Ohio State freshman Jay Timmons is about to do something only 2 players have done under Ryan Day

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Jay Timmons might be on the verge of joining a very exclusive list of Ohio State football players.Since Ryan Day took over the program in 2019, only twice has a true freshman won a job as a Day 1 starter, and both represent the two extremes of how that can happen.The first was in 2021, when Denzel Burke took the field as a starting cornerback in OSU’s 45-31 win over Minnesota. That one caught everybody by surprise.Burke had arrived as a wide receiver-turned-cornerback who’d missed his senior season of high school and was a modest-level recruit at best. He walked into a room that already had Sevyn Banks as a returning starter and Cam Brown, back from an Achilles injury and ready for a bigger role. This was supposed to be a learning year for Burke. Then he snatched a starting job said as much about the steps Banks and Brown didn’t take as about his readiness to be thrown into the action. It’s why no one was even alerted to Burke being a starter until it was already happening. The other was in 2024, when Jeremiah Smith walked into the Buckeyes’ wide receiver room just as Marvin Harrison Jr. was walking out of it. He was the five-star among five-star recruits who spent nine months making it abundantly clear he had no intention of waiting his turn, as many of the guys before him had done. So by the time we reached the season-opener against Akron, no one was wondering if he’d start, but rather how quickly he would validate the hype.Which way does Timmons lean on this scale? Perhaps he’s a healthy mixture of both.Ohio State has set its returners for the season opener -- and one is a potential budding star: Buckeye BreakfastJulian Sayin, Jeremiah Smith headline the 2026 Heisman Trade Markets ahead of CFB Week 1Ranking our confidence level in Ohio State’s 10 position groups heading into 2026: Buckeye TalkWho are the announcers for Ohio State vs. Ball State this Saturday?Like Smith, he’s a five-star recruit walking into a room where there was at least a starting job to be won if he dared take it. Like Burke, no one came into the spring looking at him as the most likely person to do so. Then he started flashing.“(I noticed it as) soon as he came in,” Florida State transfer Earl Little said. “We do a lot of competitive stuff in the weight room as well as on the field. Just seeing his whole mindset and the tenacity he brings is crazy. I’ve never seen that from a freshman.”“He has a pro-style mindset already at a young age. Just the aggressiveness he plays with and his passion for the game.” That sets him apart from a lot of people.“His willingness to come up and tackle and thump you. He’s also a great cover corner as well. He has all the tangibles to play. For a freshman, your mindset has to be there, especially at a prestigious school like Ohio State. The mindset has to be at the top every single day.”In a span of nine months, Timmons has forced Ohio State to rethink what its starting secondary could look like. If someone had told you to predict how things would have played out back in January, here’s what you would’ve said: Devin Sanchez and Jermaine Mathews at cornerback with three safeties on the field in Jaylen McClain, Earl Little Jr. and Terry Moore.You would’ve thought the same thing after the spring, though you would’ve at least been open to the idea of players moving around. But you still probably wouldn’t have landed on the option that has Timmons starting at nickel. But he kept flashing.“Jay Timmons has been making a lot of plays,” McClain said. “He’s been getting smarter, and he’s been understanding the responsibility he has.”By the time summer workouts ended, you would’ve been intrigued by the idea that Timmons could have a role similar to the one Sanchez had in 2025. Perhaps he’d be part of a package, playing a small but significant role in which he could thrive. It was the type of role that would have given him all the experience he needed to make you excited about what Year 2 could hold.Then, fall camp started, and there he was again, flashing.“He’s just relentless,” Mathews said. “He makes a lot of plays. He don’t back down from nothing.”There is another important part of how we got here. Flashing in practice gets the attention of the decision-makers, but it isn’t the full piece of the puzzle. You have to build trust.Trust that you know what you’re doing on the field. Trust that you can handle everything being thrown at you, even though everyone knows you’re going through this for the first time. And most importantly, trust that while freshman mistakes are expected, they won’t be repeated offenses. But something you learn from that can eventually lead to a big payoff later in a season where the schedule doesn’t allow for a much leeway.“We always say veterans are remembering and young guys are learning. And the faster they learn the better,” head coach Ryan Day said. “If they make a mistake, OK. If they make the same mistake again, there’s a problem. There’s gonna be mistakes made early on when they go out there. As long as they’re making them at full speed and they don’t continue to repeat those, then that’s a good thing.Apparently Jay Timmons told Devin Sanchez back when he was a recruit that he was coming to Ohio State to win a starting job as a freshman: pic.twitter.com/nLToEWAYjr— Stephen Means (@Stephen_Means) September 2, 2026 “We’ve all seen that when you have young players out there, you have to work through some of those things hand the guys that deserve to have that opportunity, through what they’ve done in terms of earning trust with their teammates and with their coaches and earn the opportunity to do that, are gonna do that. We’ll watch their performance on the field and see if they have earned the reps. There will be some guys that certainly I see that happening with them.”In January, the idea of “Jay Timmons, the starting Ohio State cornerback,” wasn’t on anybody’s mind. That’s what makes him similar to Burke.Nine months later, that idea has become so normalized that it’s probably not being discussed enough how big a deal this would be if it came to fruition. That’s what makes him like Smith. Now the only thing left is for everyone to find out why this happened and how we got here. Ohio State has a true freshman who’s 48 hours from locking down a Day-1 starting spot for the third time since Day took over the program. Either that says something about just how good that freshman is, or perhaps some veterans aren’t quite what people thought they’d be.“Obviously not a lot of freshmen around the country have the type of opportunity that he has,” McClain said. “He’s not taking it lightly at all. He’s growing every day, getting 1% better. He’s one of the better playmakers we have on this team.”