Sports: College Football, The Finals

It will be Ohio State vs. Notre Dame in the NCAA College Football Championship game. Both teams won hard fought semifinal games over Texas and Penn St. respectively. Both games were similar in several ways. Both had huge turnovers near the end of the game that allowed Notre Dame the opportunity to win the game and sealed the victory for Ohio St. The favorites won both games but both offenses especially Ohio States, had more trouble moving the ball than was expected. In my preview of the Penn St.-Notre Dame game I wrote that the team that ran the ball better would win the game. Penn St. ran the ball 26 times for 141 yards in the first half and led 10-3. They drove 90 yards for their touchdown on 15 plays. Thirteen of those fifteen plays were running plays. When the 2nd half started James (I Prefer Balance Over Winning) Franklin was quoted as saying he wanted a more balanced attack and get his quarterback more involved in the game. The question becomes why? I guess Franklin has never heard of that old football adage of keep doing the same thing until they stop it. They only tried 16 running plays in the 2nd half for 63 yards. In fact, on the fateful last possession of Penn St., the first play was a nice 13 yard run by Nicholas Singleton. Penn St. had all of its timeouts left. It would have been possible to run the ball into position for a field goal. Penn St. passed on the very next play and Notre Dame picked it off to set up the game winning field goal. I feel a little sorry for Penn St. fans, although they know one thing with 100% certainty, as long as James Franklin is the head coach, Penn St. will never win a Big Ten Championship, let alone a National Championship. I think they are stuck with him into the early 2030’s. The Ohio State-Texas game had as many key moments as the rest of the playoff games combined. Ohio States early offensive momentum was throttled by an unnecessary penalty by TreVeyon Henderson. This was the beginning of many offensive penalties that would stop Ohio St. drives. Texas got 2 huge breaks when they fumbled the ball twice within a span of 5 minutes but recovered both of them. It looked for certain that the 1st half was going to end in a 7-7 tie. Texas allowed Ohio State to score on a 75 yard screen pass with 29 seconds left in the half to send Ohio State to a 14-7 lead. This was the biggest play of the playoff season so far. It looked like Ohio St. was going to continue that momentum when they started to move the ball at the start of the 2nd half. Will Howard threw an interception that ended that very quickly. Texas had tied the score 14-14 when Ohio St. started their long 88 yard 13 play touchdown drive. The big play of the drive was Will Howards fourth and 2 quarterback designed run, where he would have scored if he had not just fallen down on the 15 yard line. Texas drove right down the field on their ensuing drive and had 1st and goal at the 1. After failing to move the ball on a run up the middle, Texas tried an ill advised pitch play and loss 7 yards. This eventually set up the 4th downplay that resulted in a scoop and score for OSU and the game was over. It set up the meeting between two Midwest power houses on January 20th.

Ohio St. right now is a 7.5 to 9.5 favorite to win the game. I think they will win but I am not too sure they will cover the spread. What will Notre Dame have to do in order to pull off the upset. First, they are going to have to revive their running game. Against Georgia they ran for 151 yards and Penn St. a paltry 116 yards. This from a team that averaged 210 yards per game during the season. They need to run the football and control the clock to keep Ohio State’s offense off the field. It will be interesting to see if Notre Dame employs the same defensive strategy as Texas, playing a lot of deep zone and super covering wide receiver Jeremiah Smith. I think Ohio St. adjusted to this defense really well. It was all the penalties in the 1st half that derailed the Buckeye offense. Notre Dame needs to play a clean game and win the turnover battle. Will they be able to get a special team’s touchdown like they did against Georgia? All of these things need to happen if Notre Dame is going to pull out the victory. Ohio St. has too many offensive weapons and certainly their defense is far from chopped liver. Ohio St. still needs to continue the philosophy pass first and run later. Their wide receiver corps is just about unstoppable as proven by Carnell Tate’s performance of 7 receptions for 87 yards when Texas overloaded on Smith. No one has been able to stop Ohio St. in the playoffs. Ohio St. did stop themselves in the Texas game and Texas did slow them down, but it still was not good enough to win the football game. Notre Dame will have to do more than that if they are going to win. Ohio St will prevail, but it will be a battle royale. Monday cannot come soon enough. A great college playoff season should come to an end with a great championship game.