When a talented team is on a mission, it’s terrifying for the rest of the school football world.
There’s no greater organization of players gathered in the game this season than the Ohio State Buckeyes, who combined elite recruiting from top schools with player progression and adding elite move portals to create a championship team.
Ohio State ended an upset college football playoff streak on Monday night with a 34-23 victory over Notre Dame in the national championship game.
They won each and every game in double figures. Although the game ended closer than expected due to a crazy comeback by the Irish in the second half and not to be missed on TV, the Buckeyes made a great pass play against Jeremiah Smith late in the game after building a 24. -Advantage point from the beginning.
As it turns out, a shocking, end-of-the-year loss to Michigan may have been an embarrassment for Buckeyes fans, but it’s like the fire got lit. And it wasn’t a hot-seat flame for coach Ryan Day.
After that, the Buckeyes were determined to prove what a juggernaut they were, and, boy, did they ever.
The Buckeyes are back on top.
It will have to have been for Ryan Day to forget the moment when the whispers turned to angry shouts about his job.
After another loss to hated rival Michigan, the cries of “The big guy can’t win” were deafening. It was a national talking point, and even if the hot seat chatter was just white noise, the microscope must have made Day feel like an ant in the scorching heat of the sun.
Four double-digit wins and a national championship overdue, those grunts are over. With a 34-23 win over Notre Dame on Monday night in which his team took a big lead and gambled with a late deep pass to Jeremiah Smith. To seal the victory, Day is now the winner of the national championship.
He joins legendary Buckeyes coaches Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer with that honor.
“They’re my motivation,” Day told ESPN about his team after the game. “My circle of relatives at home, my wife and my children, and then those guys. That’s why I get up every morning, to make sure those guys succeed in their dreams and their goals. That’s all that counts.
“And then also it just shows an example, when things get hard in life, you just keep swinging. That’s our culture.”
When Day finished his answer, defensive end Jack Sawyer ran up to him, hugged him and shouted, “National champions, honey!”
To say it was unexpected would be ridiculous since the Buckeyes have so much talent and are loaded at every position. But Day finally found the right formula to mix it all together into a title run.
In a national championship game that Ohio State had thrown away, Notre Dame had a chance to keep some big momentum on its side midway through the third quarter.
Instead, coach Marcus Freeman’s baffling resolve ended the Fighting Irish’s hopes of victory when Mitch Jeter’s basket hit the post and the Irish abandoned that advance empty-handed.
After closing the gap to 31-15, the Irish finally got the takeaway they absolutely had to have, batting the ball free from Emeka Egbuka on the Irish 20-yard line after a long passing play following a much-needed Notre Dame touchdown.
Riley Leonard and Jaden Greathouse connected on a massive 30-yard pass on third down and a fourth-down conversion to bring the Irish to the scoring stage with 9:24 left. But when the fourth goal came, Freeman pulled Jeter out to score.
At that point of the game, why?
You were down on a property after a forced turnover and you had just interrupted it with a chance to score a touchdown. Remember, the Irish still have two touchdowns and two two-point conversions to tie the game.
Why did Freeman not roll the dice? What good was a field goal in that situation, anyway?
Jeter scored the goal attempt from the left post, and Notre Dame failed to get any issues on the drive, allowing the Buckeyes to take advantage of even more valuable time off the clock. It’s a confusing resolution, to say the least, even though the Irish weren’t done with their return yet.
When Ohio State went after former Kansas State quarterback Will Howard in the transfer portal, the question was whether he was dynamic enough to be a championship-caliber quarterback.
As the season progressed, he answered those questions. Throughout the College Football Playoffs, Howard took his game to the next level. In Monday’s national championship victory over Notre Dame, he took over.
Although the Buckeyes didn’t do anything explosive, Howard meticulously led his team to touchdowns on 3 first half drives. In doing so, it is almost perfect.
Will Howard completed thirteen consecutive passes, setting the record for most consecutive completions in a CFP National Championship game. ?Mac Jones held the previous record of 12 consecutive completions against Ohio State in the 2021 national championship. pic. twitter. com/QHcDpRbIfk
As Ohio State built a two-touchdown lead, Howard finished 14 of 15 passes in the first half for 144 yards and two scores. But then everything went quiet until a decisive play helped the Buckeyes breathe a sigh of relief.
Needing something positive with the Irish defense, Howard stepped back and handed a big ball to Jeremiah Smith for a 57-yard gain to take the game to the 2-minute yellow flag and allow the Buckeyes to take the win. Perhaps it is the most important play in the maximum time necessary.
The 6’4″, 235-pound Pennsylvania local is proving that he deserves a chance in the NFL, and would possibly be moving up the draft boards. Not only is he great, but he’s also athletic. While he did nothing to control the shooting zone down against the Irish, he managed to make many playoffs.
Howard’s playoff numbers are screaming. He is the obligatory teacher to make everything work. With so many elite playmakers around him, Howard just needed to be a distributor, which he did. But he was also the catalyst that far from being a game manager, he threw for 1,150 yards in 4 games with 8 touchdowns and only two interceptions.
