Tennessee wasn’t on the radar, or didn’t appear to be, when most of the debate on the College Football Playoff back earlier this month was happening.
After all, the Volunteers beat Alabama, lost to Georgia and to Arkansas – surely that’s enough to make you a playoff team, right?
Many, many many Tennessee fans showed up here at Ohio Stadium Saturday night to insist it did.
And then the Ohio State Buckeyes gave them – and everyone else – a dose of reality.
Ohio State got a pair of touchdown connections between quarterback Will Howard and freshman receiver Jeremiah Smith, and two touchdowns each from running backs TreVeyon Henderson and Quinshon Judkins, and steamrolled the visiting Vols, 42-17, in a first-round College Football Playoff game.
It was the fourth such game of the weekend, and all four ended with double-digit decisions, with two of them – the one here tonight and the one between SMU and Penn State that began this morning – ending in absolute blowouts.
And the one here earned the Buckeyes (11-2) a rematch with No. 1 Oregon at the Rose Bowl by Prudential on New Year’s Day.
Howard helped quiet some critics – many of them vocal Buckeyes fans – who may have wanted change after Ohio State’s upset loss to 6-5 Michigan in the regular season finale. That loss not only came to the Buckeyes’ biggest rival; it also knocked them out of a chance at a Big Ten Championship.
Howard went 24-of-29 for 311 yards, the most impressive performance of any quarterback in the first round this weekend, and the two scores to Smith, who had 103 yards and those TDs on six catches.
Henderson ran for two scores and finished with 80 rushing yards. Ohio State had 473 of them – yards, that is – and that was the most the Vols had allowed all year.
To be fair, Tennessee was put in a spot when running back Dylan Sampson, considered likely the best running back in the Southeastern Conference, injured his hamstring and could not return. He finished with just 6 yards on two carries.
The first game between Oregon and Ohio State this season ended when Howard (maybe) misjudged the time left on the clock and scrambled for a first down, but the game clock ran out before the Buckeyes could run another play. They’ll get a chance to run a bunch of them on Wednesday, Jan. 1, in Pasadena, Calif., a second-round rematch that begins at 5 p.m. Eastern / 4 Central that afternoon.
