Two top NFL prospects and one epic title game: When Caleb Williams and Olu Fashanu were high school teammates
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Heather Dinich, ESPN Senior Writer
WASHINGTON — With Olu Fashanu, it was the size.
That was the first thing former DeMatha Catholic High School offensive lineman Golden Israel-Achumba noticed when he saw his rival offensive lineman on the opposing sideline in 2018.
“I’m looking at Olu like, ‘Who is that guy?'” Israel-Achumba said of the now 6-foot-6, 317-pounder who is his friend and teammate at Penn State. “That guy’s huge. He’s not letting anything get by him.”
For Caleb Williams, it was the demeanor. Whether it was seeing him as a high school freshman in 2017 or as a USC star today, the way he carried himself stood out.
“I know his look on his face, I know the body language, the way he walks, the way his arms move, the ways his feet move,” Gonzaga College High School football coach Randy Trivers said. “It’s the way his shoulders, his posture … a lot of athletes under certain circumstances are going to be really, really good. But there’s few athletes under circumstances that can really consistently triumph and be good. There’s a fearlessness of failure.”
Not only did their 2018 Gonzaga football team defeat its biggest rival, DeMatha, to win the school’s first Washington Catholic Athletic Conference title in 16 years, but the Eagles did it in epic fashion. The dramatic championship game, which was highlighted by SportsCenter and Good Morning America, featured three touchdowns and three lead changes — in the final 29 seconds.
That 2018 team could again make history this spring as the only known high school team in at least the past 20 years to produce two top-five NFL draft picks in the same class. While most draft experts have Williams — USC’s starting quarterback and the reigning Heisman Trophy winner — as the No. 1 overall pick, many also have Fashanu as the top offensive lineman and the No. 5 overall pick. According to ESPN Stats & Information research, the most comparable high school duo would have been Alex Smith and Reggie Bush, who played together at Helix High in San Diego, but weren’t in the same draft class. Smith was No. 1 overall in 2005, while Bush was No. 2 in 2006.
But before they hear their names called in the draft, Williams and Fashanu both have College Football Playoff dreams to attend to, continuing this Saturday. Williams, coming off the worst performance of his college career in a 48-20 loss to Notre Dame, will look to bounce back against Utah, a team that beat the Trojans twice last year. Fashanu and Penn State head to Columbus to take on No. 3 Ohio State in a game that will go a long way toward determining Big Ten supremacy.
In July, Williams said being so close to the CFP last year and ultimately falling out of the top four on Selection Day frustrated and fueled him.
“It bothers me because I play for championships,” he said. “I don’t play for anything else.”
He and Fashanu have the high school history together to prove it.
WILLIAMS AND FASHANU have emerged in the national spotlight, but both left their prints all over Gonzaga, a 203-year-old private school located about four blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
The school’s football field is connected on one side by the red brick St. Aloysius Church and the U.S. Government Publishing Office on the other. The Eagles compete in one of the nation’s most elite high school football conferences, with its best teams annually producing some of the top collegiate players at the Power 5 level.
Virginia Tech running backs coach Elijah Brooks was the head coach at DeMatha when Williams was choosing where he would go to high school.
“Losing Caleb in the high school recruitment might have been my worst recruiting loss ever,” he said. “He had come to my camps for many years, and he was almost a shoo-in to come to DeMatha. When that didn’t happen, I knew we lost a talented player. But I had no idea he was gonna be this phenomenal. And he is exactly that.”
Sam Sweeney, then a junior at Gonzaga and a contender for starting quarterback, conceded he wasn’t thrilled a freshman quarterback came in and won the starting job. Sweeney and Williams had a good relationship. They were always together, going to meetings and extra film sessions, and training with the same personal quarterbacks coach — Chris Baucia, a DeMatha alum.
“It was very unique to me, just because you sit two years … waiting to be the starting quarterback and then you come your junior year, and this freshman shows up and you kind of question it,” said Sweeney, now a star lacrosse player at Penn State, “but now seeing what he’s done … it makes sense now.”
Trivers said it wasn’t a difficult decision to start Williams as a freshman.
“We had opportunities for him to show us his level of maturity in the meeting room,” Trivers said, “his level of maturity and toughness in the strength and conditioning program, his level of maturity and competence on the practice field. And when he was doing those things over and over again, it just became clear that, OK, this goes against what my norm would be with a freshman quarterback for sure, but this guy, that’s what he is. And he’s ready.”
