
Ultimate CFP Championship Preview: At the end of the grind, was it Ohio State all along?
Everything – and we mean everything – you really need to know about Monday night’s College Football Playoff Championship Game between Ohio State (-8.5 per FanDuel Sportsbook) and Notre Dame.
Well, folks, we made it. Whew. We were warned at the outset that the 2024 college football season was going to be the longest on record, and you don’t need to look at a calendar to know that it has been exactly that. It has felt long. Hasn’t it? Is it just me? This has been a long-ass season.
Think about how long ago it seems now since the opening kickoff in Week Zero — so long that, at the time, Georgia Tech’s upset over Florida State in Ireland was actually considered a significant upset. That was this season! Between that game, played on Aug. 24, and Monday night’s CFP title game, nearly 5 full months have elapsed, emphasis on full. That’s expanding the traditional CFB calendar by a whole month, while also cutting into the traditional downtime in December to accommodate the expanded 12-team field. The last teams standing in Atlanta, Ohio State (13-2) and Notre Dame (14-1), are each playing in their 16th game, an unprecedented gauntlet in the modern history of the sport. I’m borderline exhausted just writing about it. Imagine how the coaches and players feel. On top of all the other factors that have always made winning a national title a heroic feat, now there’s surviving the grind itself.
We will all have to get used to this evolving trajectory of what a championship season looks like. One of the ironies of Monday night’s matchup is that it features the teams that were on the wrong end of arguably the season’s 2 most embarrassing upsets: Notre Dame’s inexplicable, 16-14 flop against Northern Illinois in Week 2, and Ohio State’s deflating, 13-10 debacle against Michigan to close the regular season. Historically, both results would have been automatic deal-breakers as far as the national crown is concerned, poisoning the rest of the season and, in the Buckeyes’ case, the ensuing offseason, too. Being humbled by your avowed blood rival for the 4th year in a row, or by an obscure, 4-touchdown underdog from the Mid-American Conference – there’s simply no coming back from that.
Except, well, now there is. Either loss must rank among the worst inflicted on an eventual national champion, albeit for very different reasons. But then, as we begin to adjust to the rhythms of a true postseason, maybe that’s the kind of distinction that turns out not to last very long. And either way, you can be sure that as soon as the confetti falls the sting of defeat will be reinterpreted as the kind of harsh but necessary trial from which all champions must be forged, or something. Defeats that as recently as a year ago would have defined an entire campaign as a failure have already been relegated to a footnote in the chapter titled “Adversity.”
Anyway, here they are. From now on, the grind imposes its own rhythm and its own logic: The 12 teams that make the cut arrive with a clean slate, and the one that emerges on the other end never has to think twice about the moments along the way when its championship cred was in doubt. The old ideal of a national champ was all about dominance, inevitably, undeniable swagger from start to finish. But none of the officially certified juggernauts of the past – not 1995 Nebraska, not 2001 Miami, not 2019 LSU, not any of the standard bearers for the dynasties at Alabama, Clemson or Georgia – ever had to prove it 4 times in as many weeks against Playoff-caliber competition. The new ideal, emerging in real time, validates resilience, endurance and survival, by any means necessary.
In the end, maybe it’s fitting that the sport enters a new era by crowning a champion that doesn’t look quite like any of the previous champs. In addition to the infamous red blotch on its résumé, the team that hoists the trophy on Monday night will do it without having been ranked No. 1 in any poll at any point, without having claimed a conference championship or a first-round bye, and without the benefit of a serious Heisman Trophy candidate at any position. The head coaches are a couple of internal hires who were promoted with no previous head-coaching experience at any level. The starting quarterbacks are a couple of 5th-year transfers with marginal-at-best NFL prospects. Both sides have put their respective fan bases through an emotional gamut. Whatever the expectations at any given stage of the season, no one ever mistook them for inevitable.
When it’s all over, though, nobody is ever going to be able to look back at the first full-blown College Football Playoff champs and say they didn’t earn it. Ultimately, that’s what the grind is for: To allow a team about whom there might have been plenty of reasonable doubt after 12 games to leave none in its wake.

