Ball State is asking Keldric Luster to give its offense a pulse right away, with the Texas Tech transfer quarterback set to carry that burden into the opener against Ohio State. The Cardinals are coming off a 4-8 season and one of the nation’s worst attacks, and they enter the game needing more than a clean start.
That is why Luster matters now. Ball State ranked 134th in total offense last season, and the team is expected to be only slightly improved under second-year coach Mike Uremovich. A quarterback change does not fix everything, but it can change the way a game looks, and Ball State is counting on Luster to do that.
There is at least some evidence that the Cardinals can stay competitive in stretches. They went 3-1 in games decided by eight points or fewer, even while losing four games by 31 points or more. That split tells the story of a team that could hang around when things broke its way, but could also get buried when the offense stalled.
Ohio State is a far harsher stage for that test. The Buckeyes were preparing for their season opener in Ohio Stadium, where they have not lost a season opener since 1999, when they fell 23-12 to Miami in the Kickoff Classic in New Jersey. The matchup is part of a larger nonconference schedule that includes nearly $4 million in guarantees for two games, with the Cardinals getting paid $1.9 million to take the kind of beating most teams try to avoid.
That imbalance is what makes Luster’s role so important and so difficult to judge. Ball State is not asking him to solve the whole season in one afternoon. It is asking him to show that the offense can be more functional than it was a year ago, when the Cardinals spent too many Saturdays stuck at the wrong end of the scoreboard.
The challenge is real because Ohio State is built to punish mistakes. Arthur Smith spent most of his career in the NFL, and the Buckeyes ranked 21st in scoring offense in 2025 while finishing last season No. 1 nationally in scoring defense by allowing 9.29 points a game. For Ball State, even a modest step forward from Luster would count as progress in a game where the margin for error is almost nonexistent.
That leaves the opener with a simple question for the Cardinals: can Luster make the offense look closer to playable against one of the toughest first-game settings in the country? If he can, Ball State may leave Ohio Stadium with something more valuable than a result — a reason to believe the season can be different.
