Ohio State had to sweat a little bit on Monday night.
The Buckeyes became the first two-loss national champion in 18 years with a 34-23 win over Notre Dame. Ohio State was far better than the Fighting Irish for the first 40 minutes of the game, but needed to stave off a late push from Notre Dame to get the victory.
Notre Dame scored 16 straight points after Ohio State took a 31-7 lead with 12:46 to go in the third quarter. The Irish trimmed the lead to eight with 4:15 to go when Riley Leonard hit Jaden Greathouse for a 30-yard TD before a two-point conversion. But Ohio State iced the game on a third down before the two-minute warning when Will Howard hit freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith for a long completion.
After stopping Ohio State on Howard QB keepers on first and second downs, Notre Dame trusted its secondary in man coverage like it has done for much of the season. The Irish brought pressure, but Ohio State’s offensive line gave Howard plenty of time as Smith was easily able to get separation.
Running back Quinshon Judkins scored three touchdowns and Howard completed his first 13 passes as Ohio State quickly rebounded from a grueling touchdown drive by Notre Dame to open the scoring. The Irish went 75 yards in 18 plays to take a 7-0 lead. And it was all Ohio State from there until midway through the third quarter.
A TD pass to a wide-open Jeremiah Smith tied the game before Judkins scored on Ohio State’s next three drives.
The transfer from Ole Miss then scored with less than a minute to go before halftime when Howard found him wide open in the end zone for a six-yard TD pass.
Judkins’ TD catch — just his second of the season — was the second time Ohio State had broken the back of an opponent with a pass to a running back just before halftime. In the Cotton Bowl semifinal game, TreVeyon Henderson took a screen pass for a 75-yard TD and a 14-7 lead with 13 seconds to go in the second quarter in the Buckeyes’ 28-14 win over Texas.
Ohio State got the ball to open the third quarter and Judkins capitalized again. This time, his one-yard run was just the fifth play of a 75-yard drive thanks to a 70-yard run on the second offensive play of the third quarter.
Judkins finished the game with 100 yards in one of his best games as a Buckeye. Judkins and Henderson have shared lead rushing responsibilities for much of the season and Monday night’s title game was the first time since Judkins ran for 173 yards against Marshall in Week 3 that he had hit the 100-yard mark in a game.
Notre Dame’s futile comeback
The Irish entered the game as 8.5-point underdogs and leaned heavily on Riley Leonard’s legs early. Leonard has been Notre Dame’s clutch rusher all season and he carried the ball nine times on the 18-play opening drive. His ninth carry was a TD run that gave Notre Dame fans hope that their team could hang with an Ohio State team that had shown during the regular season that it was capable of an underachieving performance.
That optimism disappeared pretty quickly before it tried to reignite in the second half. Notre Dame’s offense couldn’t do anything for the rest of the first half. Notre Dame gained a total of three yards over its next three possessions and that third possession — a one-play drive that consisted of a seven-yard completion — was the only reason the Irish didn’t lose yardage after scoring that TD.
If it wasn’t clear at halftime that Notre Dame’s chances of coming back were in deep trouble, it was glaringly obvious after Judkins’ third TD to give Ohio State a 28-7 lead. Notre Dame went three-and-out on its first possession of the third quarter and ran an ingenious fake punt with backup QB Steve Angeli on the field.
Angeli lined up in the backfield in front of the punter and took the snap. He fired an accurate pass to a sliding Jordan Faison past the first down markers but the ball went through Faison’s hands and fell incomplete.
The Irish cut the lead to 16 and had some life after Ohio State WR Emeka Egbuka fumbled in Notre Dame territory. But a curious decision by Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman backfired and left the Irish still down 16 with 9:27 to go.
Facing a fourth-and-goal at the Ohio State 9-yard line, Freeman sent kicker Mitch Jeter out to cut the lead to 13. A TD and two-point conversion — Notre Dame had gone for two and gotten it on its second TD to make it a two-score game — would have trimmed Ohio State’s lead to one possession.
Thirteen points is, of course, still a two-TD game. But Jeter, who made the game-winning field goal against Penn State in the Orange Bowl, doinked the kick off the left upright.
The decision to kick the field goal was made even more inexplicable when Greathouse scored.
Ohio State lived up to expectations in the postseason
After a 2023 season that ended with yet another loss to Michigan to miss the final four-team College Football Playoff as the Wolverines went on to win the national title, the 2024 season became national championship or bust for Ohio State.
Though Marvin Harrison Jr. left for the NFL, draft-eligible players like Henderson, DE Jack Sawyer, DB Denzel Burke and others returned for another year in Columbus. And with a vast pool of NIL money to promise players in the transfer portal, the Buckeyes added Judkins and Alabama defensive back Caleb Downs and brought in Howard from Kansas State to replace 2023 starter Kyle McCord.
There was also a significant coaching change. After masterminding the Ohio State offense since taking over from Urban Meyer, coach Ryan Day hired former Oregon and Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly from his job as UCLA’s head coach to be the team’s offensive coordinator and play caller.
The regular season was uneven, however. Ohio State went 10-2 and failed to make the Big Ten title game once again. The Buckeyes’ first loss came at undefeated Oregon when Howard slid to the ground as time expired before Ohio State could attempt a game-winning field goal. And there was a fourth straight loss to Michigan, as the offensively challenged Wolverines came into Columbus and got a 13-10 win before (literally) planting their flag and causing a postgame brawl.
There were rough patches even in the wins. Just like they did for a brief period in the second half, Ohio State’s offense had too many halting moments for a group with so much talent.
That inconsistency and, most importantly, the loss to Michigan was enough to make fans wonder about Day’s job security if Ohio State didn’t win the national title despite his success as the team’s coach. Since taking over as the full-time head coach in 2019, Ohio State had gone 66-10 under Day ahead of this season’s playoff. But four of those losses had come to Michigan and Ohio State had lost twice in each of the last four seasons.
A switch flipped in the postseason, however. Just like the Buckeyes did in the first year of the four-team playoff when they ran over Alabama and Oregon on the way to the national title, no one could hang with Ohio State in this postseason. The Buckeyes blitzed Tennessee to open the playoff and then jumped out to a 31-0 second-quarter lead to get revenge on Oregon in the Rose Bowl.
Thanks to that long opening drive, it took Ohio State until the second quarter to score their first TD of the game on Monday night. But it was still clear that Ohio State was the best team on the field.
