Silver Bullets Podcast

Ohio State won the marquee battle of Week 1 of the 2025 college football season after a hard-fought defensive struggle with the Texas Longhorns. Julian Sayin’s first college start was more successful than the first road start of his more hyped opposite number, Arch Manning. Sayin likely could have done more than he was asked to do, but the Buckeyes didn’t need it, thanks to the defense helping a conservative offensive game plan and the Alabama transfer’s poise and accuracy when called upon. It wasn’t a perfect performance, but most importantly, Sayin didn’t put the ball in harm’s way...

It’s game week! The Ohio State Buckeyes will renew acquaintances with the Texas Longhorns Saturday at Ohio Stadium at noon. It’s a brand new OSU football season and there is a lot going on, a lot we don’t know (yet), and a lot of the kinds of ups and downs that are part of every year of college football. We can’t wait to get it started, but we know that it will come and go before we know it.

This week’s show opens with a discussion of Ryan Day naming Julian Sayin starting quarterbac...

We have survived the long, monthly off-season podcast schedule we’ve set for ourselves and now we have to (get to) return to our weekly schedule starting with this show. And we’ve got a lot of ground to cover!

Our opening topic is the conclusion of the NCAA investigation into Michigan’s sign-stealing scandal, which ended with Jim Harbaugh becoming the all-time cheatingest coach in college football history, a big fine for Michigan, and absolutely no bowl ban for the school’s Failure to Monitor charge, no vacated wins, and no real teeth to prevent any school from doi...

A trio of young players went west to Las Vegas to join Ryan Day at the 2025 Big Ten Media Days. Jeremiah Smith, Caleb Downs, and Sonny Styles were on hand to take in the sights and sounds as the media and key B1G personnel gathered for their annual preseason event. Automatic bids and expanded playoffs are hot topics, but all the Buckeyes really want to discuss is turning the page on the 2024 national championship and letting the 2025 squad carve out its own niche.

Preseason practice starts Thursday and the public will have some access early in camp...

As we quickly approach 60 days until the 2025 Ohio State football season, the news continues to flow, because the offseason news never sleeps. We’re back to discuss the headlines since our last podcast, starting off with recruiting news with Cincere Johnson committing to the Buckeyes. We don’t normally dive too deeply into recruiting on this podcast, but it was a noteworthy addition, and how do you ignore a name like that?

We have had a couple of new kickoff times announced for this fall since our last show, and neither of them will start at noon, which shou...

We’ve got fewer than 100 days until brand new Buckeye football becomes available, but there’s plenty to talk about as the offseason drags on. For starters, we open this episode with discussion of Ohio State trying to move the opener against Texas to prime time on Sunday, Aug. 31. The Longhorns said no, and we support that decision, as we are college football purists (and old guys who are set in our ways) who think college football should be played on Saturdays — except for MACtion.

Aside from the date of the Texas game, we address the subject of noon k...

Spring ball is in the books and now we’re in that long, dark teatime of the offseason when news is something you’d rather just not hear.

For this episode, we looked at Ohio State dominating the 2025 NFL Draft. We looked at where the 14 selected former Buckeyes were picked (tying a school record) and wonder why there wasn’t a 15th player — a consensus All-American and winner of a major individual award, no less — taken to give the school a share of the all-time draft record. We also walked through the draft spots of a couple of ex-Buckeye...

The offseason has been fairly quiet for the Ohio State Buckeyes over the last month, but the team has started spring practice, and storylines are sure to surface over the coming weeks.
 
In the meantime, we reconvened to discuss important topics, such as Ohio State players switching jersey numbers. Several Buckeyes will be sporting new numbers on their shirts this fall, and we now know which number some of the incoming freshman and transfer portal players will wear.

We looked at the Sunday league as well, to find out which former Buckeyes might (or might not) c...

We’re back for our February check-in after a few weeks to bask in the glow of Ohio State’s national championship season. But the news rarely sleeps when it comes to Buckeye football, so we’re back to get caught up on what’s going on.

We start with our discussion of a new position in the government for former OSU coach Jim Tressel. “The Senator” is just a Lt. Governor (for now, at least), and it’s good to see the old ball coach finding productive things to do with his time.

After Tressel talk, we dive...

The college football season is over and the Buckeyes are the reigning champions after a thrilling 34-23 win over the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. It started and ended as a close battle, with a lot of OSU dominance in the middle. We look back at all the critical talking points, key plays, and notable statistics from the ninth championship in Ohio State history. 

