Coming into this season, the Ohio State football program had two major questions with the special teams. They weren't sure who the starting kicker was going to be coming into the season. They also needed to find a new punter after Jesse Mirco transferred to Vanderbilt.
The Ohio State Buckeyes settled on Jayden Fielding as the kicker. He has been a complete disaster as the choice. He is just 9/12 on field goals and missed two critical ones against Michigan. Both of the ones he missed were under 40 yards. Earlier in the year, he kicked the ball out of bounds on three consecutive kickoffs as well.
It's arguable that the punting has been even worse than the place-kicking this season for the Buckeyes. Joe McGuire was chosen as the starting punter after a brief fling with Nick McLarty. McGuire had three punts against Michigan that averaged just 36 yards.
Kicking killed the Ohio State football team against Michigan
For a program with the amount of resources that Ohio State does, their performance in both kicking and punting has been remarkably bad for the last few years. The last time they had a good punter was Drue Chrisman back in 2021. Kicking has been an issue since 2020 when Blake Haubeil was on the roster.
Ohio State continues to fail at the little things in big games. It's why Ryan Day hasn't been able to beat TTUN since 2019. Special teams issues are plaguing this program. It's absurd that they can't land a punter who can kick it at least 45 yards on every punt and a kicker who can make kicks inside 50 yards.
Day fired special teams coordinator Parker Fleming in the offseason. While the punt return unit has been excellent this year, everything else with the special teams has been a disaster. It's just another failure from him that added up to the ultimate failure on Saturday afternoon.