While Williams had football tunnel vision from an early age, Fashanu was a basketball player who didn’t immerse himself in football until he was at Gonzaga. One of Fashanu’s former Gonzaga teammates, current Wake Forest offensive lineman Luke Petitbon, said all of the offensive lineman during the 2018 season were big, but Fashanu “was just bigger than all of us.”
“Gonzaga is a school where the athletes and regular students, everyone is such good friends,” he said, “so Olu would be with a friend who doesn’t play football and he’s like nine inches taller than him and outweighs him by 150 pounds, but it’s normal at Gonzaga, which makes it cool because it’s not just athletes in a clique hanging out with each other. It’s definitely funny seeing Olu next to people who are 5-foot-8 and 150 pounds.”
Petitbon said he first spotted Fashanu in the stands at Buchanan Football Field for the school’s annual cookout for freshmen. The freshmen football players had already reported, and Fashanu hadn’t even signed up yet.
“At the time he was probably like 6-foot-4, kind of skinny,” Petitbon said. “He’s not as big as he is now, but he was still a massive human being, and I talked to him. He never played football before.”
Fashanu signed up for freshman football, but it wasn’t until Petitbon’s junior year that they played side-by-side. During their senior year, Fashanu had moved to his current position at left tackle, and Petitbon was at right guard.
Petitbon, who said he is on a text chain with Fashanu and a few other former Gonzaga linemen, said they still laugh about going to Outback together in his hometown of Annapolis, Maryland, where “Olu would eat an ungodly amount of food.”
“The Outback appetizers are ginormous,” Petitbon said, “and Olu would eat an entire cheese fries and a Bloomin’ Onion, and a bunch of wings and then have a big steak afterwards.”
Multiple former teammates and coaches described Fashanu as a “gentle giant” who has continued to develop, including at Penn State. Trivers said Williams was “more refined” when he arrived at Gonzaga because he had more experiences leading up to high school, while Fashanu had potential “with a capital ‘P.'”
“You could see his body, he had good length and as a young kid, decent enough thickness to know this guy has a chance to be a big dude, but he was very green, very raw because he really had no football experience coming in,” Trivers said.
Gonzaga assistant coach Justin Young, who coached Fashanu on the offensive line during his freshman and sophomore seasons, has also been the team’s strength and conditioning coach. Young said Fashanu was “molding clay,” as far as improving his flexibility in the weight room, but knew from the start he was “a first-rounder based on his size and his potential.”
“To be honest and completely humble, we just assumed he would be this type of player because of his build, just a massive young man walking these hallways,” Young said. “… He didn’t come in at the strongest but he definitely attacked getting strong. He was definitely a four-year project, three-and-a-half year project as far as getting his flexibility where it needed to be. Caleb on the other hand, he’s different. He came in there prepared and ready, came to our morning workouts a freshman prepared and ready and in shape. He just attacks some of the hardest things we try to give our players and attacks them with a smile. He’s built for whatever. He just plays quarterback.”
IN ORDER TO make it to the WCAC title game, Gonzaga had to finish as one of the top four teams in the 10-team conference.
“No one thought we were gonna be good,” said Sweeney, then a receiver for Gonzaga. ” … We were written off from the start, even in the summer, and we just put our heads down and worked and used that as motivation.”
Gonzaga won its first six games, but stumbled down the stretch. The Eagles finished the regular-season with three losses, including a triple overtime loss to DeMatha, located about 11 miles away from the heart of the nation’s capital. The storied history between the two all-boys Catholic schools is comparable to “a miniature Ohio State versus Michigan,” said Wolverines defensive back Josh Wallace, who played the same position for DeMatha.
The regular-season loss to DeMatha ensured Gonzaga would lose its division for the second straight season. Two weeks later, on Nov. 3, Gonzaga lost again, this time on its home field to St. John’s in the nation’s oldest Catholic high school football rivalry. It was a convincing 34-17 loss in front of a crowd of more than 2,500.
“They crushed us,” Petitbon said. “We were going into the playoffs as the four-seed.”
And they won — against the very team that had just “crushed” them a week earlier.
Gonzaga beat St. John’s, 24-14, in the WCAC semifinal that would pit them against DeMatha in the championship game. DeMatha had won four straight conference titles from 2013-2016 and produced NFL talent such as Chase Young and Anthony McFarland Jr.
“That was the thing with Gonzaga,” said Indianapolis Colts safety Nick Cross, who played for DeMatha in the 2018 title game. “They were never as talented as us. They’d always find a way to get lucky and to win. They would out-fundamental us.”