We looked back at the players we picked to click and checked in on our score predictions, as we put a bow on a season that Buckeye fans will remember for a long time.

The Buckeyes have advanced to the ultimate game — the College Football Playoff championship game — after battling to a 28-14 win over a game Texas Longhorns squad that pushed them to the closing moments of the game. While Ohio State made things a lote more difficult than they needed to be through a parade of penalties and an early third-quarter turnover, Texas deserves a lot of credit for making it a four-quarter struggle. Ultimately, Jack Sawyer ascended to the pantheon of all-time Buckeye legends with a play for the ages to seal the win.

We look back at the Cott...

Ohio State was able to ring in the new year the right way, obliterating the Oregon Ducks in the Rose Bowl to earn a place in the College Football Playoff semifinals. The Buckeyes opened the game white hot on both sides of the ball, carving up the Duck defense in just a few plays and harassing Dillon Gabriel when Oregon’s offense tried to get things going. It was a few plays from being a perfect game from Will Howard, Jeremiah Smith, TreVeyon Henderson, Jack Sawyer, Caleb Downs, Cody Simon, and company.

We looked back at the quarterfinal ma...

It’s our final show of the 2024 calendar year, and it’s a doozy. We started it off by discussing the latest Ohio State transfer portal news, with the most recent incoming and outgoing names and what those transfers mean for the Buckeyes. After the portal talk, it’s time to walk through the other Big Ten results from the bowl games that have taken place since our episode last week.

Rutgers kind of blew it, but Nebraska and USC took care of business in the lead-up to the College Football Playoff quarterfinal games in the middle of this w...

Ohio State more than took care of business against the Tennessee Volunteers Saturday night in the first round of the College Football Playoff. Despite reports that the stadium was going to be half-filled with Tennessee fans, Buckeye fans showed out and were loud, spurring on an offense and a defense that clicked almost the entire 60 minutes. 

We opened this week’s show with a letter from a listener, and then discussed the Ohio State transfer portal news from the previous week. Had we recorded Monday night instead of Sunday afternoon, there would have been a lot more arrivals to...

It’s College Football Playoff game week, everyone, and we’ve got plenty to talk about. That includes some of the angst over the thought of Tennessee fans buying up some of Ohio State’s student ticket allotment. Is this a big deal? How many could it possibly be? I guess we’ll find out on Saturday, but we’re not worried.

We touched on a stupid bill that would make planting an opposing team’s flag in Ohio Stadium’s turf a felony. Why is this necessary? Who is asking for this (aside from a legislator trying to score point...

We start this week’s show with news and notes from Ohio State, including a brief look at the Buckeyes’ 2025 recruiting class. Although we don’t fancy ourselves as “recruiting guys,” there are still some conclusions we can draw from looking at Ryan Day’s latest class.

We also touched on a few Ohio State players who chose to enter the transfer portal and some guys who were honored for having standout seasons in the Big Ten in 2024. The transfer portal decisions weren’t terribly surprising, and we didn’t even get to touch on Devin Brown, who made his announc...

This is not the podcast we wanted to have, but it’s the podcast we’ve got. We look back at a calamitous day filled with bewildering coaching decisions in Ohio State’s latest loss to That Team Up North, look back at our score predictions and our picks to click, and try to make sense of such senselessness.

After our Michigan rewind, we look back at the other scores around the Big Ten to see how everyone else made out. It turns out Purdue did poorly again and now Ryan Walters is out as head coach. That’s hardly...

Ohio State started slowly again, but the Buckeyes took care of the previously undefeated Indiana Hoosiers in a game we thought would be closer but could have been even more lopsided than the 38-15 score indicates. We broke down the game’s key moments, looked at the statistical data, checked in on our score predictions, and learned that all of our picks to click actually clicked. It was a comprehensive victory by the Buckeyes and it’s entirely possible that despite its accomplishments this year, Indiana might not be for real.

Following our game recap, we looked around the...

[Note: My apologies for the audio, as Chip sounded great and I did not. Unbeknownst to me, everything was running through my external laptop microphone, so I come off a bit echoey.]

Ohio State didn’t come out of the gates convincing against the Northwestern Wildcats at Wrigley Field, but the Buckeyes eventually settled in and took care of business in the final road game of the regular season. The Buckeyes ultimately won comfortably but it took a couple of quarters and a huge Northwestern mistake to get things moving in the right direction. 

We...

Ohio State took care of business Saturday as the Buckeyes returned home and beat the Purdue Boilermakers 45-0 in the Horseshoe. Some old heroes (TreVeyon Henderson) and new heroes (Eddrick Houston) shone brightly, lots of backups played, some experimentation took place on the defensive side of the ball, and Carnell Tate continued his meteoric development in a decisive home victory.

