has made a believer out of The Athletic’s Stewart Mandel, who just three weeks ago wanted to “slow everybody’s roll about the 2025 Buckeyes.” In his latest column, Mandel said there’s “nothing to suggest the 2025 Buckeyes are in any way fraudulent.”

I took a lot of flak from Buckeyes fans a couple of weeks ago for daring to suggest that maybe, possibly, you shouldn’t go ahead and start engraving their trophy already, for exactly that reason: I’ve seen many supposedly unbeatable teams get exposed over the years when they got to the biggest stage.

But as of this moment, there is nothing to suggest the 2025 Buckeyes are in any way fraudulent. Their quarterback, Julian Sayin, is completing 80 percent of his passes. He has arguably the two best receivers in the country in Jeremiah Smith and Carnell Tate. His offensive line has allowed three sacks all season. And Ohio State’s defense, which is allowing the fewest yards per play (3.75) of any team in the last decade, is an NFL scout’s dream with Caleb Downs, Arvell Reese, Sonny Styles and Co.

But no, we have not seen the Buckeyes tested by a fellow national championship contender, and we won’t until the Big Ten championship game, presumably against Indiana. Texas may still get into the CFP, but the Longhorns weren’t playing at nearly that level at the time they met. Michigan will be a big challenge, as always, but the Wolverines probably aren’t getting to the Playoff. The Buckeyes will enter the CFP having been battle-tested far less frequently than the top SEC teams.

But neither the Big Ten nor the SEC is in the same place they were in 2006-07. Ohio State was the class of the conference under Jim Tressel, but at that time, it was still largely an in-state/regional recruiting school, as was the rest of the conference. Urban Meyer changed that. And while the SEC is clearly deeper than the Big Ten, Michigan in 2023 and Ohio State in ’24 proved on the field they were better than the best the SEC had to offer in those seasons.

If they get exposed in the postseason, it would have to be by a team with a dominant defensive front that can get after Sayin like no one has to this point. And of course, any great defense can get exposed on a given day by an elite QB — see Bryce Young against Georgia’s otherwise impenetrable 2021 defense. Someone like Alabama’s Ty Simpson or Texas A&M’s Marcel Reed, both of whom have great receivers as well.

Slowly but surely, Mandel is becoming a believer. Give him a few more weeks and he'll be all in!

DAILY DUBCAST. Today's Eleven Dubcast brings on lead basketball beat writer Andy Anders to discuss the regular season tip-off for Ohio State basketball in which the Buckeyes won while setting a new school offensive record but also conceded over 100 points to IU Indy.