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Ohio State won the national championship last night, as you already know if you’re reading this post. Ohio State scored 34 points, and Notre Dame scored 23, and via a road which took a twist nobody thought could lead to glory, a team who’s been among the title favorites each of the last twelve seasons finally won their second national championship in that span.
Over the weeks leading up to last night, we described Ohio State’s quest as one most meaningful for Ryan Day. Watching the history materialize has done nothing to change that perception. No person or program’s identity changed more after last night’s game than that of Ohio State’s head coach, a man who’s now 70–10 lifetime in the role with two Big Ten championships and one national championship in six years. Elsewhere, a guy who won his first ring six years into head coaching would be a rising star. At Ohio State, it’s been a long time coming.
This is not a knock on Day, nor is it meant as some backhanded criticism of the Ohio State program. It’s an attempt to describe why we cover Ohio State differently than we would have covered Clemson in 2015. Ohio State’s worst preseason ranking over the last twelve years is 6th. Ohio State has built twelve teams in a row who could conceivably win a national championship. The last one who didn’t fit that bill only didn’t fit it because Ohio State was serving a postseason ban. That banned team went 12–0.
Columbus is a warehouse for talent, one where former five-star quarterback recruits can transfer to the ACC with nobody batting an eye. It’s the best-supported football program in the country, and while we’re used to this, it’s a little shocking given the existence of Texas. Ohio State is a juggernaut. They’re always a juggernaut. Last night, they finally won their first title since the four-team playoff’s first year.
There’s the breakthrough angle to this, and that’s legitimate. Ryan Day broke through. There’s the comeback angle to this, and that’s legitimate too. Just like their opponent, Ohio State came back from a low to end all lows. There’s an angle where the twelve-team playoff saved Ohio State from itself, making previously unforgivable losses forgivable. That angle is legitimate, but we and others covered it preemptively many a time. A lot of fans wanted a twelve-team playoff anyway.
The real angle here, or the big lesson, I should say, is that in college football and in every other sport, if you keep building one of the best teams in the game, you will eventually win a title. This Ohio State team wasn’t notably better than the nine that came before. I’d take 2015’s, 2018’s, 2019’s, and 2020’s all over 2024’s Ohio State Buckeyes. But this Ohio State team was excellent at a time when the other uber-talented programs weren’t. LSU’s in the wilderness. Nick Saban retired at Alabama. Georgia took a big step back, Texas didn’t put it all together, and Oregon isn’t talented enough yet to be asked to beat Ohio State on a neutral field. The front of the pack cleared out, and Ohio State cleaned up. They made the playoff, then beat four teams worse than themselves.
It’s easy to talk about championship windows, and it’s tempting to talk about championship cycles, the idea that teams in any sport should develop their rosters in a way that gives them one best shot. You hear about this with rookie quarterback contracts in the NFL, and with arbitration years in baseball, and with tanking in the NBA. In hockey, the NHL seems to actively punish teams for winning the Stanley Cup, given how hard it makes it to retain talent. In college football, we started hearing about this last year, after Michigan won in their one best shot.
In college football, though, it’s possible to make a championship window always stay open. It takes a ton of money, and you need a lot of consistency out of your head coach, but you can do it. Ohio State is not a dynasty yet. It might not become one. But it’s been built like a dynasty for over a decade, for the entirety of this most modern college football era. It kept coming back to the table. It kept rolling the dice. Eventually, it didn’t crap out.
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The game itself:
We talked a lot about Al Golden and Mike Denbrock—Notre Dame’s defensive and offensive coordinators—all playoff long. We talked a lot about Jim Knowles—Ohio State’s defensive coordinator—just yesterday. I don’t know that we mentioned Chip Kelly more than once or twice this season. If we did, I don’t think it was particularly complimentary. We certainly haven’t been complimentary of Will Howard, often slapping him with labels like “Ohio State’s only on-field vulnerability.”
Will Howard rocked last night.
Chip Kelly had Notre Dame all over the place, too.
All week last week, and then all weekend, and then all day yesterday, we asked whether Notre Dame would be able to stop the deep ball. In the end, they didn’t when it mattered. Ohio State got Jeremiah Smith on Christian Gray, not Leonard Moore, but Moore probably wouldn’t have been able to stop Smith either. Howard found Smith for a massive gain and a game-sealing first down.
For most of the game, though, the deep ball sat in the closet, gathering dust. Ohio State took a 31–7 lead not by throwing deep, but by using every single feature on its Swiss Army Knife of an offensive depth chart. You could see what a headache it was for Notre Dame’s defense in the pre-snap communication. You could see how sharp the weapons were when drive after drive ended with Quinshon Judkins in the endzone. Notre Dame had chances to stop the Buckeyes. They forced 3rd-and-5, 2nd-and-15, 3rd-and-5 again, 3rd-and-7, 2nd-and-11, 3rd-and-7 a second time, and 2nd-and-13 on Ohio State’s first four drives. All of those situations ended with a Buckeye first down. Some of this was Howard, whose most impressive throw of the day was the laser to Carnell Tate on the second 3rd-and-7, the one which ultimately gave the Buckeyes a 21–7 halftime lead. A lot of it was Chip Kelly. It’s hard to outwit Golden. Kelly had the personnel advantage, but to my untrained eye, it seemed like wits were involved as well.
On the other side of the ball, Notre Dame’s first drive was epic. Not in the surfer bro usage of the term, either. It was epic the way the Punic Wars were epic. Notre Dame ran Riley Leonard up the middle again and again and again. Again and again and again, the quarterback was able to keep his feet moving while beset with the weight of one of the toughest defensive lines in the country. It took too much exertion to be a replicable approach, but damn, was the effort inspiring, and damn, was the physical display impressive, and Notre Dame also shortened the game by ten minutes while staking themselves to a 7-point lead, which is something every underdog always wants to do.
