Insider points to massive questions around Ryan Day's Ohio State and Dan Lanning's Oregon

The Ohio State Buckeyes are the current national champions in college football and will want to have another successful season in 2025.

However college football insider Josh Pate has argued on the latest edition of his podcast that the Buckeyes may not be the best team in the sport coming into the season.

"I have no idea who the clear number one is this year ... think about Oregon and Ohio State and Texas and Georgia. They all replaced quarterbacks." (1:50)

According to Pate, there is no definite answer to which team is looking like the best coming into the season. Ohio State is in consideration, but so are the Oregon Ducks, Georgia Bulldogs and Texas Longhorns.

Last season, all four of these teams were among the strongest in college football. However, coming into the 2025 season, there is a great unknown surrounding the true strength of these programs.

This all stems from the fact that there will be a different quarterback leading these teams in 2025. A simple change in this position can lead to a massive improvement/regression in form.

However, to add to the jeopardy and uncertainty, we only really know how good these quarterbacks are going to be after we have seen them play in a game situation.

Let's have a look at the potential impact of these quarterback changes.

The impact of quarterback changes on Ohio State and others

In 2024, the Ohio State Buckeyes were led by senior QB Will Howard. He thrived in this position and was a massive step up from Kyle McCord.

This season, while the quarterback is currently not known, it is likely that Julian Sayin will become the starter.

Sayin was a freshman transfer from Alabama last year and only played snaps in blowout games. To go from that to being the starting quarterback of the defending national champions is a massive step up, one which could see a regression in the performance of the Buckeyes.

As for the Oregon Ducks, Dillon Gabriel led this team to a undefeated conference championship last season and was a contender for the Heisman Trophy.

He is likely to be replaced by Dante Moore, the former UCLA Bruin. His time as the Bruins starter has given him some experience. Once Oregon's track history in developing quarterbacks is taken into account, one should expect a small regression, but not a complete collapse.

As for the other two teams that Pate mentioned, Texas and Georgia are in better positions. The Bulldogs are going with Gunnar Stockton, someone who has played in big games for the Bulldogs, and should be a mild improvement on Carson Beck. However, it is Texas who is in the best place, quarterback-wise, as this year will be the first season of Arch Manning as QB1.