As determined as Gonzaga was to win its first title since 2002, the Eagles fell into a 20-0 hole in the first half of the championship game, and a 16-year-old Williams would have to lift them out of that hole.
“The main plan was to contain him, keep him in that pocket and make him make the throws that he didn’t want to make,” Israel-Achumba said. “We also wanted to get him and hit him in the pocket, but that was obviously hard because we had Olu stopping dudes from doing that. It was like, OK, they have a trump card — not only one, but two.”
Gonzaga trailed by three with less than a minute remaining when Williams was sacked, forcing a third-and-33 situation. Williams had injured his ankle on the play, and Trivers said that had the Eagles needed to play another game, Williams probably wouldn’t have been able to participate. Ultimately no cast or surgery was needed, but Trivers called it “a fairly significant injury.”
“He was laying there, I heard him say, ‘My foot, my foot. I can’t get up.'” Sweeney said. “And that’s when I came to the realization that if he can’t get up, I have to play quarterback right now with a minute left in the championship game and score. OK, that’s not happening. Caleb you need to get up.”
“He gets up,” Trivers said, “and you see visibly, there’s a real limp. That was real, for sure, but then he was able to make the throw on the next play to Sweeney, and then a couple more really good throws to finish off the game.”
“Even that last play — on [an injured] foot — and he’s throwing the ball, he’s flicking his wrist and it’s going 50-60 yards in the air,” Sweeney said. “He was just a sophomore in high school, 16 years old. How much talent he had and his competitiveness and willingness to do whatever it takes to win. It’s pretty crazy. It’s still crazy to this day.”
WILLIAMS, HOBBLED BY his injured ankle, heaved a 53-yard Hail Mary as time expired, and Gonzaga students prayed in the stands. He was on his own 41-yard line when he threw it, and it easily sailed about 60 yards.
Colts’ safety Nick Cross and Atlanta Falcons safety DeMarcco Hellams were defending the end zone when DeMatha rushed four and Williams released the ball as the clock expired.
“I didn’t get enough umph in my jump to be able to knock the ball down,” Cross said.
Gonzaga’s John Marshall, who went on to play defense at Navy, did.
He miraculously emerged from a pile of defenders in the end zone with the game-winner from Williams. Brooks, DeMatha’s coach, said there was “dead silence” on his sideline when Marshall came down with the ball, and his “heart just dropped.”
Gonzaga 46, DeMatha 43.
“It was a surreal moment,” Marshall said. “I didn’t know where I was for a couple of seconds after I caught it.”
Fans thundered onto the field, where Williams was lying flat on his back near the 50-yard line with his helmet on, before getting up to join the celebration.
Three of Williams’ six touchdowns came in the final 3:03 of the game.
“Caleb is one of the best quarterbacks I’ve ever played against,” Cross said.
Petitbon, who lined up with Fashanu for two seasons, said Williams played “like a man possessed” in the WCAC title game. Williams accounted for 480 of the Eagles’ 530 yards of offense. He completed 13 of 29 passes for 359 yards, and carried the ball 20 times for 122 yards.
He even caught one pass for 9 yards.
“It was probably the best single game performance I’ve ever seen,” said Petitbon.
“It’s just the odds of hitting that is slim to none,” Brooks said, “but if anyone was going to make the play, it was going to be him.
“After years have passed and seeing that not only did we lose to a good team,” he said, “we might have lost to arguably the greatest quarterback — maybe player — to come out of the DMV area in the last 20 years. Maybe ever.”
GONZAGA IS THE oldest all-boys school in Washington, D.C., but the athletic department has only retired three numbers — one from basketball, another from hockey, and Williams’ No. 18. They are displayed above the bleachers in the gym, and Williams returned in May for the dedication.
There are also framed newspaper clippings from the 2018 season hanging on the walls in Trivers’ office, along with the framed and stained jersey Williams wore that season. In the locker room, the first locker has been commemorated with Williams’ purple nameplate and will be reserved in his honor. In the hallway just outside and in plain view of Williams’ locker, is a banner that recognizes him as D.C.’s Gatorade Player of the Year for the 2018 season, when he threw for 2,624 yards and 26 touchdowns.
His legacy is already etched in the school’s history, along with Fashanu, who was named to the league’s first-team offense in 2018 and was part of an offensive line that produced all Power 5 alums.
Their places in the first round of the NFL draft will only enhance that.
Israel-Achumba remembered scrolling through Instagram on his phone last season when he saw an early mock draft that had his roommate projected in the first round.
“Usually I see some guys from other schools, some of the older guys on my team,” he said. “I was shook when I saw him. I’m like, whoa. It’s happenin’. I sent it to him, like, ‘Have you seen this?'”