Best players on the field
1. Ohio State DB Caleb Downs: 89.3 PFF grade | 8 TFLs + 2 INTs | All-American
2. Ohio State DE Jack Sawyer: 91.1 PFF | 9 sacks + 3 forced fumbles | All-B1G (2nd)
3. Ohio State DE JT Tuimoloau: 86.3 PFF | 20 TFLs (11.5 sacks) | All-B1G (1st) in 2023-24
4. Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love: 91.6 PFF | 1,122 yards, 17 TDs | 7.1 yards/carry
5. Ohio State LB Cody Simon: 89.6 PFF | 251 tackles career (24 TFLs) + 11 PBUs
6. Ohio State DT Tyleik Williams: 79.6 PFF | 27 TFLs career (11.5 sacks) + 10 PBUs
7. Notre Dame QB Riley Leonard: 82.3 PFF | 77.7 QBR | 137.8 efficiency | 27-9 as starter
8. Ohio State DB Lathan Ransom: 82.5 PFF | 73 tackles (9 TFLs) | All-B1G (1st)
9. Ohio State LB Sonny Styles: 70.0 PFF | 94 tackles (10 TFLs) | All-B1G (2nd)
10. Notre Dame OL Aamil Wagner: 80.0 PFF | 910 snaps (most on team) | 2 sacks allowed
In the pocket: Can Ohio State rattle Riley Leonard?
Offensive tackle was a major preseason question mark for Notre Dame following the departure of last year’s starters, Joe Alt and Blake Fisher, in the first 2 rounds of the NFL Draft. Fifteen games later, it still is. The bookends were routinely abused by Penn State’s edge rushers in the Orange Bowl, setting off alarms heading into a matchup against Ohio State’s JT Tuimoloau and Jack Sawyer.
OK, in the Irish’s defense, Penn State’s Abdul Carter routinely abused almost every opposing lineman he faced this season, including Ohio State’s Donovan Jackson, a future pro. It didn’t help, either, that Notre Dame’s starting left tackle, Freshman All-American Anthonie Knapp, exited the game in the first quarter with a high ankle sprain. After Knapp’s departure, though, every straight drop-back by Leonard (or, briefly, backup QB Steve Angeli) was a race to the quarterback. Carter and edge-mate Dani Dennis-Sutton alone combined for a dozen QB pressures, 3 sacks, and a forced fumble, not to mention a ridiculously athletic interception by Dennis-Sutton on one of his few forays into coverage. Pro Football Focus charged Knapp’s replacement on the left side, senior reserve Tosh Baker, with 5 QB pressures and a sack allowed, saddling him with a dreadful 21.3 pass-blocking grade. The regular starter on the right side, redshirt sophomore Aamil Wagner, didn’t fare much better.
Knapp has been ruled out for the title game, leaving Baker and Wagner with an equally steep assignment opposite Ohio State’s long-tenured edge duo, Tuimoloau and Sawyer. The veteran pair has feasted throughout Ohio State’s Playoff run, combining for 34 QB pressures, 10 sacks, 2 forced fumbles, and one of the most instantly indelible highlights in Buckeyes history. The right tackle whom Sawyer blew past on that play, Texas’ Cameron Williams, had just as brutal a night against the Buckeyes as Notre Dame’s tackles did against Penn State; unlike Wagner or Baker, he’s also projected as an early-round pick in the upcoming draft. Leonard can run in a pinch – it’s what he does best, in fact – but there is nowhere for his blockers to hide. The front line must be better to give him a chance.
Down the field: Do the Irish have the juice?
In contrast with the o-line, Notre Dame’s wideouts were a pleasant surprise against Penn State, defying their lo-fi reputation as a unit. On a night when the ground game struggled to break even, the receivers were at their best: They hauled in contested catches, ate up yards after the catch, and stretched the field, flashing a play-making element that was conspicuously missing from the Irish’s first 2 CFP wins over Indiana and Georgia. They even broke an ankle or two, courtesy of sophomore Jaden Greathouse.
