Nick Saban points out flaw in Ohio State's 9-0 start to 2025 college football season

ESPN personality Nick Saban does the Guns Up gesture | Nathan Giese/Avalanche-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Since strutting to the 2024-25 College Football Playoff championship in dominant fashion, Ohio State hasn't relented. Ryan Day's Buckeyes rolled off nine consecutive victories to start this season. Further more, they haven't trailed for a single second in the second half of any of those wins. OSU is kickin' butt, and Nick Saban certainly agrees.

He lauded the Buckeyes for their impressive win streak to open the year during his Friday afternoon appearance on the Pat McAfee Show. He even considers them "a cut above" most of the country.

"Well, they've been dominant," he said of the Buckeyes. "But I mean, they're only giving up like seven points a game defensively, and they score a whole bunch of points, they got good receivers, a quarterback that's played well."

He does add: "They don't run the ball great, if they have a flaw." However, that's not Nick Saban's bigger-picture issue with this Ohio State team. And it's certainly a first world problem he's pointing out with the Buckeyes, but he does want to see this group scrap and claw for a win in a tight, competitive football game.

Nick Saban says Ohio State must be tested

Ohio State Buckeyes wide receiver Jeremiah Smith (4) celebrates a touchdown with running back CJ Donaldson Jr. (12) | Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

"At the same time, I always wanted our teams to be tested," Saban remarked. "I always wanted to play against good teams, because I wanted to see what the competitive spirit of our team really was, what the mental toughness was, how we could overcome adversity."

Those are questions that simply cannot be answered in four-possession blowouts of Big Ten basement dwellers.

"Because when you dominate everybody, then you get in a tight game, people start getting frustrated because they're not dominating," Saban explained. "That's not — you just gotta win, you know. You can't get frustrated just because you're not dominating the game. But I do think Ohio State has a good team."

Ohio State actually faced their most competitive test of the year, to date, in the first week of the season, when Texas came into Columbus and played Ohio State down to the wire in a one-possession 14-7 win. While Arch Manning found some fourth quarter success, OSU still controlled that ballgame throughout.

Since, the Buckeyes haven't had to blink in a fourth quarter. They won by 70 against Grambling and by 28 against Ohio, then by 18 against Washington, tied with the Illinois victory for the second-closest game of their season. Other margins of victory include 39, 34, and then 24-point victories over both Purdue and Penn State the last two weekends.

That Big Ten championship game is coming, and everyone is expecting a reasonably close contest in Indianapolis at Lucas Oil Stadium. But now that Indiana has fended off Iowa, Oregon and Penn State all in close, competitive contests, perhaps they'll be more prepared for a bare-knuckle brawl in the conference title matchup.