I do wonder what would have happened if Notre Dame hadn’t committed those two penalties on their second drive and botched that snap with Mitchell Evans on the third. I suspect, though, that part of Notre Dame’s comeback was Knowles backing off too much, allowing too many chunks of yardage in exchange for stopping “the big play.” Ohio State’s vulnerabilities showed up, but part of that was Knowles opening the door to Notre Dame’s playmakers. If you give Evans or Jaden Greathouse the ball with space, they will make men miss. This is a good thing for Notre Dame next year, when at least Greathouse will be back and should have a quarterback who—though not capable of running through 300-pound men by means of faith and squats—can get Jaden Greathouse the ball with space. In the second half, it became clear that Davison Igbinosun was on the field. That was a bad thing for Ohio State.
Overall, it was Ohio State’s speed which won the game. Notre Dame held its own well enough in the trenches to have a chance. It was speed which killed them, with Howard making play after play to accelerate the burn. Ohio State won the game with the same asset they worked so hard to gain even before Michigan became a problem: Their footspeed.
It helps a lot to be big and strong and fast.
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One more thing from last night, something that’s bothering me:
A lot of people teed off on Marcus Freeman’s decision to kick the field goal with nine and a half minutes remaining in the fourth quarter. These people were wrong.
Notre Dame trailed by 16 facing 4th-and-goal from the 9-yard line. The Irish had all their timeouts remaining. They’d scored a touchdown two drives prior, and while their defense was starting to hold its own, it had needed an uncharacteristic Ohio State fumble (and accompanying great play by Drayk Bowen) to get off the field without allowing points. Every drive but that one, to that point, Ohio State had scored. Why, a lot of college football talkers asked, would you try to turn a two-score game into a two-score game??
The answer is that not every two-score game is created equal.
Even if Notre Dame had converted 4th-and-goal from the 9, they would have needed to:
- Convert the two-point conversion, roughly a 50/50 probability.
- Stop Ohio State again.
- Score another touchdown.
- Convert another two-point conversion, another 50/50 probability.
- Win in overtime, yet another 50/50 probability if you give Notre Dame the biggest benefit of the doubt.
Multiplying all those 50/50 probabilities together gives you a 1-in-8 chance that Notre Dame would have won even if they had converted 4th-and-9 and got the stop and got the ensuing score. Two-point conversions are difficult. Overtime is difficult. 50/50 probabilities add up. This isn’t a video game, where successful two-point conversions and overtime victories are both far likelier than 50/50. College football talkers act like it is. Football discourse has a massive blindspot in this area. These coaches are coaching football in the real world, not on a Playstation.
Here’s what Marcus Freeman chose to try to do instead:
- Kick a field goal every field goal unit should be expected to convert.
- Stop Ohio State two more times.
- Score two more touchdowns.
- Make both extra points, again routine.
The path Freeman chose did involve stopping Ohio State twice more, not once more. It involved scoring twice more, not once more. But it didn’t involve multiple two-point conversions, and it didn’t involve overtime. Seven times out of eight, Notre Dame would want that regulation field goal anyway. Again, this isn’t a video game.
I will give the talkers this: There wasn’t a ton of time left. But as Notre Dame went on to show, time was not running out. For the talkers’ preferred path to be correct, the probability of converting 4th-and-9 would need to be eight times larger than the probability of getting that second stop and second score. It wasn’t. Notre Dame has a specific staffer dedicated to running the numbers on these exact situations. We can assume Freeman was listening to him. Trailing by 13 points is so, so, so much better than trailing by 16. At some point, it stops being better because there isn’t enough time, but nine and a half minutes was enough. Had Notre Dame stopped the Jeremiah Smith 3rd-and-long, they would have gotten that last possession.
Now, Freeman did take too much time to make the call, just like he botched the execution of the fake punt earlier in the second half, one that may have been a great play design (how did they sneak Steve Angeli out there) but wasn’t as useful in a setting where Ohio State knew a fake should be coming. On the field goal, the unit was rushed, and Mitch Jeter—who was only 3-for-6 on field goal tries inside 40 yards entering the night—clanked it. But the decision itself wasn’t wrong, and a lot of people who thought they were being smart in their criticism were not being smart. A lot of otherwise smart people said dumb things because they’re so used to “don’t make a two-score game a two-score game.” It got under my skin. We can talk about something else now.
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News:
Former five-star quarterback recruit Devin Brown is off to Cal, leaving Ohio State after last night’s championship. Brown leaving isn’t a surprise, with Julian Sayin the likely starter next fall. But Cal’s an interesting destination. Brown’s the kind of prospect who could do a lot in the ACC, and this gives Cal two promising options back there to replace Fernando Mendoza.
Golden might be leaving Notre Dame, with the Cincinnati Bengals reportedly very interested in bringing back their former linebackers coach. If Golden does return to the NFL, the Irish might stand a better chance of retaining their defensive backs coach, Mike Mickens, who took on passing game coordinator responsibilities this year and is partly to thank for Benjamin Morrison, Leonard Moore, and others shining the way they’ve shone in Notre Dame’s suddenly impressive secondary. The Irish would lose a great coordinator. They’d keep a great developer of defensive backs. Eventually, Mickens is going to be a coordinator somewhere.
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We’ll be back tomorrow with the final Movelor ratings of the year, and with thoughts on those ratings. Then, on Thursday, it’ll be back to the offseason, with a look at either Ohio State or Notre Dame’s 2025 outlook. (We’ll cover the other on Friday.)
Thanks to those who followed all season. We’ll have plenty to say all winter, spring, and summer.
Bark.
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