With each College Football Playoff victory, Ohio State keeps proving it’s one of the nation’s premier teams, no matter its seed.
Jack Sawyer’s strip-sack and touchdown secures Buckeyes victory in Cotton Bowl and leaves Texas stunned.
Ohio State vs. Notre Dame will be a matchup of teams that lost headscratching games in the regular season, before each righted itself.
ARLINGTON, Texas – The monstrous video board inside AT&T Stadium showed a Texas fan at a loss for words, unable to accept what she’d just seen.
Finally, she spoke.
“Holy (expletive),” she said, in a daze, while Ohio State fans celebrated.
That just happened.
A Texas drive that reached the 1-yard line ended in a Buckeyes touchdown going the other direction.
Game over.
Ohio State to the national championship game.
Texas to the offseason.
The Buckeyes didn’t make this 28-14 Cotton Bowl victory easy on themselves, but Jack Sawyer removed them from harm’s way with a strip-sack of Quinn Ewers late in the fourth quarter.
Sawyer scooped up the pigskin, rumbled 83 yards, took away Texas’ chance to tie the game, and secured the victory for Ohio State.
Holy crapola.
Ohio State shows mettle, even as juggernaut doesn’t show up
No juggernaut showed up in this College Football Playoff semifinal, just a team that showed enough fourth-quarter mettle to turn back Texas.
In a 12-team playoff that required Ohio State to win four games to claim the crown, the Buckeyes would need to win a game without their best fastball.
This was it.
Survive. Advance. Not all victories are meant for the Louvre.
Ohio State’s first two playoff triumphs became gold stars that repositioned the Buckeyes into front-runner status.
This takedown of Texas stood as no golden performance, but it put another check in a box.
Buckeyes stand tall in Cotton Bowl fourth quarter
Quinshon Judkins put an index finger to his lips after scoring the go-ahead touchdown on a fourth quarter run.
Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. Texas had one final counterpunch in it.
Helped by two Ohio State pass interference penalties, Texas stood 3 feet from a game-tying score. Ohio State held the line on first down, before Texas called a risky toss sweep on second down that the Buckeyes blew up for a 7-yard loss. Following a third-down incompletion, Texas’ season came down to Ewers needing to complete the biggest pass of his career.
He never got the pass off. Sawyer made sure of that.
Notre Dame ought to take encouragement from this night. The Irish could hang with this Buckeyes team in the national championship game. Buckeyes fans, though, should take solace that Ohio State produced enough key plays in timely moments to survive one of the nation’s elite defenses.
Yeah, this wasn’t the same Ohio State team that stomped Tennessee or blasted Oregon, but, shush, because the Buckeyes prevailed against an opponent that just would not go away.
Never mind the Longhorns’ superior seeding, this is the result you expected if you’ve watched the Buckeyes in the postseason – just maybe not the way you expected it.
The menacing monster that showed up in the CFP’s first two rounds never showed his face here. In his place emerged a Buckeyes squad that had an answer each time Texas tied the game.
Ohio State endured drive-killing penalties and a Will Howard interception.
In a stunning loss to Michigan six weeks ago, Howard threw a second interception. Not this time. Instead, he sprinted 18 yards on a fourth-down draw that set up Judkins’ go-ahead score.
Sawyer handled the rest.
As the final seconds ticked off, Sawyer and coach Ryan Day celebrated on the sideline. Day patted Sawyer on the face, and the big defensive lineman, having recovered his breath from his long dash, smiled.
Holy moly, Buckeyes, you’re off to Atlanta.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer. Subscribe to read all of his columns.
