By Rob Hunt
ARLINGTON, Texas – The new hats they wore said UNDISPUTED NATIONAL CHAMPIONS. The Ohio State Buckeyes, at the end of the first College Football Playoff, added another word Monday night. They earned perhaps the most improbable national championship in the history of the game with a resounding 42-20 victory over the second-ranked Oregon Ducks.
Several factors contributed to making this such a seemingly impossible achievement for the Buckeyes (14-1).
They were playing with a former third-string quarterback, Cardale Jones, who was making just his third career start, while Oregon boasted this season’s Heisman Trophy winner and three-year starter Marcus Mariota.
They turned the ball over four times Monday, compared to just once by Oregon. Before Monday night, teams that had committed more turnovers in championship bowl games since the 1968 season had a record of 2-20. Oregon scored a total of just 10 points off those turnovers.
Mariota was the third consecutive Heisman finalist the Buckeyes had to face in three postseason games.
Despite this conspiracy of circumstances working against Ohio State, Jones capped off his unique run through three postseason victories and sophomore running back Ezekiel Elliott had a record setting 246-yard, four-touchdown night to offset the mistakes.
“To have four turnovers and still beat a team like that 42-20, incredible experience,” Coach Urban Meyer said after the game. “I don’t want to get overdramatic, but it’s as improved a football team, and I’ve watched football for a long time, from game one to game 15. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
While Jones has been getting most of the attention during the Buckeyes run to a national title, it was Elliott’s dominant running of the football that has been the driving force for Ohio State.
Elliott had his third straight game with over 200 yards rushing, extending his school-record streak. He finished with 1,878 yards, the second-best season in Ohio State history. During Monday’s title game, Elliott passed former Buckeye two-time Heisman winner Archie Griffin and 1980s standout Keith Byars. He trails Eddie George’s 1995 Heisman Trophy winning season total of 1,927.
In the last three games of the season, Elliott gained 696 yards on 76 carries, an average of 9.16 per rush, and scored eight touchdowns.
While most of the attention has been focused on the sudden, remarkable emergence of Jones, Elliott was making play after play.
First, against Wisconsin, he upstaged Heisman finalist Melvin Gordon by gaining 220 yards (150 by halftime) on 20 carries and scoring a pair of touchdowns, including an 81-yard run.
Then against the vaunted Alabama Crimson Tide, ranked number one in the country, Elliott ran for 230 yards on 20 carries and two more touchdowns, including an 85-yard gallop that sealed the game late in the fourth quarter.
Again, Elliott had outplayed another Heisman finalist as Alabama’s Amari Cooper was held in check with just 71 yards on nine catches.
Monday night in Arlington, it was Mariota’s turn to take a back seat to Elliott’s heroics.
Although it didn’t look that way at the outset of the game.
The Buckeyes had struggled to get anything going on their first possession, but following an Oregon punt that pinned Ohio State back at its own three-yard line, Jones and Elliott went to work.
First, Jones hit Corey Smith and Jalin Marshall with back-to-back 26-yard pass plays, the former to convert a third down, and the Buckeyes were in Oregon territory. Six plays later, Elliott, held in check up to that point, finally burst through an opening in the middle of the line and streaked 33 yards for the tying touchdown.
The 97-yard drive was Ohio State’s second longest scoring drive of the season.
After the Buckeye defense forced another Oregon punt, Elliott went to work and this time it was Jones who capitalized.
A pair of runs by Elliott of six and 17 yards helped get Ohio State down to the one-yard line, where Jones found Nick Vannett for the one-yard scoring strike and the Buckeyes had grabbed their first lead of the game, one they would not relinquish.
For the remainder of the game, it was Elliott that Ohio State repeatedly turned to when it needed a play while Oregon was unable to capitalize on its opportunities.
With the Ducks cutting what was once a 14-point deficit to one point, 21-20 with 6:39 to go in the third quarter, Meyer turned to Elliott to carry the majority of the load.
On Ohio State’s next drive, Elliott carried the ball six times for 44 yards, including a nine-yard touchdown, to extend the lead to 28-20 on the last play of the third quarter.
Despite being outscored 10-7 in the quarter, the Buckeyes dominated the time of possession in the period by a 13:08 to 1:52 margin. The Buckeye defense and Elliott took it from there.
With two more touchdown runs in the fourth quarter, Elliott’s 246 yards rushing and four rushing touchdowns surpassed the Ohio State bowl records of 235 yards and three touchdowns set by Raymont Harris in the 1993 Holiday Bowl against Brigham Young.
The story through the postseason had been the remarkable play of Jones, who started the season as a little- known third string quarterback. He completed 16 of 23 passes for 242 yards and a touchdown against Oregon. He did commit two turnovers with an interception and a lost fumble.
Jones moved up a step on the depth chart when Heisman candidate Braxton Miller was lost for the year with a right shoulder injury suffered during preseason practice. Jones then assumed the starting role when Miller’s backup, J.T. Barrett, who also became a Heisman candidate, fractured his right ankle during the team’s final game of the regular season against Michigan.
All Jones has done since was throw for 257 yards and three touchdowns against Wisconsin to win the Big Ten Championship game last month in his first start, and throw for 243 yards and another touchdown in the Sugar Bowl win over number one Alabama on New Year’s Day.
Jones recognized the odds that his team had overcome in winning the school’s eighth football national championship.
“Going back to late August, everybody counted us out when our Heisman Trophy quarterback went down,” he said after the victory. “Long story short, we weren’t supposed to be here. All the odds were stacked against us through the whole season, and for us to be sitting right here as national champs, it not only means a lot to me, but our community, Buckeye Nation, and our hometowns.”
Elliott, who earned Offensive Player of the Game honors, had also set a personal high with his 36 carries. He had anticipated the workload because of the game plan, but was feeling the effects.
“I definitely feel it now,” he said after the game. “But I knew going into the game that we wanted to run the ball. We knew that our offensive line was bigger and more physical than their defensive line, and we just had to punch them in the mouth. And the O-line, they came out, they played their butts off and they paved the way for me.”
Elliott’s late season surge and big stage dominance could lead him to be a front-runner for next season’s Heisman race. “It’s something you dream about as a kid when you’re playing NCAA football and you create your little player, and he wins the Heisman,” Elliott said. “Just thinking that I’m going to have the opportunity next year to compete for the Heisman, just, it means everything. I’m not going to change. I’m going to keep grinding. I’m going to do all I can to win it.”
