Quinshon Judkins rushed for 100 yards with two rushing touchdowns and a receiving score with Will Howard throwing for 231 yards and rushing for 57 more to pace the Buckeye offense.
With the national title trophy in tow, a different group of Buckeyes will start defending their title in August at home against the Texas Longhorns.
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1) Ohio State scored touchdowns on their first four possessions and their fifth resulted in a field goal and would only score three points after that point.
However, that includes only three more possessions, the first ended on an Emeke Egbuka fumble after a big gain at the Notre Dame 24, their only punt of the game, and the final drive that resulted in the field goal that salted away the game.
2) Emeka Egbuka's fumble was the only Ohio State turnover of the game and it didn't result in any lost points as Notre Dame missed a field goal. Still, Ohio State would have likely scored on the drive, which would have helped Ohio State fans relax earlier in the fourth quarter.
3) Emeka Egbuka caught six passes during the game and became the all-time leader in receptions for the Buckeyes breaking the record of K.J. Hill.
Egbuka played in more games than the other Ohio State greats at the position and stayed for four seasons, unlike some of the recent stars at wide receiver. But hey, that's how K.J. Hill set the record, and Egbuka will have a better NFL career than that of Hill, who caught ten passes in two seasons with the Chargers.
4) TreVeyon Henderson had been the standout running back in the postseason before Monday but it was Quinshon Judkins taking over in the title matchup, scoring two rushing touchdowns, catching another one, and ripping off a seventy-yard run that set up one of his two scores.
Judkins may have scored on that run but he was concerned about someone coming from behind and punching the football away and he visibly slowed late in the run.
5) Both Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson moved over the one-thousand-yard mark in rushing during the win, which makes them only the second running back duo at Ohio State to accomplish that feat.
Archie Griffin and Pete Johnson did this in 1975 and Carlos Hyde along with Braxton Miller did the same in 2013 but Miller was the quarterback during that season.
6) Will Howard completed his first thirteen tosses and finished seventeen of twenty-one on the game but his running was perhaps even more impressive as Howard's designed runs gave him fifty-seven yards rushing on sixteen carries.
Howard came to Columbus heralded more as a runner than a passer but his running had disappointed somewhat this season.
7) Notre Dame took the opening kickoff and punished the Buckeye defense with the running game on the seventy-five-yard touchdown drive.
I thought that would change as the game played out as Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard was taking some serious hits on his nine carries on the drive.
Whether it was from the punishment or playing from behind, Leonard would run on only seven occasions after the first drive.
8) The biggest play came late in the fourth quarter with Notre Dame having scraped back into the game down only eight points with two and a half minutes to play, Ohio State faced a key third down and eleven on their own thirty-four.
If Notre Dame could come up with a stop, a touchdown and two-point conversion would tie the game.
Notre Dame decided to gamble that Ohio State would run the football to run the clock to the two-minute timeout and left their corners in man coverage.
Big mistake as Will Howard found the most electrifying freshman in the nation, Jeremiah Smith, for a fifty-six-yard gain to the Notre Dame ten as the hammer blow to the Fighting Irish's comeback hopes.
Smith finished with five catches, eighty-eight yards, and a touchdown but he's never made a bigger catch than the one he made on third and eleven.
9) Marcus Freeman had his struggles in his first game on the championship stage but of his two questionable decisions, I think Freeman is being unfairly criticized.
Notre Dame was down sixteen with just under ten minutes to go facing a fourth and goal at the Ohio State nine and Freeman sent kicker Mitch Jeter for a twenty-seven-yard field goal attempt.
Jeter clanged the kick off an upright giving Notre Dame nothing for their drive and some say even if it was good, Notre Dame still needed two scoring possessions.
My argument would be this- now two touchdowns win the game rather than needing two touchdowns and two successful two-point conversions to merely tie it.
Notre Dame needed their defense to step up to have those two possessions (they would have two but one was with only seconds remaining and out of timeouts) but Ohio State had generally kept the Irish under wraps other than the first drive and a few big gains based on bad tackling and Notre Dame needed nine yards on one play.
I'm not saying I would have kicked the field goal but I can see why Freeman decided to.
10) It's tougher to excuse Freeman for his other call, a fake punt on fourth and two on his own thirty-three, down 28-7 in the third quarter.
Notre Dame had called fake punts several times throughout the season and Ohio State was ready, keeping their defense on the field, and forcing an incomplete pass.
Under the circumstances, few believed Notre Dame was going to actually punt and Freeman may have done better with his best players on the field and trying to gain those two yards on fourth down.
11) I did wonder a bit on the final Ohio State drive before the pass to Jeremiah Smith about the decision to do nothing other than send Will Howard forward to run the clock.
It made me think that they were afraid of a turnover (justified) but gave the feeling of coaching scared that has haunted Ryan Day in big games.
Fortunately, Ohio State shrugged that aside with a courageous play call.
12) The national title is the ninth in program history with Ryan Day the fifth coach to win one along with Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Jim Tressel, and Urban Meyer.
It was a wild ride to get to this point and it wasn't always smooth but Ryan Day and the Buckeyes managed to get through the season and the criticism of many (including myself) to earn the national title.
There are plenty of other items to explore and explain about this championship season along with thoughts on the 2025 season but those will wait until the near future (I hope in the next week or so) to write.
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