Ohio State scored on its first four possessions of the College Football Playoff National Championship on the night of January 20, took a 31-7 lead with a field goal on the fifth drive, and watched Notre Dame spend the next forty minutes trying to assemble a comeback that the underlying numbers had already declared structurally impossible. Final was 34-23. The Buckeyes’ first five drives produced 467 yards. Notre Dame’s first five drives produced 102. The game was effectively decided by the second quarter, and the closing margin of 11 points masked a contest that had been a 24-point game on the SP+ scoreboard for most of the second half.
Will Howard, the transfer quarterback who had spent three years at Kansas State before landing in Columbus, finished 17 of 21 for 231 yards and two touchdowns. The throw that closed the game — a 56-yard strike to Jeremiah Smith on third-and-11 with 4:09 left and Notre Dame having cut the lead to eight — was the cleanest moment of execution Ohio State produced all season. The Buckeyes had been a top-five team by every public efficiency model from October onward; the title finally aligned the public scoreboard with what the underlying numbers had been describing for months.
What follows is what made Ohio State’s offensive front-loading the cleanest analytical pattern of the 2024-25 college football season, how the Buckeyes’ transfer-portal strategy specifically produced the championship roster, and where the championship game actually reveals the limits of the offensive identity Ryan Day built.
The front-loaded drive quality that decided the game
Ohio State’s first five drives were a clinic. Drive one: 75 yards, eight plays, TD. Drive two: 70 yards, ten plays, TD. Drive three: 81 yards, six plays, TD. Drive four: 79 yards, twelve plays, TD. Drive five: 63 yards, eight plays, FG. The Buckeyes’ average EPA per play across those five possessions was +0.74, which would be the highest single-game EPA of any college football team’s offensive output from the 2024 season. By the time Notre Dame had recovered enough to score their first touchdown midway through the third quarter, the SP+ in-game win probability had Ohio State above 95%.
The structural reason Ohio State’s offense traveled so cleanly to the title game was the depth at skill positions. Jeremiah Smith, Emeka Egbuka, Quinshon Judkins, and TreVeyon Henderson combined for 312 of the 467 first-half yards. The receivers were impossible to double-team because the running game was the league’s most efficient. The running game was uncontainable because the receiving corps demanded safety help. Notre Dame’s defense, which had been top-ten in yards-allowed during the regular season, was structurally designed against teams with one or two skill threats. Ohio State had four.
Our SP+ vs CFP committee piece covers the broader version of how the public efficiency models have been describing this kind of front-loaded offense for two years before the championship outcome validated it. Ohio State sat at SP+ rank three at the start of the playoff. By the end of the first quarter against Notre Dame, they had earned rank one.
What the transfer-portal strategy actually built
The Ohio State roster that won the 2025 championship had four meaningful starters who entered the program through the transfer portal. Howard at quarterback from Kansas State. Caleb Downs at safety from Alabama. Quinshon Judkins at running back from Ole Miss. Seth McLaughlin at center from Alabama. The portal acquisitions cost roughly $20 million in NIL spending across the four players. The math on whether the spending was worth it had been a public conversation across the entire season. The championship game settled it.
| Portal acquisition | Prior school | NIL cost (est) | Title-game impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Will Howard | Kansas State | $2.5M | 17/21, 231 yards, 2 TDs |
| Caleb Downs | Alabama | $3M | 9 tackles, 1 PBU, no missed assignments |
| Quinshon Judkins | Ole Miss | $1.5M | 11 carries, 100 yards, 2 TDs |
| Seth McLaughlin | Alabama | $1.2M | Out (injury), but unit held |
The Howard transfer specifically is the one the Buckeyes built the season around. He had been a quality starter at Kansas State for three years, with a 60% completion rate and decent EPA per play, but he had never been an elite quarterback at any level. The Ohio State staff bet that the supporting cast around him — Smith, Egbuka, Judkins, Henderson, the offensive line — would lift his individual ceiling. The bet landed. Howard’s national-championship-game line is the cleanest single-season transformation of a quarterback’s profile that the portal era has produced.