We checked to see how our picks to click fared, looked at our score predictions, and discussed all of the game’s key plays, talking points, and players. It was good to see an Ohio State team not st...

A big game deserves a big podcast, so this week’s show is a little more supersized than usual. We apologize for nothing, because hey, no extra charge for you. (Not that we charge.)

Ohio State went on the road for its second Top 5 matchup away from home this season and this one went better than the last one. The Buckeyes made nearly the same amount of mistakes at Penn State as they did at Oregon, but this time they came away with a win by a touchdown instead of a one-point loss. Many (including us) thought this mi...

We got the Ohio State offensive line answers we were looking for, but that doesn’t mean they are the ones we wanted. The Buckeyes looked terrible up front without Josh Simmons and struggled offensively in a 21-17 home win over the Nebraska Cornhuskers. A few big plays wallpapered over a poor day running the football and Chip Kelly’s worst playcalling of the season. The Huskers played hard and it was almost enough, as the Buckeyes did not play like the angry team Ryan Day promised would take the field on Saturday.

We break down the game, disc...

With the Ohio State Buckeyes on their second bye week of the 2024 season, it provided a great opportunity for us to focus on some of the other teams around the Big Ten. With that in mind, we opened this week’s show with a trip around the other B1G results to see how everyone was doing. 

It was a bad weekend to be an Iowa Hawkeyes or a Michigan Wolverine — is there ever a good week to be a Michigan Wolverine though? — and the wheels seem to have come off for Rutgers. On the flip side, Michigan State n...

Ohio State went toe to toe with a good football team in Eugene, Oregon on Saturday night, but that team made a lot fewer mistakes than the Buckeyes and that culminated in a 32-31 win for the Ducks over the Buckeyes. While the loss doesn’t prevent Ohio State from still being able to achieve its goals for the season, it was a disappointment seeing the Buckeyes become their own worst enemies. The loss in Oregon could serve as an important opportunity to learn and grow for the team if the Buckeyes can handle their business in the right way.

Ohio State remained undefeated by passing its biggest test of the season (so far) on Saturday, beating Iowa 35-7. The Buckeyes showed they could run and throw against a competent defense designed to limit big plays and force teams to be patient, slow, methodical, and mistake-free. The OSU offense was every bit of that on the first drive and not so much of it the rest of the first half. However, once the team regrouped at halftime, the Buckeyes did well to mix the run and the pass, weaponizing Jeremiah Smith and Emeka Egbuka once Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson...

A win on the road in the Big Ten is rarely easy and Ohio State’s trip to East Lansing was not without its struggles, but the defense stiffened, the offense kept scoring, and Jeremiah Smith kept doing Jeremiah Smith things in the Buckeyes 38-7 victory over the Spartans of Michigan State. We break down the good, the bad, and the ugly from the road win, digest the Buckeyes’ statistics, check in to see if our Buckeye picks to click did just that, and looked back to see who came closest to predicting the final score.

After our Spar...

Ohio State improved to 3-0 on the season but it wasn’t the most crisp performance. It seemed as if the Buckeyes went ultra-vanilla on defense against Marshall and simply relied on the offense to make plays. It worked, because the Buckeyes won by five touchdowns. Despite the offense looking like improved, the concerns have moved to the defensive side of the ball, although whether it’s a case of not showing all Ohio State’s cards yet or an actual weakness of the team remains to be seen.

We break down the victory over the Thundering Herd, look b...

With Ohio State having a week off, there was no game for us to recap. So, we dove straight into the rest of the results around the Big Ten. It was a pretty good week for the conference unless you’re a Bruin or a Husky, and let’s face it, those guys are barely B1G. In fact, if UCLA is going to play like it did Saturday against Indiana, Bruins fans may end up wishing they’d stayed in the Pac-10. Oregon finally looked like Oregon, Michigan bounced back in less-than-impressive fashion, and Maryland got a key road win ou...

Sure, we’re a little late in dropping this week’s episode due to some vacation travel, but we haven’t forgotten to give you a brand new episode of the Silver Bullets Podcast. Ohio State improved to 2-0 on the young 2024 season by virtue of a 56-0 smackdown of the Western Michigan Broncos. Against Western Michigan, the Buckeyes looked like the team we expected to see in the opener against Akron, but they say the biggest improvement during the college football season comes between Games 1 and 2. 

The Buckeyes played with energy from the jump and were relentless through...

