OSU absorbs Notre Dame's perfect start, fighting finish to win CFP title

Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard is sacked by Ohio State linebacker Sonny Styles. (Photo by AP Photo/Jacob Kupferman)

ATLANTA — What appeared to be a tone-setting opening drive for Notre Dame football ended up being something much different.

The 18-play, 75-yard touchdown drive, which finished with a one-yard run by quarterback Riley Leonard, simply wasn’t sustainable. The drive required Leonard to do too much and set unrealistic expectations for what the Irish offense could do moving forward against Ohio State.

On that opening drive, Leonard rushed nine times for 34 yards, including two third-down conversions and two fourth-down conversions, and he completed three of his four passes for 31 yards. Leonard went to the sideline and started puking after the drive. He later blamed it on landing on the ball a couple of times.

Whatever the reason for Leonard’s post-drive upchuck, he didn’t quite look sharp again until midway through the third quarter as the Irish offense faltered while Notre Dame’s defense looked incapable of slowing down an Ohio State offense that built a 24-point lead.

With the help of Leonard’s passing and big plays by wide receiver Jaden Greathouse, Notre Dame pulled the game within one possession in the fourth quarter but lost to the Buckeyes 34-23 in the CFP National Championship at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium.

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“That first drive we just came out and played Notre Dame football, took advantage of our match-ups when we had to,” Leonard said. “We just drove the ball down the field. We had to run the ball a little bit. Everything was just clicking.

“Then the next couple drives maybe I got relaxed a little bit, and I can’t let that happen. And I apologize to everybody for the way that I played after that drive in the second quarter because it’s unacceptable.

“These are things that aren’t necessarily physical but just like the mental side of things that I can’t make certain mistakes. I’ve just got to live with that and respond.”

Notre Dame (14-2) went backward on its second drive with a false start on wide receiver Beaux Collins, who Leonard missed a play earlier, and a holding by left tackle Charles Jagusah. The Irish punted after netting a loss of five yards in three official plays.

The third drive wasn’t much better. After Leonard rushed for five yards on first down, he missed wide receiver Kris Mitchell on second down. Then the Irish were forced to punt again after center Pat Coogan’s snap hit tight end Mitchell Evans while he was in motion in front of Leonard, which the Irish were fortunate enough to recover for a four-yard loss instead of a turnover.

“We couldn’t run Riley every play,” said Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman. “It’s not right for Riley, and it’s not going to sustain the success we needed offensively.

“We ran him a whole bunch that first series, and you look at the second series, we had two penalties which ended up forcing us to punt, and in the third series we had the miscommunication with the muffed snap, and that’s the end of the half.”

Meanwhile, Ohio State (14-2) scored touchdowns on its first three drives to build a 21-7 lead. The Irish offense ran just one play with 27 seconds left in the first half, and it trailed 28-7 by the time it got the ball again.

Notre Dame showed its desperation on its fourth drive, but only on fourth-and-2 with its punt team on the field. After a Leonard incompletion, a two-yard run by running back Jeremiyah Love and a six-yard Leonard pass to wide receiver Jordan Faison, the Irish tried some trickery to connect with Faison on fourth-and-2. Backup quarterback Steve Angeli took a direct snap with punter James Rendell lined up deep behind him, sprinted right and threw to Faison near the sideline. The usually reliable receiver couldn’t make a diving catch as the ball went through his hands.

That gave Ohio State the ball at the ND 33-yard line and set Ohio State up for its first non-touchdown. Jayden Fielding nailed a 46-yard field goal to give the Buckeyes their biggest lead of the game, 31-7, with 7

Then Notre Dame started to mount a comeback that seemed first an attempt to regain respectability and eventually turned into one the Buckeyes needed to respond to in order to end the threat of blowing the lead in the finale of the first 12-team College Football Playoff, which was attended by 77,660.

Notre Dame finally returned to the end zone with a 34-yard touchdown reception by Greathouse, who caught a short pass from Leonard and escaped two tackle attempts to scamper for the score. The Irish added a two-point conversion to cut the deficit to 31-15.

Ohio State was threatening to put the game away with a long catch and run by wide receiver Emeka Egbuka, who became Ohio State’s all-time leader in career receptions Monday, but linebacker Drayk Bowen punched the ball loose from Egbuka for a fumble that linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa recovered at Notre Dame’s own 21-yard line.

“It was just a mental shift in the game,” said Bowen, who finished with eight tackles. “We’re not gonna play timid, nervous, whatever you want to call it. We’re gonna go out and attack and the chips fall where they may, and we’re gonna have to live with that.

