Replacing Caleb Downs and Arvell Reese Won’t Be Easy

Every rebuilding defense loses production. Losing Caleb Downs and Arvell Reese is a different category of problem, and Ohio State fans have been saying so all offseason.

Ohio State’s own fan community flagged the pair specifically as this offseason’s biggest concern, ahead of any question about the offensive line or the schedule. The reasoning is simple enough. Reese’s combination of size and speed let Matt Patricia use him in ways that typically require two separate players, dropping into coverage on early downs and rushing the passer on the next snap without substitution. Downs did something similar on the back end, a safety instinctive and versatile enough to erase mistakes elsewhere on the field. Both were considered, in the words of one longtime Buckeye writer, “game changers” that are simply rare to find.

What Made Them Impossible to Simply Replace

The numbers back up why fans are worried. Reese finished 2025 with 6.5 sacks, 10 tackles for loss, five quarterback hurries, and two pass breakups, a stat line that belongs to a hybrid defender rather than a traditional linebacker. That versatility was the entire point. Opposing mobile quarterbacks had to account for Reese as both a spy and a rusher on the same play, a problem that doesn’t simply disappear because a new player is lined up in his spot.

Downs presented a similar challenge from the safety position, a player trusted with run support, deep coverage, and everything in between depending on what a given week’s opponent required. Patricia has built his career around finding those kinds of multipurpose defenders, going back to how he deployed versatile safeties during his years coordinating in New England. Losing two players who fit that specific mold in the same offseason goes well beyond a normal roster hole. It costs the defense two of the pieces the entire scheme was built to feature.

The draft results underline just how good both players actually were. Downs went 11th overall to the Dallas Cowboys, the first safety drafted that high since Minkah Fitzpatrick went 11th overall in 2018 and the highest-drafted Buckeye safety since Malik Hooker went 15th to Indianapolis in 2015. Reese went even higher, at No. 5 overall to the New York Giants, with Sonny Styles following two picks later at No. 7 to Washington. NFL evaluators, independent of anything Ohio State’s marketing or box scores could inflate, rated both among the very best players in college football at their respective spots regardless of scheme or system.

How Ohio State Is Trying to Mitigate It

Patricia doesn’t have a single replacement waiting in the wings for either player, and there is no use pretending otherwise. What the coaching staff has instead is a collection of options that, combined, might approximate what Reese and Downs provided individually. Transfer safety Terry Moore brings the kind of instinctive, converted-athlete profile that fits Patricia’s preference for versatility over a traditional recruiting template. Returning safety Jaylen McClain gets a larger role after two years of rotational snaps. On the second level, the coaching staff will lean on cross-training multiple linebackers to split up the responsibilities Reese used to handle alone, and returning depth pieces like Payton Pierce will be asked to grow into snaps they haven’t carried before.

None of that is a guarantee. It might take multiple players, and multiple games, before the defense finds a version of that same disruptive presence, and it might not fully arrive until Big Ten play forces the issue.

A Concern That Extends Beyond the Stat Sheet

Part of what makes this loss harder to quantify is leadership. Both Downs and Reese were vocal, visible presences in the defensive huddle, the kind of players who could make a pre-snap adjustment call with total confidence and get 11 other guys to trust it immediately. That kind of command isn’t something a depth chart projection captures, and it isn’t something a transfer walks in already possessing on day one, no matter how talented. Ohio State’s newcomers will need real reps, not just talent, before they can offer that same level of trust to the rest of the huddle.

A Concern Worth Taking Seriously

This isn’t a case of fans overreacting to normal roster turnover. Losing a top-11 safety and a top-5 linebacker in the same draft class is a real problem for any defense, regardless of who is coordinating it. What Ohio State has going for it is a coordinator who has already rebuilt a unit that looked similarly gutted just one year ago and still finished first in the country statistically. That track record doesn’t guarantee a repeat, but it is the best reason Buckeye fans have for cautious optimism heading into a season where the Downs and Reese question won’t get a real answer until the games start counting.