Leave it to Penn State fans to spend the next 6 months speculating how the game/season would have turned out if the defender doesn’t slip at the worst possible moment. For the rest of us, the immediate question is how much of that sudden glimpse of explosiveness is translatable against the Buckeyes? Greathouse is a touted athlete who arrived in South Bend with high expectations as a recruit, but that has yet to translate into sustained production. For some context, he gained more yards on that play alone (54) than on his other 6 catches against the Nittany Lions combined, and in all but 2 other games this season. Can he make lightning strike twice?
The other unsung target who flashed on the receiving end against the Nittany Lions was not a wideout, but a running back, true freshman Aneyas Williams. Although he only lined up wide on one snap, Williams made it count, exploiting a linebacker in man-to-man coverage for a 36-yard gain that set up Notre Dame’s first touchdown on the opening possession of the second half – a turning point in a game Penn State had fairly dominated in the first half. His emergence as a plausible downfield threat was doubly notable given that both of the touchdown passes Ohio State allowed to Texas in the Cotton Bowl were wheel routes to a dual-threat running back, Jaydon Blue, streaking out of the backfield: On the first, Blue easily dusted a linebacker (Sonny Styles) in man coverage; on the second, he wasn’t covered at all. Even if Williams’ cover is blown, in the absence of a true, reliable downfield threat, ginning up a way to get him isolated against Styles or Cody Simon in space is still as plausible an idea for threatening the Buckeyes downfield as any other the Irish have at their disposal.
In the red zone: Can Notre Dame finish drives?
Part of the drama of Jack Sawyer’s game-clinching, coast-to-coast fumble return against Texas was the fact that it came on 4th down, at the end of a critical goal-line stand with the game and the season in the balance. Just a few plays earlier, the Longhorns had the ball first-and-goal at the OSU 1-yard line with a chance to tie or (pending a successful 2-point conversion) take the lead with less than 4 minutes remaining in the game. Instead, they went backward, culminating in the dagger.
If it’s possible for a defense to specialize in goal-line stands, Ohio State is that defense, and it has repeatedly risen to the occasion in the biggest games. The stand against Texas was only the latest entry in an ongoing trend: At various points in the regular season, the Buckeyes snuffed out goal-to-go opportunities by Oregon, Northwestern, Michigan and (most memorably) Penn State, turning back the Nittany Lions twice with their backs against their own goal line in early November. Altogether, Ohio State has allowed an FBS-low 15 touchdowns on 36 red-zone possessions, a 41.7% rate matched by only one other team: Penn State, at 41.5%.
Notre Dame hasn’t had trouble finishing drives – the Irish have put the ball in the end zone on 72.4% of their red-zone trips, good for 17th in the country, and boast one of the nation’s best finishers in Leonard, who has accounted for 13 red-zone touchdowns as a runner and 12 (of his 19 overall) more through the air. His nose for the end zone will be invaluable on a night when the Irish cannot afford to leave any points on the field. That means touchdowns, not field goals, and if it means getting creative against a defense that excels at preventing them, play-caller Mike Denbrock should be prepared to have a few tricks up his sleeve.

Best players on the field
1. Ohio State WR Jeremiah Smith: 89.2 PFF grade | 1,227 yards, 14 TDs | All-B1G (1st)
2. Notre Dame DB Xavier Watts: 87.2 PFF | 6 INTs + 9 PBUs | All-American in 2023-24
3. Ohio State RB TreVeyon Henderson: 87.3 PFF | 4,565 scrimmage yards, 48 TDs career
4. Ohio State RB Quinshon Judkins: 87.5 PFF | 4,106 scrimmage yards, 47 TDs career
5. Ohio State WR Emeka Egbuka: 80.0 PFF | 2,804 yards, 24 TDs career
6. Ohio State QB Will Howard: 84.0 PFF | 87.6 QBR | 173.7 efficiency | 25-6 as starter
7. Notre Dame LB Jack Kiser: 81.7 PFF | 270 tackles career + 6 forced fumbles
8. Notre Dame DL Howard Cross III: 71.5 PFF | 21 TFLs career (11 sacks)
9. Ohio State OL Donovan Jackson: 70.9 PFF | 38 starts | All-B1G (1st) in 2023-24
10. Notre Dame CB Leonard Moore: 88.9 PFF | 2 INTs + 10 PBUs | Freshman All-American
In the pocket: Is Will Howard the man for the moment?
