Skull Session: Smell the Roses

By Chase Brown on January 2, 2025 at 5:00 am
Will Howard smells a rose
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Welcome to the Skull Session.

That was fun. That was really, really fun.

Have a good Thursday.

 THE FIELD IS IN DANGER. There should be no debate over who the national title favorite is in the College Football Playoff. Through the quarterfinals, it’s the Buckeyes versus the field – and the field is in danger.

Following a dominant 42-17 win over Tennessee at home, Ohio State continued looking like the runaway train in Denzel Washington and Chris Pine’s Unstoppable in the Rose Bowl, flattening undefeated Oregon 41-21. The next team the Buckeyes will look to steamroll is Texas, who needed two overtimes to beat Arizona State in the Peach Bowl. (Good luck, Longhorns.)

Similar to their win over the Volunteers, which saw them shoot out to a 21-0 lead, the Buckeyes swarmed the Ducks to secure a 34-0 lead on Wednesday. They weathered a brief momentum shift in the Middle 8, but outside of that, the Buckeyes cruised like cars down California’s Route 101.

I don’t want to decrease the temperature here, but I will for a moment. Ohio State’s performances in back-to-back College Football Playoff matchups have made the Buckeyes’ loss to Michigan more confounding. Still, and here’s where the temperature increases again, the defeat that once felt like the program’s destruction now feels like its salvation. 

Yes, it sucks to lose. It sucks even worse to lose to a rival. But in the three weeks between The Game and the CFP first round, the Buckeyes used the bitter tastes in their mouths to replace an aura of dread with an aura of confidence – an unshakable confidence infused with John Kreese and Cobra Kai’s No Mercy rule.

“When things are going good, you have to hug the guys you love the most. When things aren’t, you’ve got to hug them even harder. You just hang in there and keep swinging. That’s life,” Ryan Day said. “This team is resilient. When you surround yourself with great people with great character, you find yourself working through difficult times.

“At the end of the day, we wanted to win a national championship. The way we got here wasn’t what we expected. It wasn’t what we planned for. Nonetheless, we got an opportunity to come back and play Oregon after we had already played them earlier in the season. That’s the only thing that mattered. The guys had been doing a great job of staying focused. The staff has stuck together, but the players have stuck together.”

Resilience makes a difference.

So does Jeremiah Smith.

After a 103-yard, two-touchdown performance against Tennessee, Smith collected seven catches for an Ohio State freshman-record 187 receiving yards and two touchdowns in “The Granddaddy of Them All.” 

Fellow receiver Emeka Egbuka has been an X-factor, too, recording 10 catches for 153 yards and one score in the CFP. That’s not to mention their quarterback, Will Howard, who has thrown for 300+ yards and multiple scores in back-to-back games. 

But Smith…

He is different.

Because Ohio State has consistently placed the ball in Smith’s hands via short, intermediate and deep routes, the rest of the offense has thrived. After Smith scored from 45 and 43 yards out – and Egbuka scored from 42 yards out, I should add – Oregon’s defense was on its heels the rest of the game, waiting for the 19-year-old to beat them again. That left wide open lanes for Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson to run through, with the latter converting two of his eight carries into touchdowns of 66 and 8 yards.

When Chip Kelly can lean on the full complement of the offense, who can outscheme Ohio State? When the offensive line controls the line of scrimmage, Howard is accurate, the receivers make contested catches and the running backs get downhill, who can outperform the Buckeyes?

The answer: No one.

That’s what makes Ohio State the national title favorite – one month after it felt like the end was near.

 THE FIELD IS IN TROUBLE (CONT). I wrote an entire section on Ohio State becoming the national title favorite, and I didn’t mention the defense. What a blunder! After all, defense wins championships.

The Silver Bullets were superb in the Rose Bowl.

In the regular-season matchup between Ohio State and Oregon, the Buckeyes surrendered 32 points and 496 yards to the Ducks. Despite offensive holding being cool and legal in the matchup – I counted at least six or seven holds that the referees didn’t call on Wednesday – Jim Knowles’ defense limited Oregon to 21 points and 276 yards. They sacked quarterback Dillon Gabriel eight times (!) and recorded 13 tackles for loss.

Those numbers tell us all we need to know about the performance. 

However, a deeper look at the numbers reveals more about how dominant Ohio State’s defense was with revenge on its mind.

In a decisive first half that saw Ohio State take a 34-8 halftime lead, the Buckeyes held the Ducks to eight points and 139 yards. Oregon collected 75 of those yards a scoring drive to end the opening 30 minutes. Outside of that, the Ducks recorded 64 yards on five possessions that ended in punts and one that ended with a turnover on downs.

The second half went about the same but in the opposite order. Oregon collected 75 yards and seven points on its opening drive, then went punt, punt, touchdown and punt to end the game. The Ducks recorded another seven points and 51 yards in those four possessions.

Yeesh.

Five Buckeyes stood out to me on defense: Jack Sawyer, Tyleik Williams, Cody Simon, Denzel Burke and Caleb Downs.

Sawyer stuffed the stat sheet like future Pro Football Hall of Famer J.J. Watt, recording two sacks and three pass breakups. Funny enough, Watt tweeted about Sawyer’s performance on Wednesday after Pat McAfee mentioned him on the ESPN broadcast.

Williams had three tackles and one tackle for loss. However, I’ll be curious to see how Pro Football Focus sees his performance, considering the number of times I saw No. 91 create havoc on the interior.

Simon was the Defensive MVP in the Rose Bowl, and for a good reason. The Block O winner continued a tear he started against Nebraska (the first game after Ohio State lost to Oregon in the regular season!) and recorded a team-best 11 tackles with three tackles for loss, two sacks and one pass breakup.

Burke has a quiet performance against Oregon, which is the best kind of performance for a cornerback. He had a thundering hit on Tez Johnson for a 1-yard loss and made another tackle on Terrance Ferguson, but other than that, Burke operated in the shadows. That was something I loved to see.

Downs was — well, Downs. The Big Ten Defensive Back of the Year had three tackles and three pass breakups in the Rose Bowl. That performance looks great on paper. It also feels great knowing it came the game before Downs takes the same field as Texas safety Jahdae Barron, who won the Jim Thorpe Award over Downs in December.

 PAY THE RANSOM. No, I didn’t forget about Lathan Ransom.

Playing on the same surface, he suffered a devastating leg injury three years ago, Ransom collected seven tackles, the second-most on the team behind Simon’s 11, and had one sack. After the game, Ransom posted two pictures to social media — the first showing him lying on the Rose Bowl grass after his injury and the second showing him celebrating in the Oregon backfield.

That dude is a warrior!

 OPEN SEASON. There we lots of good X posts on Wednesday. Johnny Ginter will have most of them in Social Reax, so make sure to check out that article when it’s posted. For now, I will end the Skull Session with this one from Ohio State defensive back Malik Hartford because I love it:

‘Twas a successful Duck Hunt in Pasadena.

‘Twas a successful Duck Hunt, indeed.

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