Ohio State Lost to Texas, But the Analytics Still Say They’re the Best Team in the Country — Here’s Why

A Heartbreaking Loss That Somehow Didn’t Change the Numbers

Ohio State suffered one of the most gut-wrenching losses of the Ryan Day era on Saturday night, blowing a 23-3 fourth-quarter lead and falling 24-23 to Texas in Austin. Yet in the day since that collapse, something strange has happened: the analytics community hasn’t abandoned the Buckeyes. Far from it. Ohio State remains the national title favorite at most sportsbooks and continues to grade out as one of the top one or two teams in the country according to the sport’s most trusted computer models. For fans trying to make sense of how a team can lose a signature primetime game and still be viewed as the best team in America, here’s exactly why the numbers still love Ohio State — and why that’s not as crazy as it sounds.

Ohio State Still Leads the Nation in National Championship Odds

Start with the betting markets, which tend to reflect the clearest real-money consensus on a team’s chances. According to DraftKings’ College Football Futures, Ohio State leads all of college football with +510 odds to win the 2026 national championship. Notre Dame and Texas — which now sits at No. 1 in both the AP and Coaches polls following its win — share the second-best odds at +650, with Georgia (+680) and Miami (+800) rounding out the top five. In other words, sportsbooks still view Ohio State as the single most likely team to hoist the trophy in January, even after Saturday’s collapse.

ESPN’s FPI Actually Moved Ohio State Back to No. 1 After the Loss

Here’s where things get genuinely surprising. On Sunday, ESPN updated its Football Power Index and actually moved Ohio State up a spot, past Texas, to reclaim the No. 1 ranking in the metric — the day after losing to the Longhorns. Ohio State’s FPI rating of 30.4 now sits just ahead of Texas’ 30.1, with both teams clearly separated from the rest of the pack, which includes Notre Dame (27.9), Georgia (26.6), and Miami (25.7).

The explanation lies in what FPI is actually designed to measure. According to ESPN, FPI is built to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward, representing how many points above or below average a team is based on net scoring margin against a hypothetical average opponent on a neutral field. It’s explicitly not a resume-based ranking like the AP Poll, the Coaches Poll, or even the College Football Playoff committee’s rankings — it doesn’t care who you beat or lost to, only how dominant your overall performance level has been.

That distinction explains the seemingly bizarre outcome. Ohio State was thoroughly dominant for three-plus quarters against Texas, building a 23-3 lead before an historic fourth-quarter collapse in which the Buckeyes were outscored 21-3 overall, and 21-0 in the final period alone. FPI essentially looks at that game and sees a team that played like the better squad for the vast majority of 60 minutes, even though the scoreboard says otherwise at the final whistle. Texas was only a 1.5-point favorite entering the game and won by exactly one point — a game FPI’s model views as close to a toss-up that could have gone either way, rather than a decisive statement of superiority.

What FPI’s Projections Say About Ohio State’s Path Forward

The numbers extend beyond just Saturday’s game. ESPN’s FPI now gives Ohio State a 25.9% chance to win out the rest of its regular season, compared to just 15.9% for Texas, and a 49.1% chance to win the Big Ten, compared to Texas’ 34.2% chance to win the SEC. FPI also projects Ohio State to finish the season with a record between 10-2 and 12-0, suggesting the model believes the Buckeyes can either win out entirely or lose no more than one additional game the rest of the way.

Texas does still hold some analytical advantages of its own. According to the same FPI model, the Longhorns actually have better odds of making the College Football Playoff outright (87.7% to 74.5%), reaching the CFP final (32.7% to 27.5%), and even winning the national championship (19.4% to 16.7%) compared to Ohio State. That nuance matters — Ohio State isn’t necessarily viewed as the more likely eventual champion by every single metric, but it is viewed as the more talented, more efficient team on a per-play basis right now.

SP+ Tells a Slightly Different, But Still Favorable, Story for Ohio State

Bill Connelly’s SP+ model, another widely respected advanced metric, offers a slightly different picture. Ohio State has actually dropped to No. 2 in SP+ following the loss, a step down from its earlier perch at the top of that particular model. Even so, sitting at No. 2 nationally in a highly respected, predictive analytics system just one day after an emotionally devastating loss is a strong signal that the underlying performance metrics still view Ohio State as an elite team — arguably still the second-best in the country, even in a metric that isn’t as forgiving as FPI was.

Why Ohio State’s Margin for Error Has Tightened Anyway

None of this means Ohio State escaped Saturday’s loss unscathed in the way that actually matters most for playoff positioning. The loss knocked Ohio State out of the top spot in both the AP Top 25 and Coaches Poll, handing that distinction to Texas instead. And while the advanced metrics remain bullish on Ohio State’s talent level, the résumé-based human polls and the eventual College Football Playoff committee rankings will care about the loss itself, not just how the Buckeyes were statistically graded during the game. Ohio State’s margin for error going forward has clearly tightened, particularly with a difficult stretch still ahead that includes matchups against Indiana, Oregon, USC, Iowa, and Michigan.

The Bottom Line: Why the Analytics Still Believe in Ohio State

Ultimately, the gap between Ohio State’s ranking collapse in the human polls and its continued dominance in computer models comes down to one simple idea: analytics like FPI and SP+ are trying to answer “which team is actually playing the best right now,” while polls and playoff rankings are trying to answer “which team has earned it based on results.” Saturday’s game gave two very different answers to those two very different questions. Ohio State was, by nearly every underlying statistical measure, the better football team for the overwhelming majority of the game it just failed to finish the job in the fourth quarter, and in college football, finishing is ultimately what puts a trophy in the case.

For Ryan Day and the Buckeyes, that distinction offers a strange kind of reassurance heading into the rest of the season. The talent, the efficiency, and the underlying performance are all still there validated by nearly every computer model in the sport. What Ohio State has to prove now isn’t whether it’s good enough to win a national championship. The analytics already believe it is. What it has to prove is that it can close out games against elite competition when it matters most.