Levi Davis finished the game at quarterback at Kent State. Davis was out there because Matt Vezza, who had already broken off a 35-yard touchdown run, left the game injured and did not return with Nick Poulos still out. Ohio won 13-10 anyway, on the road, in its MAC opener. The true freshman finished 4-of-5 for 34 yards and ran five times for 42.
That is the week in one sentence. Ohio is 3-2 overall and 1-0 in the MAC, exactly where a contender wants to be after five games, and it got there with its second and third quarterbacks of the season taking the snaps. Poulos went down back in Week 2 against Jacksonville State after a second-quarter hit that drew a targeting penalty, and no source has supplied a diagnosis or a timetable for him at any point this season. Vezza took over and started against Kent State, and now he is hurt too. Both of the quarterbacks Ohio counted on in August have been knocked out of games this fall.
Everything else held up. The defense turned in its best afternoon of the season. It allowed 266 total yards, two interceptions of Dru DeShields by Michael Molnar and Kendall Bannister, a punt blocked by Caleb Chamberlain, and a 49-yard field goal blocked by Jack Fries. Duncan Brune, who had missed the Stonehill game with a hand injury, came back to lead the Bobcats with 18 carries for 86 yards as Ohio ran for 181 yards on 40 attempts, which is how a team wins with its third quarterback taking the late snaps. Three weeks ago that unit was the worry. Now it is the reason to believe.
Central Michigan at Peden Stadium, 3:30 p.m. Saturday, ESPN+
The streak comes back into play. Ohio entered the season with a program-record 13-game home winning streak, and stretched it to 15 with the four-overtime win over Jacksonville State and the 35-7 Stonehill blowout.
They are also an awkward opponent for a team with a freshman quarterback. CMU ran on 66.5 percent of its plays in 2025, fifth-highest in FBS, while averaging 32:03 of possession. That is a plan to keep Davis on the sideline and shorten the game to the point where one Ohio mistake decides it. Ohio's front seven keeping CMU off schedule on first down, the thing it did to Kent State, matters more than anything the offense draws up.
The history cuts both ways. Central Michigan leads the all-time series 27-7-2 dating to 1972, so the long view belongs to them. The recent view belongs to Ohio, which won 34-20 at Peden in 2023 behind Kurtis Rourke and 27-25 in Mount Pleasant in 2024, when Parker Navarro accounted for 323 yards and Marion Lukes' three second-half touchdown runs fell short. Both of those Ohio quarterbacks are gone. This is a two-game Ohio streak defended by a completely different roster.
Ohio is favored at 68 percent, which feels about right for a home team with a better defense and a worse quarterback situation. A win pushes the Bobcats' MAC title-game chances to roughly 26 percent; a loss drops them to about 5.8 percent. That is the whole season's leverage in one afternoon of a game most of the country will not watch.
Kent State at Western Michigan: root for Kent State
The model gives Kent State a 6% chance to win.
Western Michigan is a 94 percent home favorite, so do not build the weekend around it. But it is the single biggest outside swing on the board. Kent State winning in Kalamazoo is about a 6 percent shot, and it would move Ohio's title-game odds by +9.7 percentage points, because it costs a Western Michigan team sitting ahead of Ohio in the standings a conference loss. With a Kent State upset, Ohio's title-game number sits near 29 percent; with Western Michigan winning, it sits near 19 percent. Same 3:30 p.m. Saturday kickoff on ESPN+, so flip to it at halftime.
Full week on the interactive guide, and the numbers are explained in the methodology.