Ohio State running back Quinshon Judkins sprints past Notre Dame defenders at the 2025 College Football Playoff national championship game. / Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated
Notre Dame’s Riley Leonard engineered one of the most impressive drives of the college football season to start Monday’s national championship game. Since that opening salvo from from the Fighting Irish, the game has been all Ohio State.
The Buckeyes answered the Fighting Irish score with a Will Howard touchdown pass to Jeremiah Smith to tie the game at seven. On their next drive, Quinshon Judkins scored from nine yards out to cap a 10-play, 76-yard drive. Howard found Judkins on the Buckeyes’ third drive to give OSU a 21–7 lead at the half. After receiving the ball in the second half, Judkins exploded on a 70-yard run, and punched it in from one-yard out three plays later to push the lead to 28–7.
Ohio State is exerting an impressive level of dominance, and are close to putting the national championship away early, and its doing it against one of the sport’s stingiest defenses. According to Matt Fortuna of The Inside Zone, the Fighting Irish had allowed just three touchdown drives of 75 yards or more in just one game this season (the 49–35 win against USC).
Notre Dame gave up 3 TD drives of 75+ yards just once all season long.
The Irish have given up 4 such TD drives to Ohio State tonight, on all 4 of the Buckeyes’ drives.
— Matt Fortuna (@Matt_Fortuna) January 21, 2025
Notre Dame was able to hold Ohio State to a field goal on the Buckeyes’ fifth-drive, snapping the touchdown streak. They weren’t able to do so early enough to prevent Ohio State from making another bit of college football history.
No team in the BCS/College Football Playoff era, dating back to 1998, had ever scored touchdowns on its first four drives, according to ESPN’s Heather Dinich.
First team to score a TD on each of its first four drives in a BCS/CFP championship game per @ESPNStatsInfo https://t.co/Wi5fXSsp8y
— Heather Dinich (@CFBHeather) January 21, 2025
For every national championship classic, there is a rough blowout like the one that the Buckeyes are putting on the Fighting Irish today. And still, none of those previous national champions were able to pull off what Ohio State did through the first 30-plus minutes of Monday’s game in Atlanta.