Howard, a 1-and-done grad transfer from Kansas State, has not exactly captured the hearts and minds of a fan base accustomed to first-rounders and Heisman finalists at the most important position. He’s not a blue-chip athlete, projects as a mid-round NFL prospect at best, and didn’t sniff the Heisman vote after turning in his worst performance of the season by far in the loss to Michigan.
Howard stunk up the joint so bad against the Wolverines that the guy he replaced as QB1, exiled 2023 starter Kyle McCord, took the opportunity to enjoy a little schadenfreude at his old team’s expense. (Ironically, McCord actually did crack the Heisman vote, finishing 10th after leading the nation in passing attempts and yards at Syracuse.) Plus there was the whole losing track of the clock sequence at the end of the Buckeyes’ midseason loss at Oregon. By the end of the regular season, it was possible to count Howard as one of the weak links of the Buckeyes’ impending Playoff run, and by some accounts arguably the weakest.
Instead, as the competition has stiffened he’s played the best football of his career. All 3 defenses Howard has faced in the CFP entered the game ranked in the top 10 nationally in pass efficiency defense; all 3 went on to endure their worst outing of the year, each giving up season-highs for both yards per attempt and overall efficiency. Howard has improved on his regular-season output across the board, inching up the FBS leaderboards in the process. He has averaged 306.3 passing yards with 6 TD passes in the 3 Playoff wins. With those performances factored in, he enters the title game ranked No. 2 nationally in Total QBR, No. 3 in efficiency, No. 5 in touchdowns and No. 6 in yards per attempt. CJ Stroud he is not, but you wouldn’t know it from his production over the past month.
Howard owes a fair share of his postseason surge to his offensive line, which has made strides following a rough November. At that point, the front was still a work in progress following season-ending injuries to its 2 best players, tackle Josh Simmons and center Seth McLaughlin, whose absence from the lineup forced 2 new starters into the starting lineup on the interior and a 3rd, senior guard Donovan Jackson, to slide outside to fill Simmons’ spot at left tackle.
In his first start on the blindside, Jackson was posterized by Penn State’s All-American edge terror, Abdul Carter, who recorded 4 QB hurries and 2 sacks at his expense; PFF slapped Jackson with a 0.0 pass-blocking grade. He then struggled against Indiana and Michigan, giving up 7 combined pressures and 3 hits across those 2 games. In the CFP, though, Jackson has been a rock, allowing a grand total of 2 pressures and 0 sacks on 99 pass-blocking snaps. Altogether, Tennessee barely laid a hand on Howard the first round, and Oregon didn’t fare much better in the Rose Bowl. Texas sacked him twice but had to resort to sending extra rushers to generate sustained pressure.
Notre Dame is comfortable with taking risks: The Irish blitzed on exactly 50% of their total pass-rushing snaps in their CFP wins over Georgia and Penn State, partly out of necessity – their best pass rusher, senior Rylie Mills, missed both games after suffering a season-ending knee injury against Indiana – and partly due to their confidence in a stellar secondary to hold up its end of the bargain. The results have been mixed.
All 4 of Notre Dame’s sacks against UGA came on standard 4-man rushes, per PFF, including the crucial strip sack by edge rusher RJ Oben that set up the Irish’s only offensive touchdown of that game just before halftime. (A heck of a moment for Oben, a full-time starter, to notch his only sack of the year.) Against Penn State, though, most of the pressure on Lions’ QB Drew Allar came from the second level, including the rush by linebacker Jaylen Sneed (No. 3 below) that forced Allar to serve up a killer interception in the final minute of regulation. The game-winning field goal followed 30 seconds later.
