Former Ohio State edge rusher Jack Sawyer is talking about Michigan football again, and he cannot fathom how or why the Buckeyes lost in 2022.
As the national (although becoming more Ohio-based) narrative that the only reason why the Wolverines have beaten OSU the past four years is because of ‘cheating’ with the Connor Stalions advanced scouting allegations, Sawyer and self-proclaimed Buckeye Nation keep putting out their side of the story, thinking it proves the point. However, as you’ll soon see, it does nothing of the sort.
“I’ll tell you this: I think they beat us straight up last year, obviously, and the year before,” Sawyer said on a podcast. “But my sophomore year, we left the field like, ‘This feels weird.’ We lost by double digits and I felt like we beat the (expletive deleted) all game. We ran a screen pass that we had never put in. Not the formation, not the look. Anything. And then like, you see him (Stalions) on the sideline, they’re doing it. And we changed it, we audible to it, whatever. We run it. All the D-linemen, as soon as the ball is snapped, the linebackers, everybody, they sniffed it out.
“We ran a tight end screen from the 25-yard line going in, and they snuff it out.”
This came to light on Monday, but last fall, Stalions appeared on the Bussin’ with the Boys podcast and explained how he knew the exact play that OSU was running without even knowing the play itself. Because football is still football, and if your sign is easy to decipher — as this was — then it will be deciphered.
“Here’s the bottom line of how can you be so good in-game,” Stalions said. “Slot YY. So I think they motion into slot YY. Their signal for the slot YY formation, and then the guy who was live the entire season signaled (visibly) Y-delay. Am I supposed to see that and be like, ‘Oh, I don’t know what this is!’ I think this has got to be a Y-delay screen.”
Stalions had more to say about this exact clip, refuting Sawyer’s version of events on X (formerly Twitter).
1. Jack is saying Ohio St never ran a Slot YY formation all year (pull up any of their games on YouTube and you’ll see them run that look).
2. Their signal for this play was:
– The letter “Y” (TE in 99% of offenses)
– The Delay of Game sign
So “Y Delay.” 🤔 Wonder what this… https://t.co/7H37tisOkZ— Connor Stalions (@cpstalions) July 29, 2025
Priceless.
Of course, note that Sawyer plays on defense, so he doesn’t exactly have a solid grasp of the offensive playbook for his team week in, week out. While we cannot confirm or deny Stalions’ account, that OSU ran this play before, as a former analyst for Michigan football, he would know.
What’s more, if Ohio State had never run the play before, then how would Stalions have illegally stolen the signal as Sawyer insinuates? If his scheme was so pervasive, and his mom being in the crowd at a Purdue-Ohio State game with her phone was somehow responsible for a play and formation that Sawyer insists was never run before, how did Stalions actually decipher it, if not in-game?
Make it make sense. Logic is not strong with this one.
But it’s another season, and though Sawyer is no longer in Columbus, he will live the rest of his life having never beaten Michigan. Thus, this certainly comes across as some kind of coping mechanism, if not outright denial.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Connor Stalions refutes Ohio State’s Jack Sawyer on sign-stealing talk