College Football Playoff: Ohio State wins first national title in 10 years with 34-23 win over Notre Dame

ATLANTA – Ohio State had to sweat a little Monday night.

The Buckeyes became the first two-loss national champion in 18 years with a 34-23 victory over Notre Dame. Ohio State was much better than the Fighting Irish for the first 40 minutes of the game, but had to fend off a late Notre Dame surge to earn the victory.

Notre Dame scored 16 straight points after Ohio State took a 31-7 lead with 12:46 left in the third quarter. The Irish cut the lead to eight with 4:15 left when Riley Leonard hit Jaden Greathouse for a 30-yard touchdown before a two-point conversion. But Ohio State iced the game with 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 guards on first and second downs, Notre Dame relied on its secondary in man coverage, as it has for much of the season. The Irish put pressure on it, but the Ohio State offensive line gave Howard plenty of time as Smith easily got separation.

Running back Quinshon Judkins scored three touchdowns and Howard completed his first 13 passes as Ohio State quickly rebounded from a grueling Notre Dame touchdown run to open the scoring. The Irish drove 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 Ole Miss transfer then scored with less than a minute left in the half when Howard found him wide open in the end zone for a 6-yard TD pass.

Judkins’ TD catch — just his second of the season — was the second time Ohio State broke an opponent’s back with a pass to a running back just before halftime. In the Cotton Bowl semifinal game, TreVeyon Henderson completed a screen pass for a 75-yard touchdown and a 14-7 lead with 13 seconds left in the second quarter in the 28-14 victory of the Cotton Bowl. Buckeyes vs. Texas.

Ohio State got the ball back to open the third quarter and Judkins capitalized again. This time, his 1-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 leading 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 reached the mark. 100 yards in a game.

The useless return of Notre-Dame

The Irish entered the game as 8.5-point underdogs and relied heavily on Riley Leonard’s legs early on. Leonard has been Notre Dame’s defensive back all season, and he carried the ball nine times in the first drive of 18 games. 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 underperforming performance.

This optimism disappeared quite quickly before trying to revive in the second half. Notre Dame’s offense couldn’t get anything going 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 7-yard completion – was the only reason the Irish didn’t lose a yards after scoring that touchdown.

If it wasn’t clear at halftime that Notre Dame’s chances of coming back were in serious trouble, it was evident after Judkins’ third TD to give Ohio State a 28-7 lead. Notre Dame scored three points on its first possession of the third quarter and executed a clever fake punt with backup quarterback Steve Angeli on the field.

Angeli lined up in the backfield in front of the punter and took the snap. He fired a precise pass to Jordan Faison sliding past the early markers, but the ball slipped 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 play.

Facing a fourth-and-goal from the Ohio State 9-yard line, Freeman fielded kicker Mitch Jeter to cut the lead to 13. A TD and a 2-point conversion – Notre Dame had gone for two and the ‘had scored on his second TD. to make it a two-score game, it would have cut Ohio State’s lead to one possession.

Thirteen points is of course still a two-touchdown game. But Jeter, who made the game-winning field goal against Penn State in the Orange Bowl, hit the kickoff from the left upright.

“I just thought instead of being down 16, let’s try to go down 13,” Freeman said. “I know it’s still a two-point game, but you have a better chance of getting 14 points than 16 points. If it was a shorter 4th-and-goal situation, I probably would have gone with that , but I just felt 4th and nine wasn’t a great chance for us to get there and we decided to do it, and we didn’t make it.

The decision to kick the field goal became even more inexplicable when Greathouse scored on the next drive.

Ohio State lived up to playoff expectations

After a 2023 season that ended with another loss to Michigan to miss the final four-team College Football Playoff as the Wolverines won the national title, the 2024 season became national championship or bust for the ‘Ohio State.

Although 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 pledge to players in the transfer portal, the Buckeyes added Judkins and Alabama defensive back Caleb Downs and tapped Kansas State’s Howard to replace the 2023 starter Kyle McCord.

There was also a significant change of coach. After leading Ohio State’s offense since taking over from Urban Meyer, coach Ryan Day hired former Oregon and Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly from his position as head coach of UCLA to be the team’s offensive coordinator and play-caller.

“Him leaving being head coach to come work with me meant a lot,” Day said after the game, “because he’s obviously someone who is a mentor to me and he certainly would Not where I am without him.”

The regular season, however, was uneven. Ohio State went 10-2 and failed to once again advance to the Big Ten title game. The Buckeyes’ first loss came against undefeated Oregon when Howard slipped to the floor 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 took a 13-10 victory before (literally) planting their flag and instigating a brawl after -match.

There were difficult moments even in victories. Just as they did for a brief stretch in the second half, Ohio State’s offense had too many down moments for a group with this much talent.

That inconsistency and, more importantly, the loss to Michigan was enough to make fans question Day’s job security if Ohio State didn’t win the national title despite his coaching success of the team. Since taking over as head coach full-time in 2019, Ohio State was 66-10 under Day heading into this season’s playoffs. But four of those losses came at Michigan, and Ohio State had lost twice in each of the last four seasons.

However, a change occurred in the playoffs. Just like the Buckeyes did in the first year of the four-team playoff when they beat Alabama and Oregon en route to the national title, no one could hang with Ohio State in those playoffs . The Buckeyes blitzed Tennessee to open the playoffs, then took a 31-0 lead in the second quarter to exact revenge on Oregon in the Rose Bowl. OSU then held on to beat Texas 28-14 in the semifinals.

Thanks to that long opening drive, it took Ohio State until the second quarter to score its first touchdown of the game Monday night. But it was still clear that Ohio State was the better team on the field. When the red and white confetti fell from the Mercedes-Benz rafters, the college football season ended with Ohio State on top of the world.

“God made things difficult for a reason,” Day said. “This game can give you the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. It can bring you to your knees some days as a player and as a coach…but if you surround yourself with great people, you are resilient and You believe in the guys around you, and you continue to fight and put one foot in front of the other, you give yourself another chance.”

Jay Busbee contributed to this report from Atlanta.