ATLANTA — Ohio State had to sweat a little Monday night.
The Buckeyes became the first two-loss national champions in 18 years with a 34-23 victory over Notre Dame. Ohio State outscored the Fighting Irish for the first 40 minutes of the game, but had to stave off a late charge from Notre Dame to get the win.
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 remaining when Riley Leonard hit Jaden Greathouse for a 30-yard touchdown before a two-point conversion. But Ohio State put the game within 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 relied on its secondary in man coverage, as it has done for much of the season. The Irish applied pressure, but the Ohio State offensive line gave Howard plenty of time as Smith was able to get separation with ease.
Running back Quinshon Judkins scored three touchdowns and Howard completed his first 13 passes as Ohio State quickly recovered from a grueling Notre Dame touchdown drive to open the scoring. The Irish went 75 yards in 18 plays to take a 7-0 lead. And from then on, it was all Ohio State 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 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 – marked 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, TreVeyon Henderson took a screen pass for a 75-yard touchdown and a 14–7 lead with 13 seconds left 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 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 rushing 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 marked the first time since Judkins ran for 173 yards against Marshall in Week 3 that he has topped 100 yards in a game .
Notre Dame’s futile comeback
The Irish entered the game as 8.5-point underdogs and leaned heavily on the legs of Riley Leonard early on. Leonard has been Notre Dame’s clutch rusher all season, carrying the ball nine times on the opening 18-play drive. His ninth carry was a TD run that gave Notre Dame fans hope that their team could hang on against an Ohio State team that had shown itself capable of underperformance during the regular season.
That optimism faded quite quickly before trying to flare up again in the second half. Notre Dame’s offense could do nothing for the remainder of the first half. Notre Dame gained a total of three yards over the 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.
While it wasn’t clear at halftime that Notre Dame’s chances of coming back were in deep trouble, it was abundantly clear that Judkins’ third TD gave Ohio State a 28-7 lead. Notre Dame went three-and-out on the first possession of the third quarter and ran an ingenious fake punt with backup QB Steve Angeli on the field.
Angeli stood in the backfield in front of the gambler and took the photo. He fired an accurate pass to a sliding Jordan Faison past the early markers, but the ball went through Faison’s hands and fell incomplete.
The Irish cut the lead to 16 and had some life left after Ohio State WR Emeka Egbuka fumbled in Notre Dame territory. But a curious call 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 outside to cut the lead to 13. A TD and 2-point conversion – Notre Dame had gone for two and got it up his second TD to make it a two-point game would have cut Ohio State’s lead to one possession.
Of course, thirteen points is still a game with two TDs. But Jeter, who made the game-winning field goal against Penn State in the Orange Bowl, took the kickoff from the left side upright.
“I just thought, instead of being down 16, let’s try to go 13,” Freeman said. “I know it’s still a two-goal game, but you’re more likely to get 14 points than 16 points. If it had been a shorter fourth-and-goal situation I probably would have gone for it, but I felt just fourth and nine wasn’t a big chance for us to make that and we decided to kick it, and we didn’t make it.
The decision to kick the field goal was made even more inexplicable when Greathouse scored on the next drive.
Ohio State lived up to expectations in the postseason
After a 2023 season that ended with another loss to Michigan, missing the final four-team College Football Playoff as the Wolverines won the national title, the 2024 season was national championship or bust for 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 huge amount of NIL money to pledge players into 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 an important coaching change. After masterminding Ohio State’s offense since taking over for Urban Meyer, coach Ryan Day hired former Oregon and Philadelphia Eagles coach Chip Kelly from his job as UCLA’s head coach to become the team’s offensive coordinator and play-caller. to be a team.
“It meant a lot for him to leave a head coaching position to join me,” Day said after the game, “because he’s obviously someone who is a mentor to me and certainly wouldn’t be where I am today without him.”
However, the regular season was uneven. Ohio State went 10-2 and once again failed to reach the Big Ten title game. 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 rolled into Columbus and pulled out a 13-10 victory before planting their flag (literally) and causing a post-game brawl.
Even in the victories there were difficult moments. Just like a brief period in the second half, Ohio State’s offense had too many stops for a group with so much talent.
That inconsistency and, more importantly, the loss to Michigan were enough to make fans wonder about Day’s job security if Ohio State didn’t win the national title despite his success coaching the team. Since taking over as full-time head coach in 2019, Ohio State had gone 66-10 under Day ahead of this season’s playoffs. But four of those losses had come to Michigan, and Ohio State had lost twice in each of the past four seasons.
However, a switch flipped in the postseason. Just as the Buckeyes did in the first year of the four-team playoff when they overran Alabama and Oregon en route to the national title, no one could stick with Ohio State this postseason. The Buckeyes blew up Tennessee to open the playoff and then jumped out to a 31-0 lead in the second quarter to get revenge against Oregon in the Rose Bowl. OSU went on to defeat Texas 28-14 in the semifinals.
Thanks to that long opening drive, it took until the second quarter for Ohio State 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. As 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 it hard 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 when you surround yourself with great people, you are resilient and you believe in the boys around you, and you just keep fighting and putting one foot in front of the other, you’re giving yourself another chance.”
Jay Busbee contributed to this report from Atlanta.