Fashanu wanted his friend to stop “messing around.” Then somebody else sent it to him. Then his parents. But Fashanu, who Penn State coach James Franklin said has the highest GPA of all scholarship players on the team, turned down the opportunity to possibly be among the first five offensive tackles drafted last year.
“I’d say the main two [reasons] were so I could graduate in the summer and start my master’s in the fall,” he said, “and also I felt like not only myself, but everyone on the team, we know that this year we could go a lot further than just the Rose Bowl.”
Regardless of where Penn State winds up this postseason, NFL scouts will be watching.
“He’s a no-brainer with his height, weight, length and speed,” a veteran scout told ESPN’s Pete Thamel this week. “He’s an easy mover and makes the game look easy. He’s a great kid from a great family. He’ll be the first tackle taken this year.”
Israel-Achumba saw the potential in his roommate the first time he looked at him as a rival.
“Couple that with Caleb Williams and the throws he was making and the scrambling, and all the magic he was doing,” Israel-Achumba said, ” … every single thing he’s doing in college now is what he did in high school. Same with Olu.”
Current USC running back MarShawn Lloyd — now teammates with Williams — played against the Heisman Trophy winner that season as a running back for DeMatha.
“Still to this day, Caleb brings up the Gonzaga game,” Lloyd said. “He’ll wear his Gonzaga shorts, and I’ll be like, ‘Bro, take those off.'”
Petitbon still keeps in touch with Williams, though not as frequently as he does Fashanu and the Gonzaga linemen. He said he and Williams usually talk the most during the offseason when they’re playing Call of Duty together online. (“We’re both actually pretty good,” Petitbon said.).
Regardless of what happens in the future, Williams and Fashanu will remain connected through their championship past.
“Having the Heisman Trophy winner, that’s unique, that’s rare,” said Trivers, who is in his 27th season coaching high school football and has spent two decades as head coach of three different programs. “Having a guy in Olu Fashanu that’s likely a first-round draft pick, that’s rare. It’s one thing to be a good high school player, and even a good college player — and even a great college player — but to be what I think is going to happen for these guys — God keep them healthy — these guys are going to be first-round draft choices. That’s another level of talent.”
Sports
‘There was no other option’: The story of Ohio State’s title run from preseason hype to crushing defeat to playoff champion
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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
ATLANTA — Seven weeks and two days ago, Ohio State coach Ryan Day watched as Michigan planted its flag at midfield inside the Horseshoe, chaos ensuing: fans chanting “F— Ryan Day,” his players both fighting back and walking around dazed, the rival Wolverines celebrating.
Seven weeks and two days ago, what unfolded Monday night felt unimaginable: joy, celebration, triumph, Day right in the middle, the whole of Buckeye Nation now back in his corner.
After that devastating loss to Michigan, the first expanded 12-team College Football Playoff delivered a chance at salvation. And the Buckeyes took advantage from the start, outscoring their four postseason opponents by a combined score of 145-75, culminating with a 34-23 victory over Notre Dame for the program’s seventh national championship.
“No great accomplishments are ever achieved without going through adversity,” Day said. “That’s just the truth.” No team has benefited from the College Football Playoff quite like the Buckeyes.
In 2014, they were ranked No. 4 in the inaugural four-team field, beating No. 1 Alabama, then No. 2 Oregon behind third-string quarterback Cardale Jones to hoist the first championship trophy of the CFP era.
This year, they were the No. 8 seed in the first 12-team field. The loss to Michigan — Ohio State’s fourth straight in the series — kept them out of the Big Ten title game. And in any previous season, it would have kept them out of the playoff. But thanks to playoff expansion, the Buckeyes made it when the bracket was revealed Dec. 8.
The future still looked bleak.
Speculation swirled around Day and whether his disgruntled fan base could accept another failure in a season built for a national championship run.
A team meeting after the Michigan loss got heated. Feelings were hashed out, grievances aired.
“There’s multiple ways that you can respond to adversity in life, and that adversity brought us closer as an entire group,” receiver Emeka Egbuka said. “We were able to lift each other up in that moment, and we’ve gotten stronger because of it.”
Michigan would be their catalyst.
TWELVE MONTHS AND 12 days ago, cornerback Denzel Burke made sure to watch the 2024 national championship game all the way to the end so he could see rival Michigan hold up the trophy following a 34-13 win over Washington. He had the game on his phone while at dinner with teammate Lathan Ransom and was so hurt, he had to walk into the bathroom to cool off.