Where the underlying numbers actually disagreed with the result
Ohio State won 34-23. The SP+ in-game model had the final margin at closer to 21 points across most reasonable counterfactuals. The Buckeyes underperformed their own structural ceiling in the second half. Specifically, the offense produced one touchdown across drives six through twelve, which is unusual for a unit that had been so dominant early. Notre Dame’s defensive coordinator Al Golden made coverage adjustments that compressed Ohio State’s seam routes; the Buckeyes did not have an immediate answer.
The reason this matters is not the championship margin — Ohio State won comfortably enough. The reason is what it tells us about the offensive ceiling. The unit that produced +0.74 EPA per play in five drives also produced -0.05 EPA per play in seven drives, after Notre Dame’s defensive adjustment. Across a full season, Ohio State’s offense was the most front-loaded in the country: enormous early-drive efficiency, meaningful regression after adjustments. The pattern won the championship because the early lead was insurmountable. It would have been a structural problem in a tighter game.
Where this gets weird
The clean “Ohio State’s transfer portal worked, title delivered” reading misses three things that complicate the broader CFB conversation.
The first is that the $20 million NIL spend produced a championship that probably required roughly that much investment. The portal acquisitions were not luxury; they were the marginal pieces that took an already-good Ohio State roster from 11-2 to 14-2. Whether $20 million is the right price for one championship is a different question than whether the portal spending worked. The first answer is “absolutely.” The second is “ask the Ohio State athletic department’s budget committee in 2026.”
The second is that Will Howard’s transformation from Kansas State quarterback to championship-game MVP-tier performer was structurally dependent on the skill players around him. A version of Howard on a roster without Smith, Egbuka, Judkins, and Henderson is a quality Big 12 starter. The portal acquisition was the right move, but the credit-allocation between “Howard improved” and “the supporting cast was elite” leans more heavily toward the second answer than the postgame coverage acknowledged.
The third is that the Notre Dame side of the game deserves its own analytical reading. The Fighting Irish trailed 31-7 and outscored Ohio State 16-3 across the next forty minutes. Their defensive adjustment after halftime was real and effective. Marcus Freeman’s halftime speech, which the public coverage has lionized, was less consequential than the actual scheme change Al Golden installed. Notre Dame did not win, but the second-half performance was the cleanest example of what their defense could have been if it had shown up in the first quarter.
What this title means for the 2025 college football season
- The portal era is now the dominant roster-construction strategy. Ohio State proved that targeted portal acquisitions can transform a top-ten team into a champion. Every program with the budget will follow the model.
- Front-loaded offensive efficiency is a real and replicable pattern. The Ohio State approach — overwhelm in the first half, weather the second-half adjustment — works against any opponent without an elite defensive coordinator.
- The 12-team playoff format produced a deserving champion in its first year. Ohio State was a top-five team by every public model. The expanded format did not produce a Cinderella; it produced the favorite. That is what the format was designed to do.
- Will Howard’s career arc is a portal case study. Three years at Kansas State, one year at Ohio State, championship game MVP. The next quarterback who follows the same path will get the Howard comp regardless of profile fit.
The callback
Those first five drives at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on the night of January 20 produced the cleanest opening sequence in National Championship history — 467 yards, four touchdowns, a field goal, and a 31-7 lead that no second-half adjustment was going to overcome. Ohio State won the title their underlying numbers had been calling for since October. The transfer-portal strategy produced a championship roster on a budget that very few programs can match. Will Howard’s career inflection from Kansas State quarterback to National Champion will be the case study every portal recruit gets compared to for the next decade. The Buckeyes’ first championship since the inaugural CFP in 2015 took ten years to assemble. They earned it in the first quarter of one game. The SEC vs Big Ten piece covers the broader conference context. The 2025 title belongs to a Big Ten team that out-recruited the portal, out-coached the matchup, and out-played the model’s most generous projection across forty minutes of football. The next team that does this will get compared to the 2024 Buckeyes. They will probably be a Big Ten team too.
Box score via ESPN; SP+ ratings via Bill Connelly; portal data via 247Sports.