Week 1 is in the books and Ohio State eventually posted the blowout win over the Akron Zips that most people predicted. It just took a while to get there. The offensive line, in particular, struggled at times, especially in the first quarter. We do our best not to overreact to Saturday’s occasionally problematic dispatching of the Zips and break down Ohio State’s victory. 

There were success stories (kick and punt returns, Jeremiah Smith, Will Howard, the defense not only getting takeaways but also turning them into points, etc.), and plenty of issues that the coaching staff can w...

It’s finally game week and we couldn’t be more excited. Before we get you ready for Ohio State vs. Akron, we start this week’s show with the latest news out of camp, including the latest Buckeyes to get the black stripes removed from their helmets. We also discussed Nick McLarty winning the starting punting job in preseason camp.

The NCAA has delivered its official notice of allegations to Michigan and we discuss the slowness of that process, why we shouldn’t expect any punishment to happen this season, and the potential for the Wolverines to qualify f...

We’re finally back to our weekly football season schedule here at the Silver Bullets Podcast. It’s been a long offseason, but there’s plenty to talk about.

We start with Ohio State’s starter at quarterback. Ryan Day is not going to let the quarterback battle spill into the regular season in 2024, as he has named Will Howard his guy to lead the offense. We discuss the ramifications of that decision and how we expect that to inform the OSU attack for the upcoming year.

Howard wasn’t the only player making news since our last s...

Michael Citro and Chip Minnich discuss some of the noteworthy items from Big Ten Media Days, preview the biggest position battles that will take place during the upcoming start of preseason camp, talk about TC Caffrey's injury and what it means for Ohio State's running backs room, touch on Buckeye news in the NFL, and look forward to Archie Griffin dotting the 'i' in Script Ohio this fall. 

We will return to our weekly schedule in August, as camp opens and we get you ready for the 2024 Ohio State football season. We’d love to hear from you, so...

Michael Citro and Chip Minnich discuss recent news about Buckeyes in the NFL, whether Caleb Downs should be taking snaps at running back, Nigel Porter returning to Northwestern, the Ohio State football schedule changes since last month, Billy Fessler's new role with the offense, Tavien St. Clair's performance at Elite 11, and the OSU players Phil Steele has on his preseason All-American list.

Michael Citro and Chip Minnich discuss the ex-Buckeyes who entered the transfer portal after the spring, the incoming Ohio State freshmen arriving on campus this summer, the addition of Keenan Nelson to the OSU roster, Ohio State's game against Northwestern at Wrigley Field this fall, and the former Buckeyes who signed their NFL contracts after being drafted. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you won't miss any future episodes and feel free to reach out to us with questions and feedback at silverbulletspod@gmail.com. Thanks for listening!

Michael Citro and Chip Minnich look back at the Ohio State Spring Game to see if there is anything that can be gleaned from the annual glorified intra-squad scrimmage. Plus, the latest from the transfer portal regarding the Buckeyes and the addition of Carlos Locklyn to the coaching staff. Finally, a look at where the Ohio State players ended up in the NFL Draft or as undrafted free agents after its conclusion.

Michael Citro and Chip Minnich check in with news from Ohio State's spring practices, some position updates, new jersey numbers, the departure of Tony Alford to Michigan, a new record set by Jeremiah Smith after four practices, and even some non-football news.

Michael Citro and Chip Minnich discuss the final touches that Ryan Day put on his 2024 coaching staff, including replacing Bill O'Brien with Chip Kelly and the addition of pass rush specialist Brandon Jordan as a defensive assistant. They also discussed the topic of possibly expanding the College Football Playoff to 14 or 16 teams even though there hasn't even been a single season yet with a 12-team playoff. Finally, they weigh in on the likely matchup with Northwestern at Wrigley Field.

We’ve got a lot to discuss on this episode of the Silver Bullets Podcast at the end of an eventful January. We start with a discussion of the biggest Big Ten news of the month, as Jim Harbaugh has departed Ann Arbor and will no longer have to face the consequences of his actions. He’s even taking the assistant most likely to share in the penalties.

We break down the possible ramifications awaiting Michigan when the NCAA investigation is complete and discuss the possibility that Sherrone Moore could also face sanctions and may not be being set...

Michael Citro and Chip Minnich unpack Ohio State's dismal performance against the Missouri Tigers in the Cotton Bowl, check their score and player predictions, discuss the portal and NFL decisions through the New Year's weekend, and go through the OSU coaching staff to determine which staffers are doing a good job and where Ohio State can make improvements.