Joel Klatt
Lead College Football Analyst
What an incredible couple of days for college football that was.
Both the Orange Bowl and the Cotton Bowl were incredible. Notre Dame is back in the title game for the first time in 12 years after its last-second win over Penn State. Meanwhile, Ohio State has a chance to win its first title in 10 years after taking down Texas — making a huge goal-line stand before Jack Sawyer’s scoop-and-score sealed the game. That was also an epic game and one we’ve been hoping for.
This College Football Playoff has over-delivered.
Before we preview the last game of the year, let’s share my takeaways from the semifinals.
Texas’ fantastic effort wasn’t enough.
Texas did what it needed to do against Ohio State in a game that I thought offered a narrow path to win. Ohio State was playing great coming into this game. It was like a supernova of a team through its first two CFP games. It was going to take a specific game plan and path from Texas to win that game.
The Longhorns were right there, traveling the correct path. The Buckeyes didn’t play too well either — with their offense failing to execute at the level they did in the previous two games and making costly penalties — but Texas had a legitimate shot at winning. I thought Texas was going to pull off the upset at one point in the fourth quarter. That’s how close it was. Texas survived the first quarter — like I said it needed to do — after Ohio State got an early score.
Texas wound up making critical mistakes at the wrong time, though. There were two obvious ones for the Longhorns. They didn’t score any points when they were at the 1-yard line and trailing 21-14 in the fourth quarter, and they allowed Buckeyes RB TreVeyon Henderson to take a screen pass 75 yards for a touchdown seconds before halftime.
Let’s start with the Henderson touchdown. Texas didn’t need to play prevent-defense there, but it shouldn’t have manipulated its own structure to create a vulnerability. Texas is going to watch that film and wonder why it blitzed a corner on that play, with the screen pass going right to that spot.
Texas was nearly able to overcome that crucial mistake. QB Will Howard wasn’t playing well, and Ohio State’s game plan wasn’t dynamic, in large part because of how Texas played. Texas’ defensive line and secondary were great.
Ohio State began to show some of what I call “eye candy” plays in the fourth quarter, particularly on its game-winning touchdown drive. Yet, Texas had responded all game long with QB Quinn Ewers making some excellent plays. The Longhorns were doing that again after the Buckeyes went up 21-14, and it seemed inevitable that they’d tie the game.
Texas had to score when it got to the 1-yard line. However, it went up against the best goal line defense in college football. We saw what it did at crucial points in its games against Oregon, Nebraska and Penn State. That’s the backdrop you have to watch Texas’ goal-line series, as that’s how the offensive game plan was built. Steve Sarkisian built the game plan with those plays in mind. All three of those teams couldn’t run the ball between the tackles and score a touchdown.
So, you could tell Texas’ game plan was to get the ball on the outside at that moment. It called a slant and a run on the perimeter with an interior run sandwiched between those two plays. The sweep play on second-and-goal is the one everyone’s going to be talking about. Safety Caleb Downs made a great play to blow it up, pushing Texas outside the 5-yard line. Everyone seemed to hate that play call, but the film Sarkisian watched suggested that Texas couldn’t run the ball up the gut on two straight plays.
That said, I despise toss sweeps in short-yardage situations. The ball goes five yards back intentionally. A play call like that is tough to swallow. In that situation, it’s even tougher. So, I didn’t like the call, but I understood it.
Ohio State beats Texas to advance to the National Championship
Jack Sawyer will never have to pay for anything in Columbus ever again.
Ohio State still needed to make two more stops to prevent Texas from tying the game in the final minutes. After forcing an incompletion on third down, “Captain Jack” saved the day for Ohio State with his strip sack and 83-yard touchdown return on fourth-and-goal.
I thought Sawyer’s interception at the goal line against Michigan was going to be an epic moment, but Ohio State didn’t win the game. So, Sawyer finally gets his moment — and it came in the CFP semifinals. That was an incredible pass rush. That was a play that no one will ever forget in Columbus or in all of college football for a long time.
I can’t remember a defensive play that impactful and made by one guy. There might be some NFL ones, but that was such a special play and moment from the Ohio kid. He was a huge piece of Ohio State’s 2021 recruiting class. Everyone in Columbus will tell you that.
Sawyer is a great player and has been a great human in my meetings with him, so I’m happy for him that he had that moment.
The blueprint is there to slow down Ohio State’s offense.
As I mentioned earlier, Ohio State’s underwhelming execution certainly gave Texas a chance to win that game. Texas did some great things defensively as well, but some of Ohio State’s offensive woes were its own doing. I’ve been saying this since I was on the call for the Michigan game, but when Ohio State has a lack of creativity offensively, it can struggle. It’s not a great running or drop-back passing team.
Howard is at his best when Ohio State gets the ball to its playmakers in space. He’s not a great drop-back passer, though, and we saw that against a great Texas secondary. He’s going to face an excellent secondary in the title game. I thought Texas’ decision to double superstar wideout Jeremiah Smith was brilliant too, so Notre Dame has reasonable hope that a version of this can play out in the title game.
