Ohio State slides by Notre Dame late to open 2022 season with top-five win
Notre Dame punched first. Ohio State slightly withered. But it wasn’t nearly enough for the Fighting Irish to spring an upset and head back home with what would have been a monumental Week 1 victory.
The No. 2 Buckeyes’ highly-touted offense was much maligned for large stretches of Saturday night’s top-five matchup, but it woke up just enough in the second half to walk away with a 21-10 win over the No. 5 Irish.
“There is no such thing as a moral victory,” said Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman, who returned to his alma mater. “We didn’t finish the game. We didn’t execute. I think we found out we are a good football team. We have a good, tough football team. We have to learn how to finish.”
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Notre Dame had its chances. Sophomore quarterback Tyler Buchner‘s first play as the Irish’s starter was a 54-yard catch and run to sophomore wide receiver Lorenzo Styles, a Columbus native, the son of a former Buckeye and the brother of a current one. The Irish moved the ball as far as the OSU 13 on their first possession, but they settled for a Blake Grupe 33-yard field goal.
In a game in which the two teams were separated by a single score for nearly the entire duration, settling for three was ultimately a stinging situation for the visitors. Notre Dame didn’t know then Buchner would only complete 10 of 18 pass attempts for 177 yards and zero touchdowns and run 11 times for 18 yards.
But it became quite clear as the night wore on that the Irish didn’t have it offensively.
“In the first half, we were rolling as an offense,” Buchner said. “We were executing. We were rolling… When it wasn’t clicking in the second half, that’s what killed us.”
Ohio State scored the game’s first touchdown on a CJ Stroud touchdown pass to wide receiver Emeke Egbuka with 5:32 left in the first quarter. The Buckeyes didn’t get back into the end zone until there were 17 seconds left in the third quarter. That 24-yard strike from Stroud to wide receiver Xavier Johnson still put the Buckeyes ahead 14-10. They went up 21-10 with 4:51 left in the game on a Miyan Williams two-yard touchdown rush. The TD capped a 14-play, 95-yard drive.
The Notre Dame defense frustrated Stroud and the Ohio State offense for long enough to keep the Irish in the game. The Irish offense didn’t pull its weight.
The wide receiver concerns that dominated offseason headlines manifested throughout the night. At the time Notre Dame got the ball back trailing by 11 with less than five minutes left, tight end Michael Mayer had five receptions. No other Notre Dame player had more than one. Buchner wasn’t bad in his first career start. But he wasn’t anything close to prolific. His wide receivers were partly to blame, but in the end it was also evident how much more of a polished passer Stroud is than Buchner at this point in their respective careers.
The running game Freeman wanted to lead the charge didn’t exactly show up either. Notre Dame rushed 30 times for 76 yards (2.5 yards per carry). It was an overall ugly evening for offensive coordinator Tommy Rees and company. It’s back to the drawing board for Rees with two winnable home games coming up against Marshall and California before taking on a high-powered North Carolina offense on the road on Sept. 24.