“But we weren’t gonna go out with them blowing us out. That just wasn’t an option. We knew something needed to change. We got it done as best we could. Obviously, the chips didn’t fall our way this time, but we left it all out there.”

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Notre Dame put together a 12-play, 70-yard drive to respond, but it ended without points. Leonard forced a throw to Greathouse on third-and-goal from the nine-yard line that wouldn’t have resulted in a touchdown if caught. Meanwhile, Love was swinging open on the same side of the field coming out of the backfield.

Freeman opted to run out kicker Mitch Jeter for a 27-yard field goal attempt, which would have cut Ohio State’s lead to 13. But Jeter missed the kick with it bouncing off the left upright of the goalpost. Even if Jeter made the kick, Notre Dame still would have needed two more touchdown drives to win.

“I just thought instead of being down 16, let’s try to go down 13,” Freeman said. “I know it’s still a two-score game, but you have a better probability of getting 14 points than you do 16 points.

“If it was a shorter fourth-and-goal situation, I probably would have gone for it, but I just felt fourth-an-nine was not a great chance for us to make that and decided to kick it, and we didn’t make it.”

Notre Dame’s defense forced Ohio State to punt for the first time on the ensuing drive, which kept Notre Dame’s long odds alive. Then when Leonard hit Greathouse for a 30-yard touchdown pass on a catch Greathouse made through a defensive pass interference penalty that was declined, and the Irish succeeded on another two-point conversion, Notre Dame’s comeback chances didn’t seem so far-fetched.

“It was just a matter of opportunities and knowing that we need our playmakers to make plays,” said Greathouse, who finished with six catches for 128 . “Whether we got the look that we wanted or not, we needed to put the ball in the air. Whenever the ball’s in the air, I think any one of us can go make a play, so that’s what we did.”

The Irish needed one more big play from it defense to keep hope alive, and they couldn’t have asked for a much better scenario that what unfolded. Ohio State faced third-and-11 from its own 34-yard line with 2:45 remaining in the game.

Defensive coordinator Al Golden dialed up a blitz and left just four defensive backs in coverage. The pressure never reached Ohio State quarterback Will Howard as he lofted a deep pass toward wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, who beat cornerback Christian Gray to get open, for a 56-yard completion and extinguished Notre Dame’s hopes.

“There’s 15 other calls I could have made,” said Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden. “We were kind of at the end of the rope in terms of a first down there is kind of it [game over] anyway. So, kid made a great throw and catch.

“I mean, obviously, hindsight, you always want to stop the play that everybody saw. But the kids’ have got to execute it, and they did. But we were kind of near the end in terms of we couldn’t allow another first down. So, we went the pressure route, and obviously 4 (Smith) made a great play.”

Fielding truly ended Notre Dame’s dream four plays with a 33-yard field goal to extend the lead to 34-23 with 26 seconds left in the game.

Notre Dame’s defense picked a terrible time for one of its worst performances of the season. Howard completed 17 of his 21 passes 81%) for 231 yards and two touchdowns. Egbuka, with six catches for 64 yards, led Ohio State’s wide receivers in receptions against Notre Dame for a third consecutive season. Smith finished with five catches for 88 yards, including a eight-yard touchdown for Ohio State’s first score of the game.

Ohio State averaged 5.2 yards per carry as an offense with running back Quinshon Judkins leading the way with 11 carries for 110 yards and two touchdowns. Judkins also caught a six-yard touchdown pass. The Buckeyes rushing total of 214 was the second-most allowed by the Irish all season only behind 222 by Navy.

Notre Dame’s own rushing game was ineffective. The Irish rushed 26 times for a net of 53 yards and one touchdown. Leonard, who finished 22-of-31 passing for 255 yards and two touchdowns, accounted for 17 of those carries, 40 of those yards and the touchdown. Running back Jadarian Price rushed three times for 13 yards. Love totaled three yards on four carries.

Offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock didn’t blame Love’s health for the lack of touches.

“I think he felt like he was in a position to really do his best and give it a try,” Denbrock said. “Unfortunately, probably had too many limited opportunities to really show how healthy he was today.”

The opportunities to play for a national championship haven’t come around often in the last couple of decades for Notre Dame. For it to be squandered after such a promising start will leave Irish players, coaches and fans feeling sick.

“I don’t think there’s really anything missing from our team this year,” Greathouse said. “We were just making a lot of mistakes that we usually don’t make. When you play another good team, that’s the outcome that you’re gonna get.

“If we had just minimized mistakes and kept ourselves ahead of the chains instead of getting behind the chains, it would have made our jobs a lot easier. That’s just how the game goes.”

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