Ohio State made sure Notre Dame’s potential advantages were nonexistent. The end result was an 11-point Buckeyes win in the CFP national championship game that wasn’t as close as the score indicates.
Ohio State has won the national title for the first time in a decade because the Buckeyes had good answers to all of the questions that defined the College Football Playoff national championship game.
A win on Monday over Notre Dame 34-23 at Mercedes Benz Stadium came down to Ohio State’s fundamental talent advantage over the Fighting Irish. When I previewed the Ohio State vs. Notre Dame showdown last week, I wondered about four areas where the Irish might be able to mitigate their inherent disadvantages against the Buckeyes.
- Could an injured offensive line prevent itself from getting caved in?
- Could a highly touted defensive line push a (relatively) weak Ohio State offensive line backward?
- Could Notre Dame follow the lead of Texas and Michigan by making Jeremiah Smith, the star freshman receiver, into a flashy decoy?
- Could the Irish induce a silly turnover or two from Ohio State quarterback Will Howard?
Time and again, coach Ryan Day’s team made sure these issues worked out poorly for Notre Dame. The end result was an 11-point loss to its Big Ten foes that was briefly close but accentuated the gap between the two.
1. Notre Dame’s offensive line avoided disaster… but that’s it
With several offensive line injuries, the Irish shuffled players around and inserted redshirt freshman Charles Jagusah at left tackle. This was an enormous ask against a frankly terrifying Ohio State defense. Jagusah had been Notre Dame’s preseason starter at the position, but a torn pectoral muscle knocked him out for almost the whole season.
He only returned in the Orange Bowl semifinal, playing right guard amid an injury to starter Rocco Spindler. Jagusah only moved to left tackle here after incumbent starter Anthonie Knapp suffered a high ankle sprain in the Orange Bowl.
Jagusah looked solid against Ohio State’s right edge rusher JT Tuimoloau. The Irish offensive line bullied Ohio State on the first drive of the game – a 75-yard scoring possession that took nearly 10 minutes – and only let up two sacks of Riley Leonard.
But after that drive, Notre Dame generated almost zero push in the run game for the final three quarters. The Irish totaled 9 more official rushing yards all night, finishing with a 39.1% run success rate – well under the 39.9% national average in 2024 and their own 42.2% mark heading into the contest.
Visions of Leonard spending the night on his back were unfulfilled, but so were visions of Notre Dame tailbacks Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price having anywhere to go. They combined for seven carries for 16 yards with a long carry of 9.
2. The Irish defensive front didn’t assert itself
If there was any piece of the action that looked like it could offer an advantage for Notre Dame, it was along the defensive line. Facing an Ohio State offensive line that was playing well but had been missing two starters for weeks, perhaps Notre Dame could make some hay.
Notre Dame sacked Will Howard twice, but those two sacks came in a four-play span in the second quarter, only cost Ohio State 4 yards, and didn’t prevent an OSU touchdown on the same series. One of the sacks was barely even a sack, a 1-yard loss on a run/pass option that might as well have gone in the books as a designed quarterback run.
(Funny enough, both of Ohio State’s sacks of Leonard also preceded Notre Dame touchdowns. I guess sacks are now a bad thing for a defense.) On the night, the Irish managed a 36.0% pressure rate – far below their 42.8% mark heading in.
Meanwhile, Notre Dame allowed 5.3 yards per run play and 3.5 yards before contact, well above their 4.5 and 2.8 season averages. OSU enjoyed several chunk runs and one huge one, a 70-yarder by Quinshon Judkins on the second play of the third quarter.
In the area of the game that looked like the only possible advantage for Notre Dame, the Irish didn’t get much.
An injury in the first round of the 12-team playoff to Rylie Mills loomed large. Mills, a tackle, led the team in adjusted sacks (11), pressures (35), and run disruption rate (15.4%). Notre Dame could have used much more of all of those things against the dynamic Ohio State offense.
3. Jeremiah Smith wasn’t a game-breaker, until he was
In the CFP championship, Notre Dame followed the not-quite-revolutionary strategy laid out by Michigan and Texas, who both kept the best receiver in the country to low numbers amid a span when he torched Tennessee and Oregon.
The Irish assigned a mix of cornerbacks to cover Smith, and they had their All-American safety, Xavier Watts, keep a close eye on him. For most of the night, this plan worked OK.
Smith scored Ohio State’s opening touchdown after coordinator Chip Kelly confused Notre Dame with misdirection over the course of the drive. But he did not dominate against cornerbacks Leonard Moore and Christian Gray, and Ohio State had to (and did) find other outlets to move the ball effectively.
Then, with the game on the line late, the Irish took a chance. After cutting Ohio State’s 24-point lead down to eight, Notre Dame’s defense had a 3rd-and-11 opportunity to get the ball back with more than 2 minutes to play. Maybe feeling burned by Howard scrambling for a first down earlier in the night, the Irish did not shade Smith with a safety, instead allocating bodies closer to the defensive box.
It was a calculated bet that Ohio State would either throw to someone else or lob up a deep ball for Smith, the best receiver in the country. It wasn’t an unreasonable idea by coordinator Al Golden. Deep balls are low-percentage plays, and giving up a 50-yard pass wasn’t much worse in that situation than giving up a 12-yard pass. Just a bit earlier, Howard had missed badly on a sideline go ball to Carnell Tate, who was open in the end zone.
But throwing this time to Smith, Howard did not miss:
After it was the nation’s best team in both burn-allowed percentage (46.5) and open-allowed (62.3) percentage, Notre Dame surrendered a 76.2% burn-allowed rate and a 85.7% open-allowed rate against the Buckeyes.
At least the Irish got beat by a worthy opponent.
4. Without a Will Howard turnover, Notre Dame had little chance
Notre Dame technically won the turnover margin 1-0, thanks to a bit of luck and a late fumble by Ohio State receiver Emeka Egbuka. A botched snap that deflected off a Notre Dame motion man in the first half wound up back in the Irish’s hands, a bit of good fortune the Buckeyes didn’t get when Egbuka later put the ball on the ground.
But we figured before the game that Notre Dame might need more help than that – and that it might need to come from Howard, who gave the ball away quite a bit this season.
Howard played a clean game, though. He threw one pass that Notre Dame’s All-American safety Xavier Watts almost pulled out of the hands of Buckeye tailback TreVeyon Henderson, but it fell incomplete instead of winding up in Watts’ grasp. The Buckeyes scored a touchdown three plays later to stretch their margin to 21-7 entering halftime, and it would be 31-7 after just a few more series.
Really, the turnover battle was a wash. Freeman opted for a fake punt in his own territory in the third quarter, and Ohio State anticipated it well enough to force an incompletion from a Notre Dame up back. The eventual national champions turned that stop into a field goal.
Bake in that Notre Dame missed a field goal try after the Egbuka fumble, and the Irish really got no net benefit from turnovers all night.
