The Path through the 12-team College Football Playoff quarterfinal: Ohio State is a juggernaut

This year is our first journey through the 12-team College Football Playoff, so it’s a learning experience for everyone. We’ve learned that guaranteeing byes to the four highest-ranked conference champions is probably a mistake, and with the top four seeds all losing in the CFP quarterfinals, we’ve solved one of life's great mysteries. Nature vs. nurture may never be solved, but a four-game sample size with two of the four teams with byes entering as double-digit underdogs, we’ve forever answered rest vs. rust. 

If you can’t sense the sarcasm, then you might be one of the many jumping to conclusions after this week. However, it is interesting to note that, including a 0-0 tie in the Sugar Bowl, the bye week teams, Oregon, Georgia, Boise State, and Arizona State fell behind by a combined 42-3 in the first quarter. It’s also interesting to note that betting favorites in the CFP are a perfect 8-0 straight up and 7-1 against the spread (TX/ASU the lone exception). 

The favorites are rolling, the top seeds are gone, and after a week off The Path is back breaking down the week that was in college football. Complete with breakdowns, touchdowns, and offseason lookaheads for the four teams that got sent home. It’ll be Penn State/Notre Dame in the Orange Bowl and Texas/Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl and as flawed as the 12-team system has been in Year 1, a larger sample almost always allows the cream enough time to rise to the top. 

The Statements

This time of year, every win is a big win, but these felt a bit bigger in CFP matchups

1. Michigan turned Ohio State into a juggernaut

Since Ohio State fell to Michigan 13-10 in the final week of the regular season and nearly the entire Buckeyes fanbase called for Ryan Day’s job, his team has won back-to-back College Football Playoff games 42-17 over Tennessee in the first round and 41-21 over No. 1 Oregon in the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day. The Buckeyes jumped out to a 34-0 lead over the Ducks, who beat them in Eugene back in Week 7, and it’s looking like losing to Michigan is the best thing that could have possibly happened for Ohio State’s national title hopes. 

The reason that game is so important is because it taught Day and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly a difficult lesson about who their $20 million team is. In the offseason, Day’s three biggest offensive transfer portal additions were a physical rushing quarterback Will Howard, running back QuinShon Judkins, and center Seth McLaughlin. Along with poaching Kelly from UCLA, Ohio State was loading up to finally out-physical Michigan, then they tried and failed miserably. 

This version of the Buckeyes has never been most effective as a run-first unit, and since losing left tackle Josh Simmons and McLaughlin to season-ending injuries, it’s gotten worse. In that game, with two first-round picks on the interior of the Michigan defensive line, they ran their heads straight into a Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant wall for four quarters. In this game against Oregon and last week against Tennessee, Day and Kelly remembered something that they inexplicably forgot; they have a Julio Jones clone at wide receiver. 

True freshman Jeremiah Smith is the best wide receiver in the country, bar none. In the second half against Michigan, he saw two targets, as many as he saw on the first three plays in the Rose Bowl. Here was play No. 3, his first of seven catches on 10 targets for 187 yards and two touchdowns. 

On offense, the plan was simple and it boiled down to players over plays. Smith and likely 2025 first-round pick Emeka Egbuka were Ohio State’s biggest advantage over Oregon, so they made sure to get them the football. Egbuka added five catches for 72 yards and a touchdown on the best throw of the season from Howard, ripping a ball up the seam over three defenders. Howard didn’t run the ball on a designed carry once, and as a pure passer, he averaged 11.04 yards and 0.41 EPA/per dropback. In part, because of his insanely talented weapons and in part because he’s developed into a criminally underrated thrower. 

The offensive dominance of the Buckeyes merely scratches the surface of their complete dismantling of the No. 1 team in the country. Defensive coordinator Jim Knowles’s unit may have had an even more comprehensive outing, confounding college football’s all-time leading passer in the first half and dominating in the trenches. 

Ohio State held Oregon, the No. 11 rushing offense by success rate this season, to -23 yards on the ground, and if you take out the 56 yards lost on Gabriel’s eight sacks, the Ducks still only gained 33 rushing yards. Oregon had a 15% rushing success rate to Ohio State’s 40% stuff rate and 13 tackles for loss, led by Cody Simon and JT Tuimoloau (who also had seven quarterback pressures), and both players had two of the team’s eight sacks. 

