Ohio State inches past Notre Dame with only a second to spare (2024)

With both human frailty and human ruggedness it wore on, using up all the seconds but one until fourth-year player Chip Trayanum, one of life’s very occasional linebacker/running backs, kept his knees barely airborne, lunged over from the 1-yard line and nudged No. 6 Ohio State past No. 9 Notre Dame, 17-14, in an early-season tussle between longtime empires.

“In moments like that,” Trayanum said, “it may all seem very fast, but in the moment those plays seem super-slow.”

With its sudden and defined life of its own, the drive flung so much meaning into so many places.

It ratified Ohio State Coach Ryan Day’s defense of his team against those who dare call it insufficiently physical, an opinion barked late in the week by 86-year-old former Notre Dame Coach Lou Holtz, on Pat McAfee’s program. Holtz said of Day, “He has lost to Alabama, Georgia, Clemson, Michigan twice, and everybody beats him because they’re more physical than Ohio State.”

So Day came to the interview room with his 49-6 record at Ohio State and said quickly, “A lot of people took a lot of shots at this team the last 48 hours, and it really hit home to me,” and, “I’m really upset and disappointed by what Lou Holtz said publicly,” and, “I don’t know where that narrative comes from, but it ends tonight,” and, “I don’t know where he gets off saying those type of things. There’s some other things I’d like to say, too, but I’m not going to say them because I’m more respectful than he is.”

With its quit-less resilience and closing bull into the end zone, the drive labeled as more than viable Kyle McCord, the third-year Ohio State quarterback making only his fifth-ever start in his first season as starter. McCord saw third and 10 and drilled a 23-yarder through the middle to wide receiver Emeka Egbuka (seven catches, 96 yards). He saw the fourth and seven and went short middle seven yards to Julian Fleming. He saw a second and 10 and went 19 yards to Marvin Harrison Jr. He saw the third and 19 from the Notre Dame 22 with 15 seconds left and sent a rocket 21 yards to Egbuka at the 1-yard line. He ran and spiked it.

He called it “a tribute to our practice habits,” and said, “We practice those two-minute situations all the time,” and said that while it “wasn’t perfect by any means,” well, “You can’t draw it up any better than that.” Of the closing seconds, he said, “At that point you’re just playing backyard football, trying to give your guy a chance.”

Were questions about McCord, the fresh replacement for the marvelous C.J. Stroud, answered?

“Hell yeah, they were answered tonight,” Trayanum said.

“Some big-time throws in there,” Day said.

That nutty, gnarly drive hurled around pain.

It took Notre Dame from the prospect of a giddy 5-0 to an aching 4-1, bumming out most of the 77,622 at Notre Dame Stadium. It took Sam Hartman, the 24-year-old quarterback who threw for 12,967 yards and 110 touchdowns while at Wake Forest, and it left him standing over on the sideline looking dejected. It minimized his 17-for-25 night and the 96-yard, 11-play drive he steered for a 14-10 lead with 8:22 left, with his key throws of 28 yards to Jaden Greathouse and 25 yards to tight end Mitchell Evans. It occluded Hartman’s two-yard touchdown pass to Rico Flores Jr., that closed those 96 yards, and piled atop the score on the previous drive, a 13-play, 75-yarder that ended with running back Gi’Bran Payne’s 1-yard run on a direct snap. It took Notre Dame, in its second season under 37-year-old Coach Marcus Freeman, that former Ohio State linebacker, from the verge of a splendid memory to an ending that made people remember the famous loss here to Southern California in 2005 — the “Bush Push” — and made people lament that on the winning touchdown, Notre Dame had only 10 defenders on the field.

The drive wound up dwarfing a last-century kind of game with its strong running and its limited scoring, a game that went scoreless almost all the way to halftime, that never got a touchdown until early in the third quarter when TreVeyon Henderson churned 61 yards off a crushing block from pulling right guard Matthew Jones. It wound up overshadowing Notre Dame’s fine comeback from that 10-0 moment, and rewarding an admirable effort from Ohio State’s wearying defense. It left in the dust of memory the taut yardage battle (366-351, Ohio State) and the long first-half drives from each side that wound up with foiled fourth and ones.

It even wiped out potentially wretched thoughts of another fourth and one, the one with four minutes left and the score 14-10, the one where Ohio State ran Egbuka on a jet sweep and a committee of Irish met and greeted him for no gain.

And then finally, the mighty drive offered its closing yard, a storybook closing yard, Trayanum muscling his way over. It gave Day a chance to say: “Me. I made the call.” It enabled McCord to say, “I had no doubt.” It led to a review, but not an overturn.

It let Trayanum tell the story he might tell for the rest of his days: “It was definitely a rush getting on the field, just to get on the field.” And: “As a running back, you live for runs like that” — for one-yard runs of will and might. It let Trayanum say, “We definitely proved our point [about toughness]. … They swung, we swung and we kept swinging.”

It proved so powerful, that drive, that it had Day going on and on, as with: “The guts of our team to go and win the game on the road. You’re going to talk about this team’s not physical, not hard. You’re wrong.” It even had him saying, “I think it’s going to go down as one of the biggest wins in Ohio State history.”

That’s a frigate-load of wins from which to choose, but fair enough. For one thing, that long, long tale of a drive that seemed to last for a sliver of forever is just getting set to live on in mind for a good chunk of forever.