College Football Playoff: Ohio State’s hot start powers it past Tennessee and into Rose Bowl vs. Oregon

Ohio State will get its rematch with Oregon.

The Buckeyes jumped out to a 21-0 first-quarter lead on the way to a 42-17 College Football Playoff win over Tennessee in a game that will assuredly take a little pressure off coach Ryan Day following the Buckeyes’ Week 14 loss to Michigan. At least for a little bit.

Star freshman wide receiver Jeremiah Smith opened the scoring with a TD catch on a perfectly thrown pass from Will Howard.

Smith then put the game out of reach in the third quarter when he caught another dime from Howard to give the Buckeyes a 28-10 lead.

Tennessee had crept back into the game in the second quarter, but Ohio State forced a punt when the Volunteers received the kickoff to open the third quarter. And right after Smith’s second TD of the night pushed the lead back to three scores, Tennessee punted again. Not long after the punt, Ohio State fans again mockingly rained down chants of “S-E-C” toward the thousands of Volunteers fans who had made the trek north from Knoxville for the game.

The Vols were overwhelmed at the start of the game. Ohio State had 133 yards on its first two drives of the game while Tennessee had minus-11. The Buckeyes’ first three drives all resulted in touchdowns as the OSU offense ran 17 plays for 201 yards. By the time the Volunteers got back into positive numbers in the yardage column, the lead had become insurmountable.

Why Ohio State was a preseason title favorite

The Buckeyes will meet the Ducks in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1. Oregon is the No. 1 seed in the College Football Playoff as it won the Big Ten and was the only team at the top level of college football to make it through the season undefeated.

Ohio State was a favorite to be in Oregon’s position before the year with the additions the Buckeyes made via high school recruiting (Smith), the transfer portal (RB Quinshon Judkins, DB Caleb Downs and others) and on the coaching staff (offensive coordinator Chip Kelly). But the Buckeyes lost 32-31 at Oregon earlier in the season and fell 13-10 at home to Michigan in the final week of the regular season.

That loss to Michigan showed Ohio State’s offensive fragilities. For all the talent the team has, it has gone into an offensive funk way too often in 2024. Howard didn’t play his best against the Wolverines and Penn State, and he slid just a couple seconds too late against the Ducks to prevent a game-winning field goal attempt from happening before time expired.

Saturday night showed why the Buckeyes had that preseason favorite status, however. The offense was unstoppable early and the defensive line shut down Tennessee’s offense, even if the Vols were dealing with some significant injuries. SEC offensive player of the year Dylan Sampson had a leg injury and receiver Squirrel White was also hobbled.

That limited the Tennessee offense significantly. QB Nico Iamaleava was left to make mountains out of molehills and it worked out as well as the scoreline indicated.

Another double-digit margin

Ohio State’s win was the fourth blowout in four first-round games in this first year of the 12-team playoff. The closest game of the four turned out to be Notre Dame’s 27-17 win over Indiana on Friday night in a game that wasn’t that close. The Irish led 27-3 in the fourth quarter before Indiana cut it to two scores with a couple of late touchdowns.

All four of the wins were by the teams hosting playoff games, too. The margins led to a lot of reactions on social media about how the playoff committee could have put different teams into the postseason. But if none of the four teams who lost on the road in the first round deserved to be in the playoff, just who did?

Indiana, SMU, Clemson and Tennessee all deservedly made the playoff. All but the Tigers made it on the strength of their regular-season success and Clemson got in based on its ACC title game win. The only two-loss major conference team that missed the playoff was Miami. And the Hurricanes got their second loss after coughing up a 21-point lead in the final week of the regular season.

But the first weekend of the 12-team playoff is way too soon to make a judgment on the format. We all knew there weren’t 12 teams capable of winning the national title this season. Plus, blowouts happened a lot in the semifinals of the four-team playoff, too.

And they were nearly as bad as they were this weekend. The average margin of victory in the four first-round games this year was 19.25 points. In the 10 years of the four-team College Football Playoff, the average margin of victory in the semifinal games was 18.35 points.

The 12-team playoff made more regular-season games matter more and has added more meaningful games to the postseason. That’s a win for college football fans, even if there will continue to be incessant and pointless arguments about who should have made the playoff until the Fiesta Bowl on Dec. 31.