Strictly speaking, that play didn’t qualify as a blitz because only 4 rushers crossed the line. Still, it’s an example of how defensive coordinator Al Golden must deploy his best athletes to turn up the heat on Howard without the benefit of a standout individual presence along the front. Sneed is one of them; blue-chip freshman Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa is another. PFF credited Viliamu-Asa with a season-high 3 QB pressures against Penn State on just 8 pass-rushing snaps. One way or another, Golden has to find a way to generate pass-rushing lanes on a night when 1-on-1 wins against Ohio State’s offensive line are likely to be few and far between.
Down the field: Pick your poison?
The most frightening part of the Buckeyes’ win over Texas might have been that the most frightening player on the field, freaky freshman wideout Jeremiah Smith, played virtually no role in it. Coming off a couple of blockbuster performances against Tennessee and Oregon, Smith was a nonfactor against the Longhorns, finishing with 1 catch for 3 yards. And even to earn that much he had to break 2 tackles behind the line of scrimmage.
That was by design, part of a determined and successful effort by Texas’ secondary to funnel everything to Ohio State’s other wideouts, Emeka Egbuka and Carnell Tate. The results were as plodding as the ‘Horns could have realistically hoped for: Between them, Egbuka and Tate hauled in 12 catches for 138 yards and 9 first downs, but with no touchdowns or gains of 20+ yards. After achieving liftoff in the first 2 rounds, the only explosive play OSU’s offense managed in the semifinal was a fluke — a screen pass to TreVeyon Henderson that caught Texas with its pants down just before halftime, allowing Henderson to cruise untouched for the easiest 75-yard touchdown of his life. Otherwise, the “Anyone But #4” plan was a success, limiting the Buckeyes to 295 total yards on 5.3 per play minus Henderson’s free jaunt.
Notre Dame’s plan for corralling Smith will probably not look exactly like Texas’. The Longhorns were already an overwhelmingly zone-coverage outfit as a rule, while Notre Dame’s scheme skews heavily toward man-to-man. It’s worked for them: The Irish’s outside corners, sophomore Christian Gray and true freshman Leonard Moore, have been bankable enough as first-year starters that Benjamin Morrison, an aspiring first-rounder, has hardly been missed since suffering a season-ending hip injury in the 6th game. The young ‘uns have been dynamite in the Playoff, clamping down on Indiana and Georgia and holding Penn State’s wideouts to 0 receptions in the Orange Bowl. And Moore, in particular, has the makings of a rising star.
But let’s be honest: The idea of trusting any current college defender on an island against Smith – or Egbuka, for that matter – is wishful thinking. Gray and Moore are good but gettable; they’ve given up 5 touchdowns between them as well as a handful of big plays, including a 67-yard bomb to Georgia’s Arian Smith in the Sugar Bowl. (Although that gain was mitigated, memorably, by a penalty against an over-exuberant UGA walk-on for colliding with an official on the sideline; the Bulldogs were forced to settle for a field goal and got little else from their wide receivers the rest of the afternoon.) No one they’ve faced to date has prepared them for Ohio State’s NFL-ready fleet, individually or as a group. On that note, a key matchup to watch will be Egbuka in the slot vs. nickel corner Jordan Clark, who can make everyone else’s job a whole lot easier by taking up residence in Egbuka’s hip pocket. No matter what Golden draws up, though, safeties Xavier Watts (a 2-time All-American) and Adon Shuler are going to have their hands full keeping the lid on.
On 3rd down: Can the Irish get off the field?
The individual matchups may favor the Buckeyes, but before you prepare the fire extinguishers for Notre Dame’s defense, take another look at the tale of the tape. Statistically the Irish stack up just fine. There are two categories, specifically, where they enjoy a clear edge that they need to bear out on Monday night: Takeaways and 3rd-down conversions.
