Buck stops here: Notre Dame falls short of national title with 34-23 loss to Ohio State

By Jack Soble

ATLANTA — Will Howard screamed while he hop-skipped to the Ohio State sideline after throwing his second touchdown of the day.

Howard had just taken a late-second-quarter snap, looked left and feigned a scramble to his right. As soon as he drew two young Notre Dame linebackers toward him, he dropped a throw right over their heads. Junior running back Quinshon Judkins caught it for his and Howard’s second touchdown of the night, putting the Buckeyes up 21-7 in the national championship game.

Three plays earlier, Howard threw his first incompletion. The Irish jogged into the halftime locker room with expressionless faces while the Buckeyes fired up their crowd.

When they returned, they gave up one more touchdown and eventually trailed 31-7. But somehow, some way, they found new life. Notre Dame built a near-miraculous comeback. The Irish scored 16 unanswered and closed Ohio State’s lead to eight, where it remained until junior Buckeyes kicker Jayden Fielding lined up for a 33-yard field goal with 26 seconds left.

The Irish sent everything they had at Fielding. Despite their best efforts, the ball sailed through the uprights. Sophomore safety Adon Shuler tried to jump over the line of scrimmage, but he couldn’t get his hands on it. Shuler stayed down on the turf, lying in devastation until his teammates picked him back up.

“You work hard to get to where we’re at, and to not get the result that we wanted, it hurts,” Shuler said.

Notre Dame lost to Ohio State, 34-23. The Buckeyes are national champions, and the Irish remain title-less since 1988.

“As I said to the guys in the locker room, there’s not many words to say when everybody is hurting,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said. “I’m just proud of them and proud of what they’ve done.”

In a game many believed would come down to which team could play their brand of football, Notre Dame did just that on its first possession. However, Ohio State quickly turned the tide.

The Irish opened with an 18-play, 75-yard touchdown drive. They converted fourth-and-1 twice, both on runs up the middle by senior quarterback Riley Leonard. Leonard plunged it in from the 1-yard line. It was exactly the grimy, won-in-the-trenches style of play Notre Dame was hoping for, and it gave Leonard and company a 7-0 lead.

The Irish gained 11 combined yards the next four times they had the ball.

“We knew the only thing stopping us was ourselves,” senior tight end Mitchell Evans said. “After you go out, what we did in the first drive — go dominate them — and then the next few, we just shoot ourselves in the foot.

“You can’t win a football game, you can’t win a national championship like that.”

Defensively, Notre Dame did not stop Ohio State from scoring a touchdown until 7:52 remained in the fourth quarter. Howard saved the best game of his college career for last, completing 14 of 15 passes for 144 yards with 2 touchdowns in the first half alone. The Buckeyes’ backfield shined, with Judkins carrying 11 times for 100 yards — 70 of which came on one play — and 2 scores.

With those two leading the charge and Ohio State’s suffocating defense keeping the Irish on the mat, the Buckeyes built a 31-7 lead.

“Just bad. Unforced error,” defensive coordinator Al Golden said about Judkins’ explosive run. “We really felt coming out of the half, we had a good plan, and we did. That run notwithstanding, we really did. We gave him an easy one there and obviously put the offense behind the eight ball.”

Suddenly, though, the offense came back from the dead. It did so primarily by peppering Jaden Greathouse. The sophomore wide receiver caught 6 passes for 128 yards, including touchdowns of 34 and 30, all in the second half.

Leonard’s numbers in the second half were nearly as strong as Howard’s in the first, with 209 yards on 23 attempts. After his second touchdown to Greathouse, on which he threw the ball up on a slot fade and gave his No. 1 target a chance, the Irish pulled yet another rabbit out of their hat. Notre Dame called a reverse pass from sophomore wide receiver Jordan Faison to graduate student wideout Beaux Collins, and they executed it perfectly to bring the game within one score.

“We’ve got nothing else to lose,” Leonard said. “It’s the last game, no matter what. Might as well go out there and sling the rock and trust your guys.

Howard, though, hit a deep shot of his own to superstar freshman wideout Jeremiah Smith on third-and-11 with just more than 2 minutes to play. Smith beat sophomore Notre Dame cornerback Christian Gray in one-on-one coverage, closing the curtains on the 2024-25 season.

“It’s really challenging, but I’m just really, really proud of my teammates, really proud of this university,” senior center Pat Coogan said. “Certainly one of the most resilient teams I’ve ever seen, regardless of college, NFL, sport.

“I’m really proud to be a part of it. Something that I’ll hold near and dear in my heart forever.”

The Irish finished their season 14-2. In his third year in South Bend, Freeman engineered a College Football Playoff run that included Notre Dame’s first two major bowl wins since January 1994. Every time Irish fans were out, even down 31-7 in the title game, their team kept pulling them back in.

But on Monday night in Atlanta, the magical campaign finished just short of immortality.