Texas will be just fine.
The way that game ended might feel devastating for Texas, but Sarkisian has the program on the rise. It made it to the semifinals for a second straight year, and Sarkisian is not going anywhere anytime soon.
Ewers said prior to the game that he expects to enter the 2025 NFL Draft, so there will be a quarterback change in Austin. But Arch Manning will take over, and Texas has put itself into the top echelon of the SEC. I don’t see the Longhorns taking any steps backward.
Notre Dame is a good situational football team.
The Fighting Irish seem to always make the right plays at the right time. That’s a credit to their head coach, Marcus Freeman. He has done such a good job coaching this team. They execute and don’t beat themselves.
In a way, they remind me of those New England Patriots teams that did similar things. Sure, they don’t have a Tom Brady or Rob Gronkowski, but they do a lot of things well and there’s not a real weak link in the chain (more on that later). They were excellent on third down, going 11 of 17, while Penn State went 3 of 11. At the end of the first half, Notre Dame executed what they needed to in order to get three more points.
Then, of course, there was the end-of-game situation. Notre Dame executed well in the final minutes, and Penn State didn’t. All of these games are going to come down to a play or two. Notre Dame made those plays. Penn State didn’t.
Freeman is an incredible coach. Notre Dame is a team that people love to hate for a lot of reasons, but he has made Notre Dame a likeable product with the way he handles his business.
Drew Allar‘s interception was brutal, but he wasn’t all to blame for it.
It was such a strain for both teams to move the ball, and I loved every second of it. Penn State’s defense did what it needed to do, holding Notre Dame to fewer than three yards per carry for the first time all season. Both sides were giving max effort.
Like Texas, Penn State made two crucial mistakes too many. Unlike Texas, though, Penn State’s mistakes weren’t from coaching decisions. A Penn State defender initially slipped in coverage on Jaden Greathouse’s game-tying touchdown in the fourth quarter, and Allar threw the interception that allowed Notre Dame to win the game.
Before I dive into that Allar interception, I just want to say that this was a really successful year for Penn State. It had a chance late in the game to clinch a spot in the national championship. All Penn State fans would’ve taken that scenario at the start of the season. The season ended in heartbreak, but that’s going to be the new reality for nearly every contender in the expanded CFP era.
As for the interception, Allar is going to live with that mistake for the rest of his life. I feel bad for him in that sense. I have never played in a game of that magnitude, but I’ve thrown interceptions that will haunt me forever.
Notre Dame wins 27-24 over Penn State with a game-winning field goal
Allar is also going to get too much of the blame. I’m not going to try and be an apologist for Allar, because you can’t blindly throw a ball over the middle like that late in a game. That’s the No. 1 cardinal sin of quarterbacking. Just saying you can’t throw the ball over the middle like that, though, doesn’t do the play justice. The play had Allar going back toward the middle of the field in his progression. Allar said he was trying to dirt at his receiver’s feet after the first two progressions weren’t there, but he took the bullet like a man when he spoke to reporters after the game.
Allar did that, and the play wasn’t totally his fault. It was a progression read against man coverage. For anyone who’s ever played the position, when you have to throw the ball downfield to your third read, very rarely are you going to be on platform. Generally, something will be in the quarterback’s lap at that moment, and he’s trying to throw a dig or in route. That’s an uber–aggressive play call.
From Penn State’s perspective, it had to put trust in its receivers that they would win their routes. You can’t always see it and you can’t wait to see it. QBs have to be on time and on target. Allar was decently on time and on target, but it was still picked. Notre Dame’s Christian Gray made an incredible play, and the receiver ran an atrocious route.
When you run a deep in route, you have to make the defensive back feel like you’re going vertical. If he doesn’t feel like you’re going vertical, it’s going to be so tough to get back inside of him and cross his face to get the ball. That didn’t happen on that play. Gray sensed that the receiver wasn’t going anywhere, allowing him to get to the ball before the receiver was out of his cut.
Allar showed good leadership by taking accountability for that play, and that’s what quarterbacks are supposed to do. When we lose, it’s me. When we win, it’s me.
Notre Dame beats Penn State 27-24, Advances to CFP Final
Penn State’s weak link was exposed.
In the lead up to the game, I mentioned how Penn State’s receivers were going to have to make a play at some point. In fact, James Franklin has told me that what held this team back in the past is that it doesn’t have that wide receiver it can rely on in a big situation. Well, Penn State’s wide receivers had zero catches in the Orange Bowl. They became the first non-service academy to have a game this year when a wide receiver didn’t have a single catch.
Franklin knew this was the weak link. He tried to address it in the transfer portal. There were moments during the season where Penn State’s receivers made big plays, but they never felt reliable.
It showed on the most critical play of Penn State’s season, too. That’s a tough pill to swallow for the Nittany Lions.
Joel Klatt is FOX Sports’ lead college football game analyst and the host of the podcast “The Joel Klatt Show.” Follow him at @joelklatt and subscribe to the “Joel Klatt Show” on YouTube.
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