Golden’s unit has thrived on forcing turnovers, generating an FBS-best 32 takeaways on the season (19 interceptions, 13 fumbles). The only game in which Notre Dame has put up a goose egg in the takeaway column is the one it lost, the Week 2 ambush from Northern Illinois. The Irish were -2 in turnover margin against the Huskies, the last time they’d finish in the red until the Orange Bowl, where they finished -1 after having a couple of apparent INTs wiped out due to penalties. (The first of which was a justifiable call, the second … don’t get me started.) Meanwhile, the pick that actually stood against Penn State was the decisive play of the game, a claim you could also make for RJ Oben’s strip sack against Georgia. They could certainly use at least 1 big, momentum-swinging play in that vein against Ohio State, whether it’s to set up a score or prevent one.
Third-down conversions are less dramatic, but Notre Dame is elite at preventing them: Opponents have converted just a tick below 30% for the season, and just 25.7% in the CFP. Georgia (2-for-12) and Penn State (3-for-11) both had a miserable time on money downs. Sustaining such low, low rates against the Buckeyes almost certainly depends on keeping them in 3rd-and-long, where their conversion rate falls off a cliff. On 3rd-and-6 or less to go, Ohio State has converted just shy of 50% of its attempts, with roughly similar success rushing and passing; on 3rd-and-7 or longer, that rate plummets to a dismal 22.4% as the play-calling becomes 1-dimensional. Altogether, the offense hasn’t converted 50% of its 3rd downs in a game since Week 10, when it finished 6-for-12 in a 20-13 win at Penn State.
Special teams, injuries and other vagaries
Notre Dame ranked dead last in the FBS in field-goal percentage in the regular season, connecting on just 8-of-18 attempts (44.4%) through the first 12 games. That number came with a big asterisk, however, due to a lingering groin injury to the Fighting Irish’s primary kicker, South Carolina transfer Mitch Jeter. In the postseason, Jeter has been healthy and on-target, hitting 7-of-8 attempts overall and 6-of-6 from 40+ yards in Playoff games – a run that includes the most clutch kick of his life, a 41-yard game-winner in the dying seconds of the Orange Bowl.
His Ohio State counterpart, sophomore Jayden Fielding, has been mostly reliable, hitting 11-of-15 on the season and 6-of-7 from 40+ yards. The exception was the 1 game actually decided by a field goal: The loss to Michigan, in which Fielding missed twice from 38 and 34 yards in an eventual 3-point defeat. If either side is lining an attempt from long range, it’s likely an act of desperation: Both offenses are relatively aggressive on 4th down, and each kicker’s only attempt from beyond 50 yards this season was an end-of-half miss.
There is potential for fireworks in the return game via Notre Dame’s Jayden Harrison, whose 98-yard kickoff return TD against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl put the Irish in the driver’s seat for the rest of that game, and Caleb Downs, whose 79-yard punt return TD against Indiana sparked the Buckeyes’ second-half onslaught against the Hoosiers. Both Harrison (a transfer from Marshall) and Downs (Alabama) also had kickoff/punt returns TDs at their previous schools.
Notre Dame has excelled at blocking kicks, tying for the national lead with 6 combined blocks — of field goals, PATs, and punts — on the year. Half of that total has been credited to 6-7 freshman Bryce Young, a future edge-rushing star who has already found a way to put his length to good use in his first year on campus. For what it’s worth, efficiency guru Brian Fremeau’s special teams page rates the Fighting Irish’s kickoff unit as the best in the FBS, while Ohio State’s kickoff return unit is the nation’s worst; in real-time, that’s likely to manifest in the most boring possible fashion, ie touchbacks and fair catches.
