The Ohio State Buckeyes entered the Sugar Bowl/National Semi-Final disrespected by the oddsmakers (seven-point underdogs), the general media, and even Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney entering their game in New Orleans.
However, most of that thinking was due to the lack of games that Ohio State played, how sharp Clemson has looked of late or otherwise the game would have been an even matchup.
What was received was the best game that Ohio State played all season and the return of the Justin Fields from the Buckeyes early-season games and that was good enough to extinguish the Clemson Tigers 49-28.
Justin Fields threw for 385 yards and a Sugar Bowl record six touchdowns, Trey Sermon rushed for 193 yards and a touchdown with Chris Olave and Jeremy Ruckert each caught two touchdown passes to lead Ohio State to a victory that some may have expected, but next to no one saw such a domination coming in New Orleans.
Ohio State will face Alabama on January 10th in Miami for the national championship.
All Photos courtesy of Getty Images.
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1) Justin Fields suddenly became the confident passer from earlier in the season and other than one bad pass when he fluttered a ball to a double-covered receiver on the first drive of the second half, Fields had his best game on his biggest stage completing 22 of 28 and his incompletions were the same amount as his touchdowns.
2) Think about that. Justin Fields threw six touchdowns and six incompletions against the vaunted Brent Venables defense of Clemson. I'm not sure that Ohio State has had a quarterback have that kind of performance against a national power that I can remember-Fields was that good.
3) And consider that Fields played much of this game with injured and possibly broken ribs after a Fields run in the second quarter saw Fields speared in the ribs by Clemson linebacker James Skalski.
Skalski clearly lowered his helmet and was ejected for targeting.
Fields would play the remainder of the game in pain and yet continued to throw accurately and hung in the pocket in a display of toughness that NFL scouts should love.
4) Fields and Chris Olave were also noted by Ryan Day to have remembered all year for the miscommunication in
last year's game between these two teams and the resolution to win this game was pretty clear with Fields hitting Olave with six catches for 132 yards and two touchdowns.
Olave returned to the lineup after missing the Big 10 title game against Northwestern after testing positive for Covid-19.
5) And the sudden transformation of Trey Sermon into the new Jim Brown continued as Sermon just missed 200 rushing yards and ran through the Tigers tacklers with an aggressiveness seldom seen in college football.
Sermon has now put together two of the best rushing games (considering the stakes) in Ohio State history and what could have lit his fire?
Perhaps someone got into his ear and whispered the difference between a day two pick in the NFL Draft and a day three selection?
6) What has made Trey Sermon so effective?
His balance when he breaks tackles.
Most backs will break a tackle and get an extra five or six yards, but Sermon (in the last two games) runs through a tackle and tacks on 10, 15, 20 yards and isn't afraid to put his hand on the ground to keep himself off the turf.
7) Garrett Wilson only caught two passes, but Wilson's 47-yard
reception was more than just a long gain, it was the beginning of Justin Fields showing that the Buckeyes were willing to take shots down the field to someone other than Chris Olave.
Wilson's day will come, perhaps against the Crimson Tide.
8) The Ohio State defense forced only one turnover, the end zone interception by Sevyn Banks near the end of the game, and they allowed Trevor Lawrence to throw for 400 yards.
However, they didn't allow Clemson to gain huge chunks of yardage in the passing game and made Lawrence accept what he was given.
The longest pass play that Clemson completed for 29 yards and Clemson would have only four plays over twenty yards.
9) The Clemson run game was turned off partially because of the Ohio State lead, but Travis Etienne wasn't running that well when the game was close.
Etienne finished with 32 yards on ten carries and while he did score a touchdown, Etienne's longest run was only for eight yards.
10) Ohio State seems to consistently recruit highly regarded receiving tight ends with the promise of the players involving the tight end more in the offense.
Jeremy Ruckert is an example of that and it was nice to see Ruckert and Luke Farrell combine for three of Justin Fields' six touchdown passes.
Ruckert is a player that may be a fairly high pick when he goes to the NFL and likely would be a larger part of most teams' offense but chose to come to Ohio State instead.
11) Ohio State set nine school records for bowl games in
this one.
12) I'll wrap this on Clemson coach Dabo Swinney.
Swinney's vote of Ohio State at eleventh in the nation was dumb.
Any extra motivation that you can give to any team of talent is never a wise move, but Swinney's refusal to even try to soften the blow a bit is a special type of dumb.
When you add this to the several questionable statements that Swinney has uttered over the last year or two, it's no wonder how Swinney has become the most disliked coach in college football.
What I do wonder about is how Swinney's mouth could eventually affect recruiting.
Swinney is the main reason that a program like Clemson isn't well-liked after their rise to national prominence among the other traditional powers should have made them so.
Perhaps some of the Dabo act is beginning to wear thin.
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