Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day and Ohio State Buckeyes players celebrate after winning the College Football Playoff National Championship, 34-23, over Notre Dame. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Scott Stuart)
Ohio State buries the season’s bad moments and completes its playoff turnaround with a 34-23 victory over Notre Dame to win the first 12-team playoff.
Atlanta, GA – When Ohio State receiver Emeka Egbuka ran over Notre Dame’s Christian Gray for a first down, it felt like the first rumbling of distant thunder.
Like a victory story was unfolding that Ryan Day finally felt free to tell.
Like a we’re-the-tougher-team statement.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State football and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Like maybe this would be another night of playoff football and finally a season to leave no doubt.
The score was 7-7 when Egbuka lowered his shoulder, but THE story was beginning to take shape. Those rumbles turned into booms, lightning strikes and an unstoppable storm of Buckeyes. Notre Dame fought valiantly in the fourth quarter, but it didn’t have enough horsemen to stop Ryan Day’s resilient footballers from sweeping the Irish over the precipice inside Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
Ohio State – an experienced team that believed in this goal for 12 months despite the stormiest of November afternoons – had all the horses needed to win the College Football Playoff national championship. In Buckeye lore, the cavalry of names talked about will be Howard, Judkins, Henderson, Egbuka, Smith, Sawyer, Tuimoloau, Simon, Downs.
Those noted men of Scarlet and Gray, and their partners in Monday prime time, will be remembered and revered for decades for leading their team – a team once thought knocked too far down to rise up and be a champion – to a 34-23 victory over the Fighting, sometimes Flailing, Irish.
Jeremiah Smith answers Notre Dame’s opening score with this touchdown reception from Will Howard.
The Buckeyes (14-2) are national champions for the ninth time, the third time this century and for the first time since January of 2015. They are the first team to overcome two losses to win the playoffs. And this playoff run – the first one with 12 teams – has a different story than the others, one Day has been waiting until the right time to fully tell.
“The story gets to get told now, and it’s a great story about a bunch of guys who have overcome some really tough situations,” he said. “A lot of people counted us out. We just kept swinging and kept fighting. It’s the reason why you get into coaching is to see guys overcome things, learn life lessons and then reach their dreams.”
Those dreams began a year ago when a dozen Buckeyes decided to stay and wait a year on their NFL dreams. Many had additional reasons, but the message was clear when cornerback Denzel Burke said, “Natty or bust.” No one argued. They got to work, welcomed key transfers in quarterback Will Howard, center Seth McLaughlin, running back Quinshon Judkins and safety Caleb Downs.
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“We just had a goal in mind, and we were going to do whatever it took to get there,” Egbuka said. “And the path wasn’t easy – faced a lot of adversity on the way. But I love my brothers, and we’re bonded for life.”
Adversity was a way of life for the Buckeyes, so it was fitting that Marcus Freeman’s hard-nosed football team would make the Buckeyes work for it one last time.
Quinshon Judkins breaks free for this long first half run, setting up a Buckeye score.
The Buckeyes built a 21-7 halftime lead and a 31-7 lead in the third quarter. The Irish (14-2) never rallied to the point of putting the game in absolute doubt. There wasn’t a play or call or moment had it gone the Irish’s way that the Buckeyes’ absolutely had to make a play.
But when it almost came to that, they did.
It happened after the Irish raised the Scarlet blood pressure with two fourth-quarter touchdowns, the last coming with 4:15 left to trim OSU’s lead to 31-23. Running out the clock on the ground against the Irish defense was a lot to ask. Eventually Day and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly were forced to decide to run a play to win.
The call was for freshman phenom receiver Jeremiah Smith to run a go route. Day said the play had two options. One was throw it deep to Smith if he was one-on-one. Smith’s route pushed Gray toward the hash marks. Then Smith drifted back toward the sideline and Howard let it go.
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Smith caught the pass for a 56-yard gain at the Notre Dame 10 with 2:29 left. Jayden Fielding kicked a 33-yard field goal, his second of the game, with 26 seconds left to remove all doubt.
“We felt like we had an advantage with Jeremiah on that shot, and we talked about it all week,” Day said. “We really hadn’t thrown one all game, and it was like, you know what, game on the line, let’s just go, let’s just lay it on the line and put it out there and be aggressive. And that’s what we did.”
Quarterback Will Howard runs for a first down in Monday’s CFP championship win over Notre Dame.
Notre Dame displayed its aggressiveness from the start. The Irish thundered methodically in 18 plays, converting twice on fourth down. It took them 9 minutes and 45 seconds to cover 75 yards and take a 7-0 lead on quarterback Riley Leonard’s one-yard run.