There is no fun in losing to your rival; even less fun is watching your rival win the national championship. Michigan beat Ohio State and won it all last season, thanks in part to a veteran group that put off the NFL to return to school to try and win a championship.
Day wanted the same for the Buckeyes in 2024. To get the better of Michigan, Ohio State would have to be like Michigan. Well, at least in one way. With $20 million to spend in NIL, Ohio State went about convincing its top players to return to school, too. Defensive end Jack Sawyer, who grew up in nearby Pickerington, Ohio, as a huge Buckeyes fan, led the charge.
Within short order, he and seven others — defensive end JT Tuimoloau, tailback TreVeyon Henderson, defensive tackle Tyleik Williams, defensive tackle Ty Hamilton, offensive lineman Donovan Jackson, Egbuka and Burke — put off the NFL to come back to school for one more year.
“It just kind of fueled our fire a little bit to come back and hoist the national championship trophy,” Burke said. “To be able to see them win it all like that, we wanted a piece of that.”
Player retention and development has been huge: The Buckeyes started 19 players who signed with the school and have combined for more than 520 starts. Many in the signing class of 2021, the foundation for this team, returned because they had contributed nothing to the trophy case inside the Woody Hayes Athletic Center and refused to let their careers end that way.
“This might be the biggest example of selflessness I have ever been a part of,” linebacker Cody Simon said. “So many guys had the opportunity to go first round, second round in the NFL draft. They all came back to play another year together.
“I commend all those guys who made a decision and all the guys who came in who were outside of our program because it takes a lot to get this all to work together.”
Day signed a top-tier recruiting class, including receiver Jeremiah Smith, and brought in key transfer portal acquisitions — quarterback Will Howard, safety Caleb Downs and running back Quinshon Judkins chief among them. Ohio State would enter 2024 as one of the most talented teams in the country. Expectations were clear from the start.
“At this time last year, which is crazy to think about, guys decided to come back and put their personal goals aside to achieve this goal,” Ransom said. “It’s pretty special. I hate when people say, ‘Win or bust,’ but we did everything to come back to win.”
Day knew he needed something to help his players best understand the journey on which they were about to embark. In their first preseason meeting last year, Day showed the team a picture of a lighthouse in the middle of a storm in the ocean. The lighthouse keeper, he told them, was counting on the lighthouse to be built with the right foundation to withstand the storm.
Then he told the story of three bricklayers building St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the importance of each brick being laid the right way. He told the players that every day after practice, he would hand out a scarlet and gray brick to one player. It would be his job to build a foundation for what was to come. The bricks could not be placed randomly or haphazardly. Building that foundation had to be done the right way.
Every day as players walked out to practice, they had a view of the bricks being stacked. Every day on the way back into the locker room, they had a view of the bricks being stacked. Over 100 bricks are now stacked perfectly, forming a foundational wall. “That wall is built for anything — the fire that we went through, the perseverance that we have, and here we are now,” Burke said.
“Storms are going to come,” Day said. “How is the foundation built? Was it built on a true foundation of rock or of sand? We knew those storms were coming. We didn’t know when, but that was ultimately going to allow us to withstand those storms.”
THE BIGGEST STORM came Nov. 30. The Buckeyes entered their rivalry game against Michigan as a 20.5-point favorite, ranked No. 2 in the CFP and with massive matchup advantages up and down the depth chart.
The Wolverines lost nearly every key offensive player from their 2023 national championship team and were 6-5 under first-year coach Sherrone Moore. Two of their best players were injured for the Ohio State game.
Finally, the Ryan Day Redemption Arc would be written.
Then the game kicked off. Michigan dominated up front, handcuffing Ohio State from doing much. Inexplicably, the Buckeyes could not get the ball to Smith to make enough of a difference, and Ohio State was shut out in the second half at home for the first time in 13 years.
When the final seconds ticked off the clock, Michigan had won 13-10 in one of the biggest upsets in the history of the rivalry. As the Wolverines planted their flag at midfield, Sawyer came charging up, tearing the Michigan flag down. He could be heard on video screaming, “They’re not f—ing planting the flag again on our field, bro!”
Day stood there silently, seemingly in disbelief. Though he ranks No. 1 among active head coaches in win percentage, Day has been judged by one thing: his record against Michigan. Day has gone 47-1 against all other Big Ten opponents in his career. But what did he do against the Wolverines? To date, he is 1-4. As a result, Ohio State has not won a Big Ten title since the truncated 2020 COVID-19 season, a year in which the rivals did not play.
