A look back at the standout moments from Ohio State's undefeated 2024 season, including national championship-winning plays and incredible individual efforts.
There are no shortage of plays to choose from when narrowing down the top 10 from Ohio State's 2024 season . That's what happens when a team wins a national championship . The Buckeyes had the best players in college football and they made some of the best plays in college football , from the spectacular to the title-clinching.
Half of this top 10 comes from Ohio State's four-game College Football Playoff run and three plays involve Jeremiah Smith, to little surprise after the freshman sensation's breakout season. He made a title-clinching catch in the CFP national championship game, but even that was not enough to take the top spot – Buckeye fans out there might have a good guess as to where that honor went. January 1, 2025 Ohio State has played in many Rose Bowls, 17 to be exact. This is the longest run by a Buckeye in any of them. Henderson makes one surgical cut, evades a would-be tackler and burns Oregon's secondary with some of the best acceleration in college football. Perhaps there's an alternate reality where Ohio State's offense capitalizes on the momentum of this play and engineers a game-winning drive to snap the team's three-game losing streak against Michigan. In that universe, this would easily be a top-five play of the Buckeyes' season. Do they still win a national championship on that timeline? Hard to say. It is easier to appreciate the one they won in our reality, and – removed from the context of what happened next to Ohio State in The Game – appreciate an exceptional individual effort by Sawyer. It would not be his last. Getting in a goal-to-go situation against the 2024 Silver Bullets guaranteed you no gains on the scoreboard. There were 10 drives by Ohio State opponents that got inside the Buckeyes' 10-yard line and failed to produce any points this season. Several of them proved critical in close wins. Here are a few of the most notable, excluding three that appear elsewhere in this story. Nebraska reached 1st-and-goal at the Buckeyes' 7-yard line and 4th-and-goal at the 2-yard line only to see running back Dante Dowdell get stuffed attempting to leap over a heap of bodies. Credit goes to defensive tackle Kayden McDonald for blowing up the right guard to create that traffic jam and cornerback Davison Igbinosun, who met Dowdell up top to prevent his extension of the football. Linebacker Cody Simon made first contact and helped drag Dowdell down from behind. The prevented points proved critical in a 21-17 win for Ohio State. When No. 3 Penn State got to 1st-and-goal at Ohio State's 3-yard line down 20-13 with less than eight minutes to play, it seemed it might be on the Buckeyes' offense to win the game. But the Nittany Lions ran running back Kaytron Allen into a brick wall three plays in a row to gain just 2 yards, with defensive tackle Ty Hamilton getting in on a pair of tackles. Then on 4th-and-goal at the 1-yard line, safety Lathan Ransom sniffed out a play for tight end Tyler Warren in the flat, forcing quarterback Drew Allar to throw into heavy coverage and incomplete. OSU sealed the game on offense with a long drive of running plays to kill the clock. In the national championship, though Notre Dame did eventually cut Ohio State's fourth-quarter lead to 31-23, it took two tries. That's because the Buckeyes' defense made its final big goal-line stand of the season after the Fighting Irish reached 1st-and-goal at Ohio State's 8-yard line. Defensive end Kenyatta Jackson Jr. swarmed quarterback Riley Leonard for a TFL and the Buckeyes' secondary held up for two incompletions, forcing a demoralizing field goal attempt that doinked off the left upright no good. It says something that the third-longest run (officially) in Ohio State football history lands at just the 10th spot on this list. There were a lot of great plays in the Buckeyes' season but at a time when their offensive line was fully healthy and rolling, this exemplifies how great their running game was early in the season. Not that there weren't great rushing moments down the stretch, but for five and a half games before Josh Simmons' injury, OSU had one of the best ground attacks in the sport. Center Seth McLaughlin escorted Marshall's nose guard aside and a ferocious combo block by right tackle Josh Fryar and right guard Austin Siereveld cleared a lane for Judkins to make one cut and race by the entirety of the Thundering Herd's defense 86 yards to paydirt. 'I think the mindset of me and my teammates as a whole is to play with bad intentions,' Judkins said after the game.'And I think that's my mindset when I get the ball is to, you know, I'm going to try to – that's my job. I'm going to do my job in any way. I'm going to try to get the first down. I'm going to try to score. So every time I get the ball,' I'm gonna try to make the most of it.' Later in the same game, Judkins threw one of the nastiest stiff arms ever seen by Buckeye faithful. December 22, 2024 All was dark in Columbus for three week
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