With the way Quinshon Judkins shredded the SEC in his first two collegiate seasons at Ole Miss, most expected that he’d shine brighter on a bigger stage at Ohio State, even alongside returning running back TreVeyon Henderson.
The season was not statistically like that for the junior who left Oxford for Columbus and a big NIL contract.
In Monday night’s national championship win over Notre Dame, Judkins showed he gets his money’s worth and finally eclipsed 1,000 rushing yards in his 16th game of the year. He was the Buckeyes’ most productive offensive weapon in the victory, rushing 11 times for one hundred yards and two scores and catching two passes for 21 yards and the occasional touchdown.
Quinshon Judkins ripped off the longest run in the history of the College Football Playoff national championship game, a 70-yard gash of Notre Dame’s defense. https://t.co/fThjnYK9Qb
Judkins scored 3 touchdowns to lead Ohio State, and he did it in many ways. First, he drove in from nine yards on a heavyweight run that broke a shot to cap a 10-play, 76-yard drive to give Ohio State its first lead in the second quarter.
Will Howard then found a wide-open Judkins in the goal zone from 6 yards out as he broke free of a finisher to end the lead later in the quarter and put the exclamation point on a 12-play, 80-yard drive. Training
Then, as the Irish needed a block to start the second half, he made a nice cut on a fast break run and ran 70 yards to set up his own 1-yard touchdown run to start the game on the second generation and ended all the possibilities of the Irish. we will have to return.
Judkins is a can’t-miss NFL running back who showcased his skill set for a title.
No matter when their offense faltered at times during the season, Notre Dame was able to rely on a defense that carried them all the way to the national championship game.
But a visibly unleashed Ohio State team, the Fighting Irish and coordinator Al Golden had no answer.
Like Texas last week, the Irish won some deep plays, but Buckeyes offensive coordinator Chip Kelly made a brilliant combination as he split Notre Dame and took the lead. Al Golden had no answers as a defensive coordinator, and that’s saying something.
Bottom line: Notre Dame couldn’t leave the field, allowing conversions on all six of the Buckeyes’ third downs in the first half and nine of 12 in the game and racking up 445 total yards.
“We just have to get off the field on third down,” a visibly frustrated Marcus Freeman told ESPN’s Holly Rowe as he walked into the locker room at halftime. “We have to be able to overcome it. We were looking to play like a small man. ” , and they convert, and then we play in a small area, and they are going to convert. “We have to fix some things. “
In other words, no matter what they tried, nothing worked. Tennessee, Oregon and Texas, the Buckeyes’ other three warring sides in the postseason, can sympathize.
They made a terrific Irish defense look pedestrian. This was a unit that entered the game allowing just 14.3 points per game, second nationally behind the Buckeyes. They were ninth in total defense and fifth in third-down defense, allowing a conversion rate of just 29.8 percent.
Ohio State took the numbers and threw them into the paper shredder, dominating every time they had the ball and decisively winning a game that started so brilliantly with the Irish’ early lead.
Everyone dismissed them and rightly so.
But Notre Dame hasn’t won thirteen outright after a shocking season-opening loss to Northern Illinois by turning around and betting to death in the face of adversity. They didn’t do it Monday night in the national championship game either.
Instead, senior quarterback Riley Leonard and his most level-headed playmaker, Jaden Greathouse, tried to lift the Fighting Irish and lead them to a fantastic victory.
As it turned out, a 24-point second-half hole just too big to build, yet that tandem gave the country anything exciting to watch in what looked like a smart snore fest to the old one.
In his only year as Notre Dame’s starting quarterback, Leonard has been an underrated catalyst after transferring from Duke. Forced out of his comfort zone and pressed into being a pocket passer, the fifth-year senior from Alabama responded.
He finished the game with 278 all-purpose yards and his biggest weapon was Greathouse. He found it five times for 111 yards and two touchdowns to help Notre Dame overcome what seemed like a ridiculous deficit.
The Buckeyes simply had no answer. Every time Leonard needed a big play, he went to Greathouse and the big receiver responded. There simply weren’t enough arrows in the quiver in the end, as the Buckeyes did enough to win.
Apparently butterflies are not allowed in Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Despite being the biggest game of the year for Ohio State and Notre Dame, Monday’s national championship was shy on the jitters. Both teams came out playing their game and stormed out of the gates with big-time drives.
The Buckeyes kicked off to Notre Dame and then could have read a novel and taken a nap before getting the ball back. Quarterback Riley Leonard meticulously drove the Irish down the field on an epic 18-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that chewed up more than 9 minutes.
He swept a yard to score, completing the series with 31 passing yards, 34 rushing yards and landing to lead a start where Notre Dame made two conversions on third down and of the two they didn’t achieve, they scored on fourth down. below.
It was the longest opening scoring drive of a BCS or College Football Playoff title game.
However, Ohio State was undeterred and responded immediately. Even with Notre Dame disguising the covers and enforcing its general man-to-man policy on just two plays, Will Howard temporarily took down the Buckeyes to tie the score.
He finished all of his passes for 46 yards, setting up superstar freshman Jeremiah Smith intact for the tying score from 8 yards out early in the second quarter for the tying game.
It’s precisely the kind of heavyweight start we all wanted to see.