Caleb Downs: Inside the Mind of the Best Defender in College Football

The memory that Caleb Downs holds dearest from the aftermath of Ohio State’s national championship victory over Notre Dame, which perched the Buckeyes atop the sport for the first time in a decade, had nothing to do with the team’s reception upon returning to campus nor the celebration held at Ohio Stadium before a crowd of roughly 30,000 fans.

Instead, what Downs remembers most were the initial few hours of reflection at the hotel in Atlanta, before he and his teammates went to sleep as national champions for the first time. It was during that window, Downs told me earlier this week, that players and coaches congregated in each other’s hotel rooms to reminisce about the season that was, the unforgettable journey they’d just completed through a freshly expanded College Football Playoff. Four victories in the span of a month, all of them by double digits, to salvage quite emphatically a campaign that threatened to go awry.

There was the defiant destruction of ninth-seeded Tennessee on a frigid night in Columbus when visiting fans infiltrated nearly half the stadium. There was the jaw-dropping demolition of top-seeded Oregon in the Rose Bowl to avenge the Buckeyes’ midseason defeat. There was the scintillating scoop and score from edge rusher Jack Sawyer, the first verbal commit Day earned as head coach five years prior, to upend Texas in the semifinals. There was the 56-yard heave to star wideout Jeremiah Smith in the waning minutes of the national championship game that propelled Ohio State to victory and launched the freshman sensation onto the cover of EA Sports College Football 26.

Still, the moment worthy of even more team-wide introspection, the one that has already been memorialized and will be discussed for decades to come, took place long before the postseason began. It was Tuesday, Dec. 3, three days after the Buckeyes capitulated against Michigan despite having entered "The Game" favored by nearly three touchdowns. That’s when Ohio State held a closed-door meeting in which Day and the players unleashed emotions big and small, raw and red-faced, and redirected the team’s trajectory toward an eventual national championship.

"It was a huge change of events," Downs said, "just with the growth that had to happen, the realizations that we had to come to. It showed the importance of leadership, I would say, on our team. We had a lot of veteran guys that put a lot into it and somehow got everybody on the same page for the last four games. That’s something that you can’t really measure. It was one of the determining factors for our season, and it led us to the victory that we had."

At the time of that meeting, Downs was most of the way through an exhilarating debut season for the Buckeyes after transferring from Alabama following the shocking retirement of legendary head coach Nick Saban earlier that same year. He would soon be named Defensive Back of the Year in the Big Ten and earn unanimous first-team All-American honors to reflect his status as the best safety in college football. Scouts and talent evaluators began speculating if Downs, who won’t turn 21 until December, could become the rare safety to be selected in the top five of the 2026 NFL Draft, the first year he’s eligible to declare. Downs even joined Smith, Day and a cadre of other college football luminaries for the Deluxe Edition of EA Sports "College Football 26," which was released earlier this week, an achievement he described as "an honor because a lot of safeties probably wouldn’t get the same type of blessing."

But one role that Downs wasn’t asked to fill last season, be it during the Buckeyes’ emotional team meeting or their eventual march to the national championship, was that of a primary vocal leader — regardless of how vital his on-field contributions were. Neither he nor Smith, another first-team All-American and the Wide Receiver of the Year in the Big Ten, were expected to lead from the front. Their play did the talking instead.

The backbone of Ohio State’s high-priced roster came from Day’s lauded 2021 recruiting haul that finished second in the national rankings to Alabama by a silver margin of 0.02 in average prospect rating, according to the 247Sports Composite. Veterans like Sawyer, fellow edge rusher JT Tuimoloau, offensive lineman Donovan Jackson, wide receiver Emeka Egbuka, tailback TreVeyon Henderson, defensive tackle Tyleik Williams and cornerback Denzel Burke all bypassed the NFL Draft for one more shot at Michigan, one more shot at winning a Big Ten title, one more shot at a national championship — though the latter would prove to be the only item they checked off the list. Alongside Day, whose job security was loudly questioned by factions of media members and Ohio State fans alike, they had suffered through several trophy-less years laced with enough pain to imbue on the underclassmen, Downs included.

A school-record-tying 14 Buckeyes went on to be selected in the 2025 NFL Draft, most of whom came from the aforementioned recruiting class and more than half of whom played with Downs on defense. The departures of Williams (No. 28 overall), Tuimoloau (No. 45 overall), linebacker Cody Simon (No. 115 overall), safety Lathan Ransom (No. 122 overall), Sawyer (No. 123 overall), defensive tackle Ty Hamilton (No. 148 overall), defensive back Jordan Hancock (No. 170 overall), and Burke (No. 174 overall) means Ohio State will enter the fall campaign with only three returning starters from its unit that won the national championship: Downs, linebacker Sonny Styles and cornerback Davison Igbinosun. Significant chunks of winter and spring workouts were dedicated to identifying some of the team’s new leaders — Downs included — and encouraging underclassmen to step forward without fear.

"Putting a lot of focus on putting our younger guys to feel experienced and feel that they’re ready to play," Downs said. "And that’s a lot of it, just playing with confidence and trying to get people to feel like they are ready to play. That’s a huge thing. Just trying to encourage and be a leader, make sure everybody is preparing the way that they need to prepare. And when we lift our heads up, we’ll see where we’re at."

Where they’re at will depend, at least in part, on how smoothly new defensive coordinator Matt Patricia adjusts to his first college coaching job since he was a graduate assistant at Syracuse more than 20 years ago. Patricia, who has spent the majority of his career in the NFL, last served as a senior defensive assistant for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2023, though fans are more familiar with his highly successful stint as defensive coordinator for the New England Patriots (2012-17) under former coach Bill Belichick — a run that included three Super Bowl rings — and his subsequently disastrous tenure as head coach of the Detroit Lions (2018-20) that was peppered with unflattering media coverage.

Patricia is tasked with maintaining the lofty standard established by former defensive coordinator Jim Knowles, who accepted the same job at Penn State shortly after the national championship game. Knowles is regarded by many as the best coordinator in the country and elevated Ohio State from 59th in total defense (372.6 yards per game) and 38th in scoring defense (22.8 points per game) in 2021, the year before he arrived, to No. 1 in total defense (254.6 yards per game) and No. 1 in scoring defense (12.9 points per game) last season. The Nittany Lions reportedly lured him to Happy Valley with the promise of more autonomy and an annual salary of $3.1 million that makes him the highest-paid coordinator in the sport.

But Patricia’s cupboard at Ohio State isn’t exactly bare. He still has Downs, the best defensive player in college football, and that should take the Buckeyes quite a long way.

"I feel like we have the same caliber of leadership," Downs said, "and we’ve had a lot of guys step up to put themselves in a position to be able to lead and be able to hold people accountable. I feel confident in who we have and what we’re doing."

Michael Cohen covers college football and college basketball for FOX Sports. Follow him at @Michael_Cohen13.

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