Buckeyes Head West to Take on Washington Saturday

FIRST AND TEN

• No. 1/1 Ohio State (3-0) and the also unbeaten Washington Huskies (3-0) meet in a 12:30 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (3:30 p.m. EDT) game Saturday at Husky Stadium in Seattle. The game will kick off the 113th Big Ten Conference season for Ohio State and the second for Washington.
• This is Ohio State’s first visit to Husky Stadium since the 2007 season. It is also Ohio State’s first road trip of the 2025 campaign and the first of three Big Ten road games in the next four games.
• The Buckeyes, who practiced three days last week but did not play this past Saturday, will conclude their work week this week Thursday afternoon and then fly to Seattle later that evening.
• Coach Ryan Day‘s Ohio State teams are 23-3 in true road games, 31-7 in road/neutral field games and 20-4 with more than one week to prepare for an opponent. 
• Ohio State is on a seven-game winning streak – tied for second-longest, nationally, to Memphis’ eight-game streak – while Washington has won 22 consecutive home games, the longest active home winning streak in college football.
• The teams will next meet in the regular season in three years, in 2028 in Columbus.

BY THE NUMBERS

27: Ohio State has played 27 true or red-shirt freshmen so far this season with SAF Faheem Delane, LB Riley Pettijohn, TE Nate Roberts and CB Devin Sanchez playing in all three games so far as true freshmen.

.901: Ryan Day‘s teams are 46-5 in Big Ten Conference games through his first six seasons as head coach, for a winning percentage of .901 and with an impressive 24-2 record (.923) in Big Ten road games.  

4: Jeremiah Smith needs 4 catches to tie Jaxon Smith-Njigba as the fastest Buckeye to 100 career receptions … 20 games. Smith broke Smith-Njigba’s record for fastest to 1,500 yards last week (19 games).

6-1: Ohio State is 6-1 in Pacific Time zone games since the 2007 win over Washington, incl. four Rose Bowl wins (OR in 2010, UW in 2019, UT in 2022 and OR in 2025), a ’13 win at Cal and a ’24 loss at Oregon.

THREE OF FOUR ON THE ROAD

• Ohio State will play three of its first four Big Ten Conference games on the road.
• Following the Washington game, the Buckeyes host Minnesota (2-1) and then travel in consecutive weeks to No. 23 Illinois (3-1) and to Wisconsin (2-2).
• This is the third time a Ryan Day-coached team will play three of its first four conference games on the road.
• The Buckeyes also did so in 2019 and 2021 and went 4-0 in those games each year.

THE OHIO STATE-WASHINGTON SERIES

• Ohio State and Washington are playing for the 13th time on the gridiron and the first time since the 2019 Rose Bowl, won by Ohio State, 28-23.
• Ohio State holds a 9-3 advantage in the series, including four consecutive victories.
• The teams have played a near-even split of games in Seattle (six) and Columbus (five) with the one Rose Bowl game in Pasadena. Ohio State is 4-2 in Seattle games and 4-1 in Columbus games.

LAST TIME AT HUSKY STADIUM

• The game, the first between the schools with both as members of the Big Ten, is the first between the two at Husky Stadium since the 2007 season when Ohio State prevailed 33-14.
• Current Buckeye assistants – OC/WR coach Brian Hartline and LB coach James Laurinaitis – each had big games back then vs. the Huskies.
• Hartline had six receptions for 88 yards and a 36-yard TD catch.
• Laurinaitis had two interceptions: one at the OSU 5 and the other at the OSU 23.
• Longtime Ohio State AD Andy Geiger was honorary captain for the Buckeyes.

DAY IN COACHING MATCH-UPS

• Coach Ryan Day and Washington coach Jedd Fisch will be on opposite sidelines for the first time.
• Day is 38-7 in first-time coaching matchups with national champion coaches Dabo Swinney, Nick Saban and Kirby Smart accounting for three of the defeats.
• Day’s wins in such matchups include over Jim Harbaugh, Marcus Freeman, Gary Patterson, Kyle Whittingham and the Big Ten’s all-time wins leader, Kirk Ferentz.

PAT CHUN: FROM SID TO UW AD

• Pat Chun started his college athletics career as an assistant SID in the Ohio State sports information office in the late 1990s.
• In 15 years he advanced at Ohio State to development officer to sport AD to executive associate AD overseeing football.
• Chun left Ohio State in 2012 and has been an AD ever since: six years at both Florida Atlantic (2012-18) and Washington State (2018-24) and now he is in his second year at Washington.
• Chun’s wife, Natalie, is an Ohio State grad and a former Buckeye softball player.

MORE OSU-UW TIES

• WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba was a first-round NFL draft pick of the Seahawks in 2022 and has since caught 185 passes for 2,081 yards and 11 touchdowns.
• WR Joey Galloway, an ESPN studio analyst, was a first-round draft pick of the Seahawks in 1995 and played five of his 16 seasons in the NFL with the organization.
• Sr. Assoc. AD for Sports Performance Doug Calland spent 12 years at the University of Washington working under football coaches Don James and Jim Lambright. His name is on a 1991 national championship plaque on Husky Stadium. 
• Assoc. VP for Brand Engagement Kevin Griffin grew up in Seattle, will visit his mother there this week and previously worked nine years with the Seahawks and another four years with the state of Washington’s high school association.  
• The powerful Ohio State men’s tennis program has twice played in the indoor national championships in Seattle, but its three national championships came in Houston (2014), Chicago (2019) and New York (2024).