Leonard carried the ball nine times – eight times straight ahead – for 34 yards to set the Irish’s relentless, hit-em-in-the-mouth tone. But to ask a quarterback to do that for four quarters? That couldn’t happen. And Ohio State’s defense adjusted to hold the Irish to 18 yards the rest of the half on seven plays.
That allowed the Buckeyes’ offense to do some driving of their own: 11 plays, 75 yards, 6:05 to tie the score 7-7.
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The Buckeyes finished their first drive with some Chip Kelly sleight-of-hand play calling. The play began with a play-action fake to Judkins. What really confused the Irish was the movement of Smith, the receiver every defense makes it a point to shadow his every step.
Smith was split out to the right, started to run to the left on the snap for what looked like a handoff and a reverse. But when Smith changed direction back to where he started, the defender was caught up in the wash of the play and didn’t see Smith. But Howard did. A soft toss to his best receiver, and an eight-yard jog into the end zone tied the score on the second play of the second quarter.
The Buckeyes’ defense responded with two three-and-out possessions. And the offense kept thundering. Egbuka’s bully run was at the end of a 12-yard catch to the Irish 20. And it set the record for career receptions with No. 202. He caught six passes to finish with 205 and finished only 31 yards shy of Michael Jenkins’ career record for receiving yards.
The lead grew to 21-7 when Howard scrambled right and threw back over the middle to a wide-open Judkins in the middle of the end zone for a six-yard score with 2:14 left in the half.
The back breaker…Jeremiah Smith hauls in a 50-yard bomb from Will Howard in the fourth quarter to set up the clinching field goal.
The Buckeyes made good on their goal of winning the middle eight minutes with another touchdown drive to start the second half. Judkins burst up the middle for 70 yards to the five-yard line and eventually scored from the one. Fielding kicked a field goal for a 31-7 lead after the Irish failed to gain a first down on a fake punt.
The Buckeyes were in control. The Irish didn’t quit, but in the end the Buckeyes left no doubt that they had the team to beat all along even when it didn’t seem like it.
While Day and the Buckeyes let their story unfold on the field a week at a time, everyone who watched – fans diehard and casual, media near and far – thought they knew how the story would end as the calendar turned to December. And it was nothing like the script that unfolded and reached Monday night’s climax.
Not even close.
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Remember the feeling when Ohio State lost a fourth straight game to Michigan? How belief in Day’s team sunk like the pit of your stomach on the first drop of a roller coaster. How another painful defeat in the playoffs would confirm what your gut was telling you: 1) This team just isn’t that good. 2) This coach probably isn’t the right guy. 3) We bought a lie.
As bad as the future appeared for the team and Day, he said the team wasn’t broken.
“We had an awful day – I don’t know how else to describe it,” he said. “We just said we could never do that again. It’s the job of the head coach to take the responsibility when something goes bad like that, but then on days like this make sure that everyone understands it’s the warriors and guys on the field that deserve all the credit, not the coach.”
The reckoning, instead, was reserved for Ohio State’s opponents.
Tennessee waltzed into Ohio Stadium for a first-round dance with more orange than a sunset. They limped home red-faced as a 42-17 loser. It was just the first embarrassment the SEC apologists would endure in the playoffs.
Oregon welcomed the Buckeyes to the West Coast for the quarterfinals. The No. 1 Ducks didn’t mean to be a doormat, but they were as helpless as Daffy trying to outsmart Bugs. The Buckeyes sprinted to a 34-0 lead and 41-21 victory.
Texas rolled out a Lone Star welcome for the semifinals. But Jack Sawyer’s dagger will be felt deep in the heart of Texans as long as the coyotes wail. Another SEC foe humbled: 28-14.
Ohio State Buckeyes place kicker Jayden Fielding (38) lines up the field goal that sealed the 2024 CFP championship with 25 seconds left in the game.
The four-game run is unprecedented in college football and gave the Buckeyes the distinction of beating six of the top eight teams this season in the final playoff rankings.
“Going to the Tennessee game we had a lot of doubters, maybe rightfully so, but we persevered and trusted in God’s plan,” senior defensive end Jack Sawyer said, “and we were able to come out as national champs.”
A few thousand seats reserved for Notre Dame fans were draped with green hand towels emblazoned with “Shake Down the Thunder.” But that lyric in the Notre Dame fight song meant to inspire the Irish to conquer, served only as a towel to dry the tears of their fans.
Instead, the thunder Ohio State brought shook Notre Dame more than it could overcome. And it’s a thunder of emotions the Buckeyes will never get over.
“I look at the faces of the seniors, and with every person I look at I just think of a story,” Egbuka said. “Over our four years here we really had nothing to show for our efforts and all the time and energy that we spent. Now we get to hang a banner in a state that we’re very proud of, a trophy that no one can ever take away from us. And in 30 years we’re going to look back and be able to still celebrate this moment.”
And laugh and cry and pray and tell the stories that brought them together.
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