Vitriol was directed at both Day and his players in the immediate aftermath of this season’s Michigan loss, and sports talk focused on whether Day needed to win the national championship to save his job. Athletic director Ross Bjork tried to quell the speculation when he gave a vote of confidence to Day in December, telling 97.1 The Fan in Columbus, “The season’s not over. The book is not closed.”
In that same interview, Bjork asked his Ohio State fans not to sell their tickets to Tennessee fans for their first-round playoff game in Columbus.
“We knew that we could play better than what we presented,” guard Donovan Jackson said. “So having people tell us we’re trash, terrible, garbage, half of us should transfer, half of us should leave the state of Ohio. No, we know how good we are.”
IN THE FOUR-TEAM CFP era, Ohio State made five playoff appearances and finished ranked No. 5 or 6 three other times. In fact, the Buckeyes ranked in the top seven in every final CFP poll, including No. 7 last year at 11-1. That lone loss to Michigan precluded them from making the four-team field.
The loss to Michigan this year served a far different purpose.
“The new format has allowed our team to grow and build throughout the season, and as much as losses hurt, they really allow us as coaches and players to take a hard look at the issues and get them addressed,” Day said.
The team meeting after the Michigan game got loud and emotional. Fingers were pointed, mistakes were rehashed, but players and Day took accountability. In times of great adversity, either you fold under the pressure or you rise to greatness. Ohio State chose not to break.
“There was no other option for us,” Simon said. “You go from feeling sorry for yourself to now we’ve got to rewrite the history for this season and this team.”
Kickoff against the Vols came on a chilly night at the Shoe, three weeks removed from the Michigan loss. Nobody knew how the Buckeyes would respond.
The nation got its answer two minutes and 14 seconds into the game. Then four minutes later. Then five minutes after that. By the time the first quarter ended, Ohio State had a 21-0 lead as it overwhelmed what had been one of the best defenses in the country, while completely stymying Tennessee quarterback Nico Iamaleava and his high-powered offense.
Day said after the 42-17 win, “You could tell from the jump that they had a look in their eyes that they were going to win this game.”
Next up: a rematch with No. 1 Oregon in the CFP quarterfinals at the Rose Bowl. The undefeated Big Ten champion Ducks handed the Buckeyes their first defeat back in October, after Howard lost track of the game clock while trying to drive for a game-winning score, running with four seconds left and sliding as time ran out in the 32-31 loss.
There would be no need for late-game heroics this time around. Once again, Ohio State bulldozed its way to a massive lead, going up 34-0 before winning 41-21. After two rounds, the Buckeyes had harnessed all their talent and potential and were playing like the “championship or bust team” many envisioned when the season began.
There was more to come. Before the semifinal against Texas at the Cotton Bowl, Day had a simple message for his team: “To leave a legacy, become your own legend.”
With the game on the line in the fourth quarter, leave it to the player who dreamed about winning an Ohio State national title as a little boy throwing a football in his backyard with his dad, to do just that.
Sawyer strip-sacked Quinn Ewers on fourth-and-goal from the 8 with 2:13 left, then returned the fumble 83 yards to put the game out of reach and give the Buckeyes a 28-14 win.
The image of Day standing silently next to a riled-up Sawyer after the Michigan game was replaced with the image of Day unclipping his headset and jumping into a giant bear hug from Sawyer on the sideline screaming, “YEAHHHHHHHHHHHH!” A hug so powerful, it appeared to break a camera the CFP had placed on Sawyer after the play.
“The resiliency of this team, from a month ago, it’s been incredible,” Sawyer said afterward. “I love Columbus. I love the state of Ohio. I love Ohio State football. I’m so fortunate to be playing in the national championship my last year here.”
Just like the semifinal, the national championship game needed a fourth-quarter play to seal the win. This time, it was Smith and his 57-yard reception with 2:29 left that ended any Notre Dame comeback hopes.
Ohio State trailed for the first time in this CFP after the Fighting Irish opened the game with a clock-busting drive that nearly lasted 10 minutes and ended with a Riley Leonard touchdown run.
Then the Buckeyes showed off their wealth of depth and talent during a critical portion of the game — the rest of the first half and start of the second — pulling ahead and proving right those who chose them in the preseason to bring home another national championship. Their offensive line opened up huge holes for Henderson and Judkins while allowing virtually no one to come near Howard. The Notre Dame defense was flummoxed — alternating between man and zone — unable to answer for Judkins nor for a mobile Howard, who was all too eager to take off when the running lanes opened. Ohio State converted all six of its third-down attempts in the first half, and Howard opened the game with 13 straight completions — a record for most completions to start a national championship game.
