ATLANTA — Pinch yourself, Ohio State fans.
You really are in seventh heaven.
The Buckeyes on Monday night completed their redemptive arc for the football ages and dotted the i in the school’s seventh national championship, holding off Notre Dame in a 34-23 victory punctuated with an exclamation point that will live on in scarlet lore.
The play history will remember: a 57-yard fade from Will Howard to superstar freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith that turned angst into awe.
Holy Buckeye Part II.
With 2:29 remaining and a lead that had ballooned to 24 points sliced to eight, Ohio State faced third-and-11 on its own 34 after consecutive runs went nowhere.
The Buckeyes could have played not to lose.
Ryan Day and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly could have kept both eyes on the clock and dialed up another Howard draw.
Instead …
Like the theme of the season itself, they went all in.
“If they played [Smith] one-on-one on the outside,” Day said, “we were going to take our shot.”
With the Irish positioned to stop the run, Howard dropped back, spotted Smith in single coverage streaking down the right sideline, and let fly a beauty.
The pass floated into the clutch of Smith and into history.
“Just surreal, man,” said Howard, the senior transfer from Kansas State who needed just one season in Columbus to become an Ohio State legend.
Next thing you knew, Day was getting showered with Gatorade and scarlet and gray confetti was raining like manna from the rafters of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, the storms washing away the past.
Good for Day and the Buckeyes.
It was just seven weeks and a lifetime ago — as boos and anger and pepper spray filled the air at Ohio Stadium after the stunning loss to Michigan — that such joy would have been inconceivable.
Ohio State was doubted by the believers, dismissed by the rest, its championship-or-bust season shoved to the brink.
Turns out, the Buckeyes just got a little lost.
Their season was like a M. Night Shymalan movie, a wandering plot giving way to a memorable ending.
From the soul-searching low, Ohio State closed ranks, opened the offense, and pushed up the falling sky, proving as tough and resilient as it is talented.
If its Ohio Against the World cry may provoke eye rolls elsewhere, the Buckeyes indeed took on all comers this postseason, rattling off four straight top-10 wins in a northern campaign that — as with Gen. William T. Sherman (OK, maybe that’s a reach!) — ended on a cold night in Georgia.
It was nothing short of one of the greatest runs the sport has seen.
These guys are going to go down in Ohio State history as one of the greatest teams to ever play at Ohio State,” Day said. “After all the things that have been said throughout the year, these guys are going to be cemented as one of the best stories in Ohio State history and one of the best football teams ever. … There was a point where not a lot of people had that vision, but these guys did, and they saw it through.”
The final chapter did not come easy.
For a fleeting minute or 10 early, Notre Dame interrupted Ohio State’s march.
The Irish came out looking like a team tired of hearing whether the Buckeyes would win by nine touchdowns or 10 and were ready to throw hands.
With quarterback Riley Leonard agreeing to become a human cannonball — firing up the middle on one run after another — Notre Dame opened with a 18-play, 75-yard touchdown drive that lasted longer than my New Year’s resolutions.
It was the perfect start, and the first time Ohio State trailed all postseason.
But if Leonard stumbling to the sideline and vomiting after the series was any indication, it was not sustainable.
Nor was Ohio State stoppable.
The rest of the night belonged mostly to the team in the road whites.
The Buckeyes answered with a pounding 75-yard touchdown drive of its own and kept coming, the separation of church and state widening by the minute. To identify the biggest play would have been like singling out the pebble that inflicted the most damage in a landslide.
There was Findlay native Luke Montgomery and a proud offensive line clearing double-wide lanes, and running back Quinshon Judkins — who had 100 of the Buckeyes’ 214 rushing yards — powering through them, and Howard dealing, not to mention wheeling. (Does Howard — who completed 17 of 21 passes for 231 yards and two TDs and ran for another 57 yards — remind everyone else of a more dynamic version of Craig Krenzel?).
Notre Dame tried its stalwart man coverage, which — with Ohio State’s receivers — can be like playing next to a stove top with all the burners cranked up. It tried zone. It tried … everything.
And nothing worked.
Add in a defense that put its collective cleat down, and Ohio State rattled off 31 straight points to go ahead 31-7.
Credit the Irish for continuing to swing. They have a heck of a team.
But, ultimately, the rest was history.
For Ohio State, the pain from seven weeks ago gave way to a scene straight out of seventh heaven.
“The worst of the worst to the top, man,” Montgomery said. “This is amazing.”
First Published January 21, 2025, 5:12 a.m.
