When Ohio State Buckeyes coach Ryan Day walks into the Cotton Bowl for the second consecutive season, he will do so under vastly different circumstances.
For one, Friday night’s edition is a College Football Playoff semifinal and an integral part of the expanded 12-team tournament—a sharp contrast to the glorified exhibition game that was staged last year as an unwelcome follow-up to another loss to the rival Michigan Wolverines.
Numerous Buckeyes opted out of the contest as they transferred or pursued an NFL career, and backup quarterback Devin Brown suffered an injury that forced Day to play a third-stringer under center. OSU mustered just 203 yards of offense in a 14–3 loss that only added to the dour mood around Columbus, Ohio, to end 2023.
This time, however, Day has a full complement on both sides of the ball. Momentum has been restored to the program following two blowout wins over the Tennessee Volunteers and the top-seeded Oregon Ducks in the first two rounds of the playoff.
More importantly for the coaching staff as they prepare to knock out the final SEC team left standing in the Texas Longhorns, Ohio State can count on having the best player in the game in budding young freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith.
Even better, the Buckeyes have the second-best player in the game—and perhaps the country at the moment—in safety Caleb Downs.
The sophomore has been a worthy defensive counterpart to the playmaking Smith the past month, underscoring an impressive season in scarlet and gray after arriving as one of the most sought-after players to ever enter the transfer portal following an All-American campaign last season with the Alabama Crimson Tide.
Downs was named Big Ten Defensive Back of the Year last month and stepped up his game as the season has worn on to an impressive degree. His punt return touchdown helped spark a win over a fellow playoff team in the Indiana Hoosiers just before Thanksgiving, and he was one of the few players who showed up in the tough loss to Michigan with a game-high 11 tackles and a pick.
Though his stats haven’t been nearly as prolific during this postseason run to the semifinals—10 combined tackles and a single punt return that lost yardage—Downs has somehow found a way to be even more impressive as a jack-of-all-trades defensive back who is seemingly everywhere after the snap.
He’s batting down balls, he’s shutting down passing lanes and he’s become a bit of a roaming wrecking ball against the run.
Even NFL scouts who are not showing up to Ohio State’s bowl games to evaluate the sophomore are instinctively drawn to the defender wearing a bold No. 2 jersey and thinking ahead to 2026 where the true sophomore could well match his number with his draft position.
“It’s really unique how they use him. They put him in a lot of different positions, whether it’s at safety, whether it’s at nickel, they put him in the box—he’s a very, very versatile player,” Texas offensive coordinator and line coach Kyle Flood says. “An excellent coverage player and an excellent tackler. They have certain things they do on defense to try to funnel the ball to him as the primary tackler. He’s impressive in terms of how many different ways they use him and how he’s able to excel at all.”
Downs’s role has evolved as coordinator Jim Knowles has gotten more creative with how to deploy him depending on the opponent and what the Buckeyes need him to do in leading the stingiest unit in FBS (12.1 points per game allowed). While he initially started off mostly as a patrolling center fielder who teamed with veteran safety Lathan Ransom, Downs has lined up all over and, increasingly, made it a point to creep closer to the line of scrimmage.
In holding Oregon to negative rushing yards during their regular-season rematch in Pasadena to ring in the new year, Downs was almost off of the hip of linebacker Sonny Styles in a bit more of a hybrid role that saw him stack the box while still being plenty capable of dropping deep into coverage against the Ducks’ passing attack.
“If you have me in the post, I can make plays. Have me at man, I can make plays. Have me in the box, I can make plays. To me, it doesn’t really matter,” Downs said. “I feel like I’m comfortable at that position [in the box], and it allows me to be able to read the line and read the quarterback and be able to get in the run game and play the pass. So I feel like that’s a good spot for me. But I feel like I’m versatile enough to move around.”
That is all but set to continue this week at AT&T Stadium as he looks to go against a Texas offense that is averaging 34.3 points per game and might have the most weapons of anybody that OSU has faced this season.
Downs’s former Tide teammate Isaiah Bond, when healthy, is a dangerous deep threat and fellow wideout Matthew Golden had a massive outing against the Arizona State Sun Devils to save the Longhorns in the Peach Bowl. Tight end Gunnar Helm has come up clutch to move the sticks consistently and the running back tandem of Quintrevion Wisner and Jaydon Blue are both home run hitters out of the backfield.
“Really smart quarterback. Knows how to operate their offense. Puts the ball in the right places. And then Coach [Steve] Sarkisian does a great job in putting him in positions to win,” Downs said. “They do a really good job with eye candy, and it creates a lot of challenges for defense in order to see if it’s run or pass, because that’s when they're going to take their shots as well.”
If Downs has the scouting report down pat against Texas, that’s because he’s the rare Buckeye who has been through a game week against these same Longhorns before. While at Alabama—in just his second game as a true freshman starter in the secondary—he recorded a game-high 10 tackles as one of the few bright spots for the Tide, announcing himself to much of the college football world with his play in an eventual 34–24 win by the burnt orange.
“He’s a great player for sure,” Longhorns quarterback Quinn Ewers said in recalling the meeting in early September 2023. “He’s a super, super instinctual guy. I think they do a really good job of allowing to play to his instincts.”
That’s unsurprising given how Downs has the lineage of a player built for anything to be thrown his way on the football field. His father, Gary Downs, was a running back in the NFL while older brother Josh currently plays wide receiver for the Indianapolis Colts. Uncle Dre Bly was a standout corner in the league for many years and won a Super Bowl.
Perhaps that’s why Downs has been welcome to positioning himself wherever the coaches want game-by-game when some players who look the part of being a future first-round pick might object to having to learn multiple roles. Whereas others would struggle given such a workload ahead of some of Ohio State’s biggest games or even be more prone to making mistakes, the star safety has rarely put a wrong step forward regardless of where he pops up on the field—including seeing some time in practice this season at running back.
“He’s one of those really, really special players. His football IQ is off the charts,” OSU offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said. “He was seamless when he came over and practiced with us at running back. We didn’t have to use him this year, but for him to be able to play multiple positions on defense and then to easily transition to be an offensive player tells you what kind of player he is.”
That’s also part of why this Cotton Bowl is even more special for Kelly, Day and the rest of the Ohio State brain trust.
Not only do they have a player like Downs between the lines and leading the way on Friday night, but they can rest easy knowing the sophomore still has one more season left in college football to push for another playoff run.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Caleb Downs’s Versatility Gives Ohio State Advantage This Season, and Next.