The Buckeyes raced out to a 28-7 lead after their first series of the third quarter and then held on against an inspired Notre Dame effort. Afterward, a raucous Ohio State crowd chanted Ryan Day’s name as he walked off the field.
They may not be able to call themselves Big Ten champions. They may not have a win over That Team Up North.
But the Buckeyes have something to celebrate that is theirs, and only theirs: the national championship.
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David Purdum, ESPN Staff Writer
The top two favorites to win next season’s College Football Playoff will square off in Week 1, when Ohio State hosts Texas on Aug. 30.
The Longhorns and the defending-champion Buckeyes enter the offseason as the favorites to win the 2025-26 College Football Playoff at sportsbooks. Texas, which is poised to begin the Arch Manning era, opened as the national title favorite at +450 at ESPN BET, followed by the Buckeyes (+500) and Georgia (+600). Ohio State is the favorite at other sportsbooks, but those three teams top the early odds across the betting market.
Oregon and Penn State, each at +750, round out the teams with odds shorter than 10-1 in ESPN BET’s opening numbers.
Ohio State held off Notre Dame in Monday’s College Football Playoff National Championship game, capping a dominant postseason run. The Fighting Irish opened at +1500 to win next season’s title at ESPN BET.
Manning is expected to be the Longhorns’ starting quarterback with Quinn Ewers declaring for the NFL draft. FanDuel has Manning as the second favorite to win next season’s Heisman Trophy, behind LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier.
The transfer portal has added to the challenges sportsbooks face when creating odds to win the following season’s national championship.
“We will take our power ratings for 2025 and make the proper adjustments to account for recruiting, returning production and transfer portal changes,” said Joey Feazel, a trader at Caesars Sportsbook. “It is a challenging process at times, but year after year, we are getting better at it.”
The preseason betting favorite to capture the national championship has not won it since Alabama in 2017.
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Mark Schlabach, ESPN Senior Writer
ATLANTA — Maybe Ohio State football fans will like coach Ryan Day now.
Fifty-one days after suffering the worst loss of his career, Day guided the No. 8 Buckeyes to their first national championship in 10 years with a 34-23 victory over No. 7 Notre Dame in the CFP National Championship presented by AT&T on Monday night.
The Buckeyes led the Irish 31-7 midway through the third quarter, but the Irish kept fighting and pulled to within one score and a two-point conversion with just more than four minutes remaining.
Notre Dame quarterback Riley Leonard threw a 34-yard touchdown pass to Jaden Greathouse with 3:03 left in the third and tossed a two-point play to tailback Jeremiyah Love to make it 31-15. Then, after a late defensive stop, Leonard found Greathouse again for a 30-yard touchdown and Beaux Collins converted the two-point attempt to pull the Irish within 31-23 with 4:15 left.
The Buckeyes finally put the Irish away for good when quarterback Will Howard threw a deep ball to freshman Jeremiah Smith, who beat cornerback Christian Gray for a 56-yard gain to the Irish 10. That led to Jayden Fielding‘s 33-yard field goal that put the Buckeyes up 11 with 26 seconds left.
The victory was redemption for Day, whose team fell to rival Michigan, the so-called “School Up North,” for the fourth straight time in a stunning 13-10 defeat at home on Nov. 30. That loss, in which the Buckeyes were 21-point favorites, knocked them out of the Big Ten championship game.
But the defeat didn’t eliminate Ohio State from the first 12-team CFP, and the Buckeyes took down No. 9 Tennessee in the first round, No. 1 Oregon in the quarterfinals and No. 5 Texas in the semifinals before beating the Fighting Irish in their 16th game of the season.
“I say all the time to our players, the first time you got on a bike you didn’t just ride the bike, you fell down, and how quickly did you learn from falling down to get back on the bike to learn to ride a bike?” Day said. “Well, it’s like that in life. You learn from going through difficult times like that.”
That was what made Monday night so special for Day and everyone around him.
“I think he’s done a great job, and I think he understands the weight of what this job is,” Ohio State offensive coordinator Chip Kelly said this week. “That comes with the territory. He’s shown who he is, and I think he’s done an unbelievable job in that situation.”
Ohio State’s players said Day accepted some of the blame for coming up short against Michigan again. But the shocking defeat might have been exactly what the Buckeyes needed in order to capture the seventh national title in program history.