The lasting memory of the first matchup for many was Gabriel hitting deep shots against Ohio State’s secondary, and while he did go 4/4 on throws over 20 yards downfield, he only attempted four. Most of his damage was done quick and underneath with a 2.61 time to throw while Ohio State backed off to respect the overwhelming team speed of the Duck’s receivers. 

This time, Knowles dared Gabriel to beat him deep and took away with quick game with his three-safety look bringing additional athleticism around the line of scrimmage to muddy the picture for the most veteran QB in the history of the sport. Whether that was the plan pregame or an adjustment once the Ohio State braintrust learned that Evan Stewart, who had seven grabs for 149 yards and a touchdown in the first matchup, was out with an injury he sustained during warmups, it was masterfully executed. 

The loss to Michigan forced Ohio State to look in the mirror, and without a spot in the Big Ten title game, it gave the coaching staff the time it needed to do that. This team knows its strengths on offense, has a patchwork offensive line that is gelling enough to take advantage of them, and has a defensive line finally living up to the name brands that it features. No team left can beat Ohio State, the Buckeyes themselves, and the hubris that led to an ill-conceived Michigan gameplan, are the only thing standing in its way. 

2. A Marcus Freeman masterclass

Instead of focusing on the negatives of Kirby Smart getting thoroughly outcoached in the Sugar Bowl on Thursday afternoon, let’s focus on the man who thoroughly outcoached him, Marcus Freeman. In his third season at the helm in South Bend, Marcus Freeman has figured it out and after a 23-10 win over the Dawgs, he’s two wins away from a national championship, which eluded Brian Kelly over his 12-year tenure. The first-time head coach has done plenty of winning but besting Smart, even with backup QB Gunner Stockton leading the way, is by far his best. 

Freeman got a backup-caliber performance from his starter, Riley Leonard, so we can call it even there. Instead, Notre Dame won this game with turnovers, special teams, and a bit of masterful fourth-quarter game management. Up 23-10 and facing a fourth-and-1 from his own 18-yard line, Freeman sent his punt team out, then he called them back, rushing his offense out on the field and forcing Smart to scramble and send out his defense. Frantic, Georgia refused to burn a timeout, one of the two ideal outcomes for Notre Dame, the other is exactly what happened. Leonard drew Jalon Walker offsides with a hard count, center Pat Coogan snapped the ball, five-yard penalty, first down, and in a sense, ballgame. 

Now to the negative. The lead Freeman was protecting was essentially handed to him by Smart. Georgia got the ball back with just under 40 seconds remaining in the first half and trailing by three. For a team that ranks 87th in first-half points per game this season, a 6-3 deficit with a backup QB is not a bad spot to be in. However, instead of kneeling it out or handing it off, Smart and offensive coordinator Mike Bobo chose to be aggressive and it only took one play for Stockton to give the ball right back. Junior Tuihalamaka stripped the sophomore backup QB and Notre Dame cashed it in for the game’s first touchdown on the next play. 

Smart did his backup QB no favors in this one, and yet, in many ways, Stockton was the least of Georgia’s offensive problems. He threw for 234 yards and averaged 7.3 yards per attempt. The menu of passing plays that Bobo felt comfortable calling was clearly smaller than with Beck, but it was the same issues along the offensive line and at wide receiver that plagued Georgia’s starter in his final collegiate season, were on display with his replacement. 

Left tackle Monroe Freeling, who allowed the Tuihalamaka strip sack, gave up two others and had to be replaced by Xavier Truss, who moved over from right to left tackle at halftime with former starting left tackle Earnest Greene III entering the game on the right side. Left tackle was never solved this season which hurt in pass protection and limited a severely underwhelming run game that never got going in this one. At wide receiver, Georgia led the country in drops and just didn’t have many talented options after Rara Thomas and Colbie Young were dismissed from the team following offseason and midseason arrests. 

An offense can remain functional with a backup quarterback, a weak link on the offensive line, or a disappointing group of pass catchers, but not all three. Kirby is still the best defensive coach in football and he gave Notre Dame’s offense fits, but game management becomes a much bigger issue when you can’t overwhelm your opponent with waves of first-round picks. The transfer portal and NIL have dispersed talent more widely across the country and with a more equal playing field, the coaches who have dominated because they’re great recruiters, especially in the SEC, are getting exposed.  

Battling the big-time backs

Contrary to popular belief, the running back isn't dead, but the two teams with the best ones got eliminated from the CFP this week.

