We need to be careful. We all tend to see the team that just won as the team that will win again next year. Alabama looked invincible after it demolished Notre Dame in January 2013, but finished that calendar year as second-best in its state. Florida State figured to be no less good in 2014 than in its unbeaten run to the last BCS title, but the Seminoles nearly lost a half-dozen times before being overwhelmed by Oregon.
Got that? We’re good on the caveats? OK, here goes: Ohio State should be even better next season.
Even coach Urban Meyer conceded the point, saying Tuesday: “I think we’ll be very good.”
Ezekiel Elliott, who rushed for an astonishing 696 yards in the Buckeyes’ three-game postseason? He’s a sophomore. Joey Bosa, the fierce defensive end? Sophomore. Vonn Bell, the terrific safety from Rossville? Sophomore. Jalin Marshall, the fleet receiver? Redshirt freshman. Raekwon McMillan, the burgeoning linebacker from Liberty County? Freshman.
Quarterback Cardale Jones? He’s a third-year sophomore, but he was so stellar in leading the Buckeyes to the national championship that he’s being tempted by the NFL. “My personal opinion is that I’m not ready for that yet,” Jones said Tuesday morning, which made sense. He has, after all, made only three collegiate starts.
In those three, the Buckeyes beat Wisconsin for the Big Ten title, Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and Oregon here Monday night. The team that lost at home to Virginia Tech in September wasn’t favored in any of its postseason games, but won them by the aggregate score of 143-55. The Buckeyes scored 42 points on Alabama and Nick Saban and held Oregon and Marcus Mariota to 20, and they did all this with their third-string quarterback.
After Monday’s game, Meyer said: “We finished the year a great team. To have four turnovers and still beat a team like that 42-20 is an incredible experience. I don’t want to get overly dramatic, but it’s as improved a football team, and I’ve watched football for a long time, from Game 1 to Game 15 — I’ve never seen anything like it.”
If we’re looking for the biggest reason why the born-again Buckeyes aren’t going away anytime soon, there it is. They’re coached by Urban Meyer, and he’s the best. Saban loyalists will note that their man has four national titles to Meyer’s three, but Meyer is 2-1 against Saban in the postseason (1-1 in SEC Championship games, 1-0 in this inaugural tournament). And Saban never won anything with his No. 3 quarterback.
What Meyer did after J.T. Barrett, who was playing because Braxton Miller was lost in the preseason, got hurt against Michigan on Nov. 29 is — deep breath here — the greatest coaching job in the history of college football. Even Meyer has conceded that he believed this team was “a year ahead of schedule,” but he recruited SEC speed and grafted it onto Big Ten heft.
For all Jones’ deep throws and battering-ram scrambles, Ohio State won because it outslugged every team in its postseason path. (Again we reference Elliott’s 696 yards.) Said Meyer: “Ohio State has always been that style of program. I hear people say we’re a spread offense, but it’s a line-of-scrimmage league. We’re a line-of-scrimmage program. You win on the offensive line and defensive line.”
He turned to Jones. “When we get on a plane, the quarterback doesn’t sit in first class. Who sits up there?”
Said Jones: “The offensive line.”
Like most innovators, Meyer is a sponge. He takes ideas from everywhere — from auditing other programs (such as Oregon, which he visited only two years ago) to books about leadership to historical antecedents — and meshes them in a way nobody else does. He’s also a recruiting demon, and now that he has claimed a national championship based in the formerly downtrodden Big Ten, there should be no stopping him.
Meyer mentioned Tuesday that he looked at assistant Kerry Coombs during the sleepless celebratory night and said: “Man, I can’t wait to go out recruiting. If you can’t recruit to this, you’re officially a bad recruiter.”
The Big Ten is improving — and Jim Harbaugh’s arrival at Michigan will improve it more — but there really aren’t many programs there with the resources of Ohio State. (Wisconsin just lost its second coach in three years