Joel Klatt believes Notre Dame cannot beat Ohio State if Buckeyes score 20 points

Joel Klatt sees a path for Notre Dame to upset Ohio State in the national championship game on Monday, but he admits that it is a very narrow one.

Klatt joined Andy & Ari On3 Thursday morning and shared that the Fighting Irish must hold Ohio State under 20 points if they are going to have a chance to win the game. The Buckeyes have only been held under 20 points once all season. That occurrence just so happened to be in a loss to rival Michigan to close the regular season.

Get your team’s official College Football Playoff watch from AXIA by CLICKING HERE: “Watches that tell so much more than time”

“They do not win if Ohio State gets to 20. Like, I don’t see it,” Klatt said.

Klatt’s reasoning is that he believes the Notre Dame offense is going to have a tough time scoring points against Ohio State. The Buckeyes have the No. 1 scoring defense in the country at 12.2 points per game. The only team to score more than 17 points on Ohio State all season is Oregon.

“I don’t want to diminish Notre Dame here. I think they have a very narrow path, because if they’re not winning on first down, I don’t see how they score more than 14, 17 points in this game,” Klatt said. “It’s not like they’ve set the world on fire in these playoffs offensively to begin with, much less with Ohio State.

“And their threats on the outside are just not what Texas can bring to the table or Tennessee can bring to the table or Oregon can bring to the table. And obviously Ohio State, for the large part, shut all of those teams down.”

In order to have a chance to move the ball and ultimately win the game, Klatt believes Notre Dame is going to have to be successful on first down. The Fighting Irish can’t get behind the sticks and be forced into obvious passing situations.

“The offensive line, and mainly the first-down game plan for Notre Dame, if they’re not running Riley Leonard or throwing RPO on first down then I don’t know what they’re doing,” Klatt said. “Because that’s their only way, I think, to really effectively move the ball and create second-and-short, third-and-short.

“If they’re in obvious passing situations, they’re not going to win, They’re just not. Because they won’t be able to score enough points. If they don’t score at least 17, maybe 20, I don’t think they’ve got a big shot in this game.”

Michigan, Nebraska and Texas were all able to keep the Ohio State offense at least somewhat in check and played close, low-scoring games against the Buckeyes. Klatt believes if Notre Dame can follow that game plan and hit some passes to running backs out of the backfield, the Irish will have a shot.

If not, Ohio State could roll to another double-digit win in the playoff.

“They’ve gotta hit their backs out of the backfield in the passing game. Texas was able to exploit that on the Ohio State defense with their backs out of the backfield,” Klatt said. “That’s exactly what Notre Dame needs to do offensively, and if they do those two things – first-down success, use their running backs out of the backfield in the passing game, maybe they can get to 14 or 17.”