The most anticipated rematch of the College Football Playoff lasted less than a half. Ohio State scored on six of its first seven possessions. The Buckeyes led 34-0 before Oregon had settled into the game. They beat the nation’s top-ranked team 41-21 in the Rose Bowl on Wednesday. The dismantling sends Ohio State to the Cotton Bowl semifinal and ends the Ducks’ perfect season.
KEY POINTS
- Ohio State led 34-0 in the second quarter. Oregon’s 14-game winning streak and unbeaten season ended in Pasadena.
- Will Howard threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns. Freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith caught seven passes for 187 yards and two scores.
- The Buckeyes sacked Dillon Gabriel eight times. They had failed to sack him at all in the October meeting.
Rose Bowl: a first half that settled everything
Smith opened the scoring with a 45-yard touchdown in the first two minutes. He added a 43-yard score in the second quarter. By then, Ohio State’s offence looked unstoppable. Emeka Egbuka caught a touchdown of his own. TreVeyon Henderson broke a 66-yard touchdown run. He finished with 94 yards and two scores. The Buckeyes piled up points so quickly that Oregon’s offence spent most of the half chasing a game that was already gone.
Howard finished 17 of 26 for 319 yards with no turnovers. The performance came five weeks after the lowest moment of Ohio State’s season. The home loss to Michigan had fans questioning everything about the program. Smith’s seven catches for 187 yards drew post-game praise even from the losing coach. The 19-year-old looked ready for the NFL, the coach said. He caught 161 of those yards in the first half.
Background and context
The rout completed a month-long transformation. On Nov. 30, Ohio State had lost at home to an unranked Michigan team for the fourth straight year. The defeat had much of the sport assuming coach Ryan Day’s tenure was ending. Given a playoff reprieve instead, the Buckeyes beat Tennessee 42-17 in the first round. They then produced the most complete performance of the postseason against the nation’s only unbeaten team. Oregon, meanwhile, had beaten everyone on its schedule, including these Buckeyes. Its 14-game winning streak, the longest in the country, ended with its defence surrendering touchdowns on drive after drive before the halftime show had even begun.
The scale of the defensive reversal told the strategic story. In October, Ohio State never sacked Gabriel. On Wednesday they got to him eight times. Linebacker Cody Simon recorded 11 tackles and two sacks. Gabriel still threw for 299 yards and two touchdowns, both to Traeshon Holden. But Oregon’s scores came with the outcome decided. Its ground game — the engine of its unbeaten run through the Big Ten — never travelled.
For Oregon, the loss closes a first season in the Big Ten that brought a conference title and a No. 1 seed. But the program still waits for its first national championship. For the playoff itself, the result sharpened the seeding debate. The unbeaten top seed, coming off a bye, lost to a team that had played a first-round game. It was the second straight year a rested favourite fell at this stage.
What happens next
Ohio State (12-2) advances to the Cotton Bowl on Jan. 10 against Texas. Texas survived Arizona State in double overtime in the Peach Bowl earlier Wednesday. It is a semifinal between the two teams many oddsmakers rated most talented in the field. They arrived by opposite routes — Texas by escape, Ohio State by demolition.
If the Buckeyes reproduce anything like Wednesday’s first half, the national championship game on Jan. 20 in Atlanta will have an obvious favourite.
Sources: Rose Bowl Game and College Football Playoff official statistics; Ohio State and Oregon athletics reports.
