Ryan Day’s Ohio State opened the 2026 season at No. 1 in the AP Poll with 40 first-place votes. A one-point road loss to Texas dropped them to No. 6 after Week 2, their first time outside the top five since late 2024. Usually, a win against a non-conference team doesn’t affect the rankings that much. But that wasn’t the case for the Buckeyes.

Ohio State now sits at No. 7 in the AP Top 25 after Week 3 games. The Buckeyes are 2-1 after defeating Kent State 59-3, yet they slid one more spot. They received 1,415 points and zero first-place votes. Three voters ranked them as high as No. 2. Three others ranked them as low as No. 8. After Week 2, the Buckeyes had received 1,407 points. Other teams gained more ground.

The drop was not about the Kent State score. Ole Miss jumped from No. 8 to No. 4 after beating then-No. 7 LSU 32-24. That one result pushed Indiana from No. 4 to No. 5, Miami from No. 5 to No. 6, and Ohio State from No. 6 to No. 7.

The order after Week 2 was Texas, Georgia, Notre Dame, Indiana, Miami, Ohio State, LSU, and then Ole Miss. Ole Miss’s win over a top-10 team was the only result that changed the group above Ohio State. This was also a result of the strength of the Buckeyes’ Week 3 opponent.

Kent State is a weak Mid-American team. Voters already expected a top-10 program to win that game easily. Ole Miss now has two ranked wins, over Louisville and LSU. That is the strongest record right now. Ohio State’s only loss is a one-point defeat on the road to the current No. 1 team. It is a quality loss, but it is still a loss.

Indiana beat Western Kentucky 38-0 and simply slid one spot. Miami beat Wake Forest 33-20 and did the same. Ohio State’s blowout over Kent State could not hold the line once Ole Miss leaped over four teams. Texas, Georgia, and Notre Dame all won comfortably and stayed ahead. 

The rest of the poll followed the same pattern. Texas is No. 1, Georgia No. 2, and Notre Dame No. 3. Texas A&M fell 14 spots to No. 23 after a 31-21 home loss to unranked Kentucky. Louisville jumped seven spots to No. 16 after beating then-No. 16 SMU 41-31. 

The one-spot slide this week looks smaller than last week’s drop, yet it still stands out. 

Ohio State’s ranking in recent years

For Ohio State, No. 7 is their lowest regular-season spot this early in a season in quite a while. They sat at No. 6 after the Texas loss. They reached No. 7 late in 2021 and finished No. 7 in the 2023 final poll. Their 2023 year-end rank of No. 10 was their lowest since 2013. In 2025, they spent most of the year at No. 1 and finished No. 5. In 2024, they finished No. 1 as national champions.

Ohio State was the first program to appear in 1,000 AP Top 25 polls. They have spent 122 weeks at No. 1, second only to Alabama, and have been ranked in at least one AP poll for 58 straight seasons. They have finished in the top 10 of the final poll every year since the College Football Playoff started, except in 2023.

Since Day took over in 2019, the Buckeyes have lived mostly in the top five or six. Drops outside the top five have been rare. This season, they have scored 138 points and allowed 30. The two wins were 56-3 over Ball State and 59-3 over Kent State. The combined margin against those two teams was 115-6. They gave up their only points in the loss to Texas.

Next up is Illinois on September 26 at Ohio Stadium. Illinois is 2-1 and unranked after beating UAB and Southern Illinois and losing to Duke. Ohio State has won the last nine official meetings and 10 straight home games. Illinois last beat them in Columbus in 2007.

A win over Illinois is expected. It will not push Ohio State back into the top five. Movement will depend more on what happens to the teams now ranked No. 4 through No. 6. Moreover, Texas’s game against Tennessee can also affect the top 7.

If the No. 14 Vols manage to beat the Longhorns at Knoxville, it may jump Josh Heupel’s team in the top 10. However, since it’s a ranked matchup and Texas already has a great win on the record, the drop may not be substantial enough to affect Ohio State’s position. The question of H2H will only come into the picture when the committee sits to decide the final 12.

Bigger chances to climb come later for Ohio State at Iowa, at Indiana, at USC, against Oregon, and against Michigan. The Coaches Poll also has Ohio State at No. 7 with 1,473 points. The 59-3 score did not simply move the needle this week.