Payton Pierce

The Ohio State linebacker story this offseason is a subtraction problem: Sonny Styles and Arvell Reese both went in the top ten of the 2026 NFL Draft, and the beat has spent the spring asking who steadies the room behind them. The answer keeps coming back to Pierce. He didn't start much in 2025 — three starts across all 14 games, 43 tackles, 1.5 for loss, an interception, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery — but he played every game as the heir apparent, the same path Reese walked the year before. Eleven Warriors framed his ascension as a lifelong dream realized; 247Sports slotted him 16th on its top-20 Buckeyes list and called him a "throwback Mike." The detail that matters most: he's slated to wear the green dot, the in-helmet signal-caller, which means the defense's calls run through a junior making his first real run as a starter.

The counter-narrative is loud too. Land-Grant Holy Land ran a whole "biggest concerns" beat arguing the Ohio State defense takes a step back in 2026 under Matt Patricia, with linebacker the unit's softest question. Pierce profiles as the closest stylistic replacement for the stabilizing things Styles did — "albeit without the same elite frame or athleticism," as the room's own observers keep noting. That's the tension: the staff trusts him enough to hand him the green dot, but nobody outside the building is sure trust equals production yet.

What tips it toward optimism is the spring. Multiple writers said no defender had a better one, and Pierce credited Patricia with "putting guys in the right spot." He's a four-star, top-200 Lovejoy product who picked Ohio State over Notre Dame, Texas and Tennessee, and he's been pointed at this moment since he enrolled early. The forward stake is simple and it's the whole season: does Pierce's reliability hold up the green dot, or does the defense slide the way the doubters expect?