“We had to address all the issues we had on the team,” Buckeyes defensive tackle Tyleik Williams said. “Everybody spoke up and just fixed those problems that we had. The leadership on this team is like I’ve never seen. That wouldn’t have happened a couple years ago.”
With a 70-10 record, Day now has the second-best winning percentage (87.5%) among coaches with at least 80 FBS games. Only Walter Camp, who coached at Stanford and Yale in the late 1800s, had a better winning percentage (90.7%).
And with Michigan having claimed the last four-team CFP following the 2023 season, the Big Ten captured consecutive national titles for the first time since 1940-42, when Minnesota won back-to-back titles and Ohio State added a third.
Monday’s game also was redemption for Howard, the Kansas State transfer who struggled in his first start against Michigan. Against Notre Dame, Howard completed 17 of 21 passes for 231 yards with two touchdown passes, while running 16 times for 57 yards.
Quinshon Judkins, an Ole Miss transfer, ran 11 times for 100 yards with three total touchdowns. Smith caught five passes for 88 yards with one score.
Leonard led the Irish with 255 yards on 22-for-31 passing with two touchdowns. Greathouse caught six passes for 128 yards with two scores.
This one was especially satisfying for the Big Ten because it came in the SEC’s backyard. The SEC was left out of the CFP title game for the second straight season, which hadn’t happened since 2004-05.
Notre Dame, which was trying to capture its first national championship since 1988, had its 13-game winning streak snapped. It was Ohio State’s seventh straight victory against the Irish.
After falling behind 7-0 on the game’s opening drive, Ohio State quickly answered with a touchdown of its own and never took its foot off the gas. On the Buckeyes’ first possession, TreVeyon Henderson ran for 19 yards to move the ball to the Notre Dame 40. Then Judkins ran for 15 after catching a screen pass from Howard.
On second-and-5 at the 8, Smith went into motion toward Howard. But then Smith stopped and ran back to the right. When Notre Dame’s secondary blew the coverage, Smith caught a pass in the flat and easily ran into the end zone to tie the score at 7-all with 14:10 left in the first half.
It was the first opening-drive touchdown the Notre Dame defense had allowed since a 49-7 win against Stanford at home on Oct. 12.
After two penalties backed the Irish up and forced them to punt on their next possession, Ohio State needed just two plays to move across the 50. Howard scrambled for 11 yards on third-and-5 at the Notre Dame 43. He ran for three more on third-and-2 at the 12. On the next play, Judkins stiff-armed linebacker Jaiden Ausberry to the ground and scored on a 9-yard run to make it 14-7 with 6:15 remaining.
Things unraveled for the Irish on their next possession. On third-and-5 at their 30, tight end Mitchell Evans went into motion. Center Pat Coogan‘s snap to Leonard hit Evans, who recovered the fumble at the Irish 26, forcing another punt.
The Buckeyes took over at their 20 with just under five minutes to play in the half. Howard delivered big on two third-and-7 plays. At the OSU 23, he threw a 19-yard pass to Brandon Inniss. At the OSU 45, he completed a 20-yarder to the sliding Carnell Tate.
On second-and-4 at the Notre Dame 6, Howard found Judkins, who was all alone in the end zone for another touchdown to make it 21-7 with 27 seconds to go in the half.
The Buckeyes had possession to start the second half, and they didn’t need long to score again. On the second play, Judkins burst through the line and ran past linebacker Jack Kiser. Cornerback Leonard Moore finally pulled down Judkins after a 70-yard gain to the Irish 5. Judkins scored his third touchdown of the game on a 1-yard run three plays later to give Ohio State a 28-7 lead.
The Irish failed to pull off a fake punt at their 33 on their next possession, leading to Fielding’s 46-yard field goal that made it 31-7.
Notre Dame’s first possession of the game couldn’t have been scripted any better. The Irish picked up six first downs over the first 9 minutes, 45 seconds, with Leonard running for four and throwing for two more.
When the Buckeyes stopped Leonard on third-and-1 at the Ohio State 45 with about 11 minutes to go in the quarter, coach Marcus Freeman left his offense on the field. Leonard ran three yards and a first down. On third-and-3 from the OSU 7, Ohio State pulled Leonard down for a 2-yard gain. The Irish went again on fourth-and-1, and Leonard lowered his shoulder and ran for 4 yards.
Leonard ran into the end untouched on the next play, giving the Fighting Irish a 7-0 lead with 5:15 to go in the first.
Unfortunately, that was about as good as it would get for Notre Dame’s offense in the first half. The Irish went three-and-out on their next two drives and gained just 18 yards the rest of the half.
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