3. Penn State ends Ashton Jeanty’s record chase

Boise State running back Ashton Jeanty’s remarkable season came to an end in the Fiesta Bowl quarterfinal with a 104-yard performance in a 31-14 loss to Penn State. That left him 27 yards shy of Barry Sanders’ single-season rushing record (with three additional games), and considering the caliber of defenses that Jeanty did much of his damage against, the Nittany Lions did college football a service by preserving Sanders’ place in history. 

Penn State entered the Fiesta Bowl at No. 6 in the country in opponent EPA/rush, by far the best unit that Jeanty had faced. For the year, seven of Boise State’s opponents ranked outside the top 100 in EPA/rush and that’s not including Wyoming at No. 97 or FCS Portland State. Jeanty is a great player, but not a truly unstoppable one, and while they did give up over 300 yards through the air to Maddux Madsen, the Nittany Lions exposed that. 

Jeanty had the first negative EPA/rush game of his season and managed just a 23% success rate on the ground. As a team, Boise State ran two or fewer yards on 49% of its carries against a Penn State defense with a 96th percentile stuff rate this year. The Nittany Lions overwhelmed Boise State in the trenches and had too much sideline-to-sideline speed with linebackers Kobe King, Tony Rojas, and Dom DeLuca for Jeanty to get anything going on the perimeter. 

The Broncos were a perfect matchup for Penn State on that side of the ball, and Notre Dame will be too. The Irish don’t have the elite receivers who can expose a questionable secondary as Oregon and Tez Johnson did in the Big Ten Championship Game, but that’s assuming that Abdul Carter is healthy enough to play. The Big Ten Defensive Player of the Year left the Fiesta Bowl in the second quarter with a left arm injury and was unable to return. The converted linebacker has become the most dominant edge rusher in the country, and without him, the Nittany Lions won’t be disruptive enough up front to win two more “big games” for a national championship. 

This “big game” was “Big Game James” Franklin’s fourth win against an AP top 10 team in his 11-year tenure at Penn State, and with an admittedly favorable path, he’s finally reached the CFP semifinal. 

4. Texas survives Skattebo’s puke and rally

Texas jumped Arizona State in the first quarter of the Peach Bowl quarterfinal, taking a 17-3 lead into halftime behind a two-play touchdown drive on its first possession and a Silas Bolden punt-return touchdown. However, Arizona State, which entered the game as a double-digit underdog, just kept hanging around before finally falling 39-31 in double overtime. 

The Longhorn’s highly-touted defensive line was too much for the Sun Devils early on, pressuring quarterback Sam Leavitt on 18 of his 51 dropbacks and pushing 215-pound running back Cam Skattebo to the brink of exhaustion. Skattebo reportedly threw up on the sidelines before leading a ferocious comeback that included a 42-yard touchdown pass and 242 scrimmage yards. Apologies to your freshman-year college roommate, but it was the most impressive puke and rally in decades and nearly knocked the Longhorns out of the playoff. 

Talk of making a switch to Arch Manning can be put on hold for another week, and likely until the offseason when Quinn Ewers is likely to head to the transfer portal, ceding the job to his understudy. Ewers threw for 322 yards and three touchdowns, and despite an ugly fourth-quarter pick that allowed the Sun Devils to tie the game on Skattebo’s first touchdown run, the veteran QB played one of his best games since sustaining oblique and ankle injuries this season. He even ran for a score. 

Arizona State fans will point to a no-call on a potential targeting near the end of regulation, but Kenny Dillingham’s Sun Devils simply made too many special teams mistakes to overcome, even with two missed fourth-quarter field goals from Texas’s Bert Auburn. The Longhorns advanced, but have nearly made a mess of a pristine path to the semifinal, playing competitive games with Clemson and ASU as huge betting favorites. 

Steve Sarkisian’s offense finished with 53 yards on the ground a week after rushing for 292 against Clemson and, even in a 39-point performance, looked disjointed. If it were a consistent issue for a statistically impressive yet at times unwatchable unit, it would be easier to identify the cause and possible solution, but the reality is, Texas is a good, not great, team with a good, not great, quarterback and now it has to stop the rolling ball of chainsaws that is the Ohio State Buckeyes in the Cotton Bowl semifinal. 

