We’ve got four questions to keep in mind for Ohio State vs. Notre Dame Monday night, and which way they tilt will likely tell us how much of a chance the Irish have of pulling a surprise.
The 2025 College Football Playoff national championship game is a captivating grab bag of storylines.
On Monday, Jan. 20 at Mercedes Benz Stadium in Atlanta, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are angling for their first title in 36 years, and Marcus Freeman will become the first Black (and first Korean) coach to appear in the title game.
The Ohio State Buckeyes haven’t won the national championship in 10 years, which might as well be 40 for that fanbase, and Ryan Day will either lose as a 8.5-point favorite (they opened as 9.5-point favorites) or complete the fastest transition ever from reviled, potentially hot-seated coach to king of the college football world.
TRACR, Opta Analyst’s rating and projection system that’s 10-0 in the playoffs (see below), gives the Buckeyes a 76.0% chance to win. I’m also picking the Buckeyes and expect them to cover. But the Buckeyes should at least have a much harder time than they did in their first two playoff romps over Tennessee and Oregon, and Notre Dame could succeed on the margins where Texas, in the Cotton Bowl semifinal, did not.
Here are four questions to keep in mind as you prepare for the CFP national championship game. The answers aren’t obvious, and which way they tilt in the end will tell us how much of a chance the Irish have of pulling a surprise.
Question No. 1: Can Notre Dame’s dilapidated offensive line hold up for one more week?
Notre Dame left tackle Anthonie Knapp is out for the title game with a high ankle sprain. Knapp is himself a backup left tackle, having replaced Charles Jagusah after Jagusah was lost for the season, or so we thought, in fall camp.
But Jagusah made a shocking return in the Orange Bowl against Penn State, playing right guard amid an injury to the usual starter at that position, Rocco Spindler.
With at least two starting linemen injured, at least one ruled out for the game, and a preseason starter pressed back into duty, Notre Dame’s offensive line combination is an unsolvable puzzle right now. Freeman is reportedly entertaining the idea of reinserting Jagusah, who was supposed to be his left tackle all year but didn’t get to play any games at the position, back into that spot.
All I can say is that if Freeman asks Jagusah to assume left tackle duties for the national title game for his first start of the year, coming off an injury, then Riley Leonard, Jeremiyah Love and the Irish must hope God really is with them.
Ohio State’s Jack Sawyer and JT Tuimoloau are a terrifying a set of pass rushers. They led the Big Ten in adjusted sacks, which occurs when a defender records a pressure on a sack play, even if that defender does not actually get the sack.
So Jagusah limiting the damage against either one would be an epic achievement. At left tackle, Jagusah would most likely face Tuimoloau, who tends to line up at right edge but moves around.
Ohio State won’t be an easy matchup for a Notre Dame offensive line that has a pressure-allowed rate of 36.3% – worse than the national average of 32.6%.
Question No. 2: Will the Irish’s one clear advantage still be one?
If there’s one area where the Fighting Irish have an on-paper advantage, it’s in the defensive interior.
Freeman’s team has had one of the best defensive tackle tandems in the country, with sixth-year senior Howard Cross and fifth-year senior Rylie Mills anchoring the line. Meanwhile, Ohio State is missing its starting center, Seth McLaughlin, and has shuffled around its lineup with him out.
But Mills is out for the year with an injury suffered in Notre Dame’s first-round win over Indiana. That’s Notre Dame’s team leader in pressures (35), adjusted sacks (11), and run disruption rate (15.4%) watching the action in street clothes. Cross was hurt at the end of the regular season and has returned to give the Irish important help, but he may not be at full strength either.
Ohio State’s run game was not dominant against Texas, averaging 4.5 sack-adjusted yards per carry. That allowed the Longhorns get uncomfortably close to Will Howard, who took two sacks. Texas probably has the best defensive tackles in the country, though, certainly a scarier group on paper than Notre Dame’s injured lineup.
If the Ohio State offensive line looks like the one that’s allowed a kind of ugly 34.4% run disruption rate this year, and the Notre Dame defensive line looks like the one with a very pretty 43.7% rate, then the Irish will have a point-of-attack advantage.
Those are big ifs, though. Both teams’ medical situations make it hard to know.
Question No. 3: What is Al Golden’s plan for Jeremiah Smith?
Texas had a good one. The Longhorns held Jeremiah Smith, the best receiver in college football (who also happens to be a true freshman), to one catch on three targets for 3 yards.
To get those precious yards, Smith had to catch the ball 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage and dart forward. To say Texas gave Smith no space down the field would not be an overstatement. The Longhorns gave him no space.
Texas probably gave Golden, the Notre Dame defensive coordinator, a blueprint. Only rarely did Smith go anywhere in the Cotton Bowl without one of Texas’ talented safeties, often the Clemson transfer Andrew Mukuba, shading in his direction.
That approach left single coverage for other Ohio State receivers, and Emeka Egbuka and Carnell Tate combined to catch 12 passes for 138 yards. Tate would have scored a touchdown if he didn’t drop a ball on his chest in the end zone on a slant route.
Putting a safety over top of Smith is, of course, the most obvious idea in the world. Day pointed out this week that most teams have done just that. Still, Smith managed to finish tied for third in the nation with 16 touchdown burns. But most teams don’t have safeties as good as Texas’, and Notre Dame happens to be one of the few that does.
All-American safety Xavier Watts is going to get an intimate look at Smith in this game, as will, most likely, a whole collection of Notre Dame cornerbacks. I might see if Leonard Moore, who allowed a team-best 28.8% burn rate this year on 52 targets in coverage, was interested in following Smith around for most of the night.
Question No. 4: Does Will Howard play clean?
If yes, what is Ohio State’s margin of victory?
In 12 games against power conference opposition, Howard has thrown nine interceptions and lost a fumble. (He’s fumbled six times in total, but the Buckeyes have gotten five of them back.)
He’s only played turnover-free in four of the 12 games, and while those included Ohio State’s one-point loss to Oregon in Week 7, Howard’s zero-turnover outings since then have gone like this for Ohio State:
- A 45-0 win over Purdue
- A 31-7 win over Northwestern
- A 41-21 win over Oregon at the Rose Bowl, which wasn’t even that close
On the other hand, in games in which Howard turned the ball over once or twice, Ohio State has been vulnerable, even against mediocre opponents.
These have included:
- A 21-17 win over Nebraska, with one Howard interception
- A 20-13 win over Penn State, with one Howard interception returned for a touchdown and the quarterback’s lone lost fumble of the season
- A 13-10 loss to Michigan
- A 28-14 win over Texas, which was still dramatic with 2 minutes remaining
“Team plays better when QB doesn’t lose the ball” is not revolutionary analysis. But Ohio State is so much better than its opponents – probably even Notre Dame – that a turnover-less game from Howard probably forecloses all but the slimmest chance of an upset.
After all, the only team to be remotely competitive with OSU in a clean Howard game was Oregon, playing an excellent game on its own field and still needing help from the clock and a creative substitutions loophole to seal a one-point win.
At the risk of being too declarative, I do not think it’s possible for the Fighting Irish to win if they don’t get Howard to mess up at least once. Get him to do it twice, and the Fighting Irish might have something.
- TRACR’s Projected Winner (With Probability): Ohio State (76.0%)
- Kirshner’s Pick: Ohio State -8.5
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