AUSTIN, Texas — Ohio State needed to make one play. Just one.There was the fumble off a Texas punt returner’s head it didn’t recover. Texas fumbled on the ensuing drive, too, and again, Ohio State didn’t come up with it.There was the missed 45-yard field goal by Connor Hawkins that would have made it a two-possession game with 4:16 left. There was the time Julian Sayin had Devin McCuin wide open for a touchdown in the third quarter but missed him. There was the punt on fourth-and-4 from the Texas 39-yard-line.Play after play. Decision after decision. It all compounded to cost No. 1 Ohio State in its 24-23 loss to No. 4 Texas on Saturday night after it led 23-3 entering the fourth quarter.Texas completes comeback over Ohio StateChris VanniniIf Ohio State made one more play in the second half, it would’ve flown back to Columbus elated, the bona fide No. 1 team in the country with a Heisman Trophy contender in Jeremiah Smith fresh off a statement game.Instead, Ohio State went home with real issues to address, from red zone offense to its inability to get pressure on defense. Now, it must face those questions head-on.“Things like this are going to happen. You have to know how to react to it,” safety Jaylen McClain said. “I feel like it’s getting on the field and grading it really hard, seeing what went wrong and facing it.”Ohio State doesn’t have much experience losing under Ryan Day, period; he’s 83-13 as a head coach. And though they lost consecutive postseason games last year, the Buckeyes have typically responded to losses well, including the national championship run after being upset by Michigan in 2024.But with a challenging schedule that still includes Iowa, Indiana, USC, Oregon and Michigan, there’s a now a sense of urgency around the Buckeyes, who don’t want to be sweating when the College Football Playoff bracket is announced in December.Day has been in this position before, walking into a news conference dejected after a close, heartbreaking loss. Almost every Ohio State loss is jarring. Still, few have been comparable to this, given that Ohio State led by 20 points with 15 minutes to play.Texas scored 41 seconds into the fourth quarter, and Ohio State, which had tallied 320 total yards to that point, went blank on offense. It went three-and-out for the second consecutive drive, punting the ball back to Texas after possessing it for 90 seconds.The defense got no break. The offense lost all control.Ohio State had no answer as to why its offense, which had made five straight red zone trips in the first half, couldn’t get into a rhythm in the final quarter to score one time.“I don’t think anyone is going to come out of the locker room and feel like we did what we needed to do on offense, in the fourth quarter,” Day said. “We had opportunities in the third quarter and in the second half. We didn’t get that done.“We weren’t efficient enough and didn’t get ourselves into a rhythm in the second half like we should’ve, and that’s on all of us. We have to get it addressed and fixed.”A missed field goal with 4:16 left opened the door for Texas’ winning touchdown drive. (Adam Cairns / USA Today Network via Imagn Images)The hard part for many Ohio State fans to swallow is that there might not be an answer to that question, because there’s not just one thing that broke down.Ohio State’s issues, particularly on offense, were there even in the first half when everything was bouncing its way. When Ohio State had to settle for a field goal after getting to first-and-goal on the 4-yard-line. When it decided to go for it on fourth-and-2 up 10 points from the Texas 13-yard line and got stopped. And when Ohio State, with complete control of the game, couldn’t find its identity to put the game away.Day hired Arthur Smith as his offensive coordinator to improve the red zone issues that plagued his team in the postseason last season. But the Buckeyes scored touchdowns on just two of their five trips inside the 20.“I don’t know if it’s just one thing,” Day said. “It was kind of just a mix of things that we just didn’t get done.”So when the offense wasn’t working, Day leaned on his defense and coordinator Matt Patricia, who is being paid $3.75 million to duplicate the success he had a year ago with the top defense in the country.It’s why Day decided not to burn a timeout and let Texas score as it worked its way to the 1-yard line with a minute left.“We talked about it and decided we were going to play the defense on second down,” Day said. “When we got the stop right there we said we are going to take our chances, put the ball down for 1 yard and see if we stop them for two downs and win the game.”The issue with that decision is that Kayden McDonald, Tyleik Williams and Ty Hamilton aren’t the defensive tackles anymore. And the depth Ohio State has preached all offseason about having didn’t show up in the Texas heat.This isn’t the same Ohio State team that won the championship in 2024, and it’s not the group that looked like one of the best teams in the country in the 2025 regular season. With 58 new players, it’s a group that still has things to sort out.In the 12-team Playoff era, that can be OK. The 2024 team showed as much. Ohio State’s 2014 national title team even won the four-team Playoff after a September setback to Virginia Tech. Ohio State still has an entire Big Ten slate to play, with several opportunities for marquee wins.But if Ohio State wants to win championships, it has to find the character that the 2014 and 2024 teams had when adversity hit.Asked how Ohio State bounces back from one of the biggest losses in his tenure, Day took a second, took a deep breath and said, “I mean, it’s right after the game, so it’s hard to say, but we’re going to take ownership of this and recognize that it’s on all three phases. I can’t sit here and tell you just one area.”Ohio State has showed that one loss doesn’t have to define a season. But to rebound, the Buckeyes are going to have to have as difficult a Sunday film session and team meeting as they’ve ever had.