Neither team is at full capacity at this late date: At least 2 potential first-rounders, Ohio State OL Josh Simmons and Notre Dame DB Benjamin Morrison Jr., will be spectators, as they’ve been for the majority of the season. Overall, though, anxiety on the injury front is much higher for Notre Dame. Ohio State’s only notable casualties, Simmons (knee) and fellow OL Seth McLaughlin (Achilles), have both been on the shelf for months, giving the reshuffled o-line plenty of time to gel in their absence. The OSU defense, meanwhile, is fully intact.
Notre Dame’s injuries are fresher, on both sides of the ball. The Irish lost their best defensive lineman, Rylie Mills, in the first-round win over Indiana, as well as starting offensive linemen Anthonie Knapp and Rocco Spindler, in the first half of the win over Penn State. Knapp has been ruled out for Monday night with a high ankle sprain; Spindler is questionable. So is the Irish’s leading receiver in the regular season, Clemson transfer Beaux Collins, who barely played in the Orange Bowl due to a calf strain and remains TBD. For a unit that hasn’t introduced a new starter on offense since late October, every domino is worth keeping an eye on.
Bottom line
No one expected the Fighting Irish to make it this far, and to get here they’ve had to exorcise some well-documented demons over the past few weeks. It’s no exaggeration to say their triumphs over Georgia and Penn State are the 2 biggest wins by any Notre Dame team in 30 years – as of New Year’s Day, that’s how long it had been since Notre Dame’s last win in a “major” bowl game, however you choose to define it, a losing streak that has defined the program for the better part of two generations.
Most of that time the Irish spent in the wilderness, fading from national relevance; on the rare occasion that they reappeared, under Brian Kelly, they were promptly reminded of just how much ground they’d lost.
In 3 appearances in the BCS Championship Game (2012) and Playoff semifinals (2018, 2020), they arrived as huge underdogs and were outscored by a combined 9 touchdowns in the first half alone. Kelly didn’t believe the gap could be closed anytime soon, or at least was tired of being the guy tasked with closing it, infamously defending his 2022 departure for LSU by saying “I want to be in an environment where I have the resources to win a national championship.”
Obviously, that line has aged poorly. Neither Notre Dame’s resources nor overall talent level have substantially changed since Kelly said it, but with 3 CFP wins in as many weeks, suddenly the Irish’s reputation for high-stakes meltdowns has. Regardless of what happens in the title game, the ’24 Irish have fully justified their presence by passing multiple tests that the ’12, ’18 and ’20 teams never even had to face.
They’ve won 13 straight; they’re elite on defense; they’re as experienced as it gets at this level. (Not for nothing, they also matched Ohio State blow-for-blow in a razor-thin, 17-14 loss last year in South Bend, a game decided at literally the last second.) Marcus Freeman, once a relatively obscure figure who started 0-3 in his first 3 games as a head coach, is on the cusp of breaking into the elite tier of his profession at age 39. The opportunity is too big to treat it as playing with house money. But it’s not “now or never,” either.
Assuming the score is remotely competitive, for once there is no danger of a high-profile loss triggering a fresh round of existential angst about the state of the program.
Ryan Day has no such luxury, nor should he. Part of the deal of being the head coach at Ohio State is that every loss is a fresh source of angst, the big ones most of all. The Buckeyes have had more than there fair share of them in the decade since their last national title, with increasingly few big wins post-pandemic to keep the critics at bay. Prior to last month, the Buckeyes hadn’t won a CFP game since 2020, and still haven’t beaten Michigan since 2019, Day’s first season in the big chair.
Not that he’s in any danger of being thrust back on the hot seat if they don’t seal the deal on Monday night. The dominance of the Playoff run to this point has restored most (if not all) of the goodwill that was squandered against the Wolverines. But blowing this opportunity, with this roster, after proving definitively through the first 3 rounds that this team’s ceiling really is as high as the $20 million price tag implies, will not be met with a chorus of “good job, good effort.” The Buckeyes paid for championship-or-bust, and they’re 60 minutes away from getting their money’s worth. For Day’s sake, I don’t even want to think about what the next 12 months will look like if the final word in this alternately maddening/magical journey is bust.
Prediction: • Ohio State 31 | Notre Dame 16