And the CFP quarterfinal Heisman goes to…

5. Arizona State running back, Cam Skattebo

Skattebo began his career at Sacramento State, and on New Year’s Day in the Peach Bowl, he stared down the best defensive line in the country and gave them 143 yards and two touchdowns on 30 carries. He essentially slammed into that burnt orange and white brick wall for an entire half, appeared to need an oxygen mask every third play, vomited on the sidelines, and still eventually broke through. 

173 of Skattebo’s 242 scrimmage yards came in the second half and overtime and 96 of his yards on the ground came after contact. He basically decided he wasn’t going to be tackled and a unit that is easily one of the four best defenses in the country obliged. Quickly becoming a cult hero, he was named the offensive MVP of the Peach Bowl just weeks after he finished fifth in Heisman Trophy voting. He had the performance that Boise State needed from its superstar running back in the quarterfinals, and his season is nearly as impressive. 

Play the fight song!

Whether by a great play-call or just a great play, the week’s most exciting and important touchdowns

6. Drew Allar’s excellence

This segment of the column is reserved for pure, unabashed Drew Allar propaganda. The junior QB finished 13/25 for 171 yards and three touchdowns, but that stat line doesn’t begin to tell the story of how excellent he was in the Fiesta Bowl. The three touchdown passes were all excellent, but this dime was my favorite because it’s not a throw you see from the Nittany Lions offense too often and Allar grooved it over 50 air yards with ease. 

Allar has reportedly already told the coaching staff that he intends to return for 2025 and backup QB Beau Pribula already fled for Missouri in the transfer portal, but having started my work on the 2025 NFL Draft class, which features Cam Ward and Shedeur Sanders as likely first-round picks, and having watched every snap of Allar’s breakout junior season, he’s easily my QB1. 

Penn State’s lack of wide receiver talent limits Allar’s efficiency, and is likely the reason the Nittany Lions won’t win the national championship, but their 6-foot-5 235-pound former five-star QB will give them a chance. He has an excellent arm, incredible pocket awareness and mobility, and understands risk/reward as a thrower like a much more seasoned veteran. He’s not just the best QB that could possibly enter the 2025 draft, he’s easily the best QB left in the CFP. 

7. Dillon Gabriel’s record breaker

Late in the second half, when Ohio State had already pulled away in the Rose Bowl and it was all academic, Dillon Gabriel tied Case Keenum’s NCAA record for career passing touchdowns with 155. While it had no bearing on the game, it’s worth recognizing Gabriel for his remarkable career because he’s the type of excellent college quarterback whose greatness will be clouded by his lack of success at the next level

Gabriel doesn’t have an NFL arm, that’s what sent him back to school, but he should be a surefire College Football Hall of Famer and while his career didn’t include a Heisman Trophy or a national championship, he defined this chaotic era as well as anyone. With the additional covid eligibility, Gabriel played for six seasons at three different schools, which was enabled by the emergence of the transfer portal. For five of those seasons, he thrived in the veer-and-shoot, the in-vogue system of the time, beginning his career under Josh Heupel, who replaced Art Briles as the patron saint of that offense. 

8. Gotta win all three phases

How do you win a college football playoff game when your quarterback throws for 90 yards and you fail to crack 250 as a team? Special teams and turnovers. Notre Dame, which leads the country in takeaways after adding two more on Thursday, also outplayed the Dawgs in the third phase of the game. When Jayden Harrison opened the second half with a 99-yard kickoff return touchdown, the Irish had scored 17 of their 20 points in under a minute of game-time.

Offseason outlook

Even with the offseason roster churn of college football presenting serious uncertainty, it’s never too early to look to next year’s team and how these programs can get back to the CFP

9. Boise State

Spencer Danielson isn’t just losing one of the most irreplaceable players in the country on offense, he’s also losing the leader of his team’s elite pass rush in Ahmed Hassanein. The Broncos finished second in the country in sacks per game and Hassanein led the way with 62 quarterback pressures, the third most in the country. However, at a development-based program like Boise State, Danielson has young players ready to fill those big shoes. 

Jayden Virgin-Morgan led the team in sacks opposite Hassanein, and he’ll likely return for his redshirt junior year. To stave off a drop in production, Danielson and his staff have already added three defensive linemen in the transfer portal to keep the team’s identity. Like Virgin-Morgan, former four-star running back Jambres Dubar, one of the highest-rated recruits in program history, will also likely be back. Dubar was nagged by injuries as a sophomore and overshadowed by Jeanty’s dominance, he’ll likely be set to take over as RB1 on a run-heavy offense alongside Maddux Madsen. There won’t be much to overhaul and a step forward from Madsen will have the Broncos in the mix for a Mountain West title in 2025, but without Jeanty, back-to-back CFP appearances feels unlikely. 

10. Arizona State

Kenny Dillingham’s Sun Devils may have failed to advance to the Cotton Bowl semifinal, but overall this season was a rousing success. While making the move to the Big 12, Arizona State jumped from 3-9 to 11-3 with a conference championship, and though Cam Skattebo is heading to the NFL this program isn’t going to disappear back to the desert without him. Quarterback Sam Leavitt developed into a foundational piece in his redshirt freshman season, so this offseason is all about reconfiguring the program around him. 

Leavitt is a quick decision-maker and accurate thrower, but he can thrive outside of structure with his pocket awareness and athleticism. He limits negative plays with a low pressure-to-sack rate and very few turnovers while still hunting for big gains down the field when under pressure and outside the pocket. He’s more than the custodian of a Skattebo-centric unit, he’s a playmaker and so far could be the most impressive member of the loaded 2023 quarterback recruiting class. Of the 2023 QBs who started this season, I’d take Leavitt over everyone except LaNorris Sellers, and even that is a close call. 

Redshirt sophomore Jordyn Tyson was the only wide receiver with over 20 catches this season, leading the team with 75 grabs for 1,101 yards and 10 touchdowns before going down with a season-ending injury in Week 14. He left a noticeable void, one that Dillingham is hoping to fill with the transfer portal additions of Noble Johnson from Clemson and Jalen Moss from Fresno State, but the Sun Devils may still need another dynamic playmaker to maximize Leavitt’s second year in Tempe. 

11. Oregon

The Ducks are loaded with talent and Phil Knight has provided Dan Lanning with a near-unlimited NIL war chest, so it’s not a matter of what holes they can fill, it’s a question of whether they chose the right players to fill them. Lanning needs to fix his run defense, and while the addition of Bear Alexander along the defensive line made a splash, it won’t be enough to fix a unit that finished 110th in the country in EPA/rush. 

In that regard, the loss of linebacker Bryce Boettcher, who is also the Duck’s centerfielder, to professional baseball could be the toughest to overcome on that side of the ball, but the offseason focus will be all about who takes over for Dillon Gabriel at quarterback. Lanning added former 2023 five-star recruit Dante Moore in the transfer portal last season so he could sit and learn in a redshirt year behind Gabriel in 2024 after a disastrous start to his career at UCLA, ironically under Chip Kelly. 

The offseason could feature a QB battle between Moore and fellow 2023 recruit Austin Novosad, but will Lanning and OC Will Stein be comfortable handing the keys of the offense over to an inexperienced QB after three straight successful seasons between Bo Nix and Dillon Gabriel, two of the longest tenured passers in college football history? If they aren’t, the Ducks could make a big play for a veteran like… oh I don’t know… Quinn Ewers. 

12. Georgia

Facing the toughest schedule in the country in 2024, Smart led the Dawgs back to an SEC title and the College Football Playoff, but now two years removed from his back-to-back national championships there are very real problems in his program that need to be addressed. 

1st: Accountability - We can and do all make jokes about Georgia’s reckless driving problem, but it's an actual issue that cost a player and a staffer their lives in January, 2023. The list of reckless driving, racing, and DUI arrests since then has continued to grow with very little punishment in almost all instances. Smart has been swift to punish players like Rara Thomas and Colbie Young who have faced domestic charges, but there’s an obvious lack of discipline in the program and it’s only a matter of time before that erodes the culture. 

2nd: The offense… just the whole offense - Carson Beck took a huge step back without Brock Bowers and Ladd McConkey, and even if Thomas and Young weren’t dismissed from the program, Smart still would not have done enough to replace them. Not to mention, Mike Bobo’s play-calling didn’t do much to elevate the pressure on Beck to carry the underwhelming receiving corps. The transfer portal creates a much smaller margin for error, especially on the offensive line, so Georgia can be forgiven for those issues, but Smart must overhaul his receiver room this offseason and consider a change at OC for whoever plays quarterback next year to have a chance. 

The good news is that if Nate Frazier Jr. can hold onto the ball and solve his fumbling problem as a sophomore, he could be the next great Georgia running back, the best since Nick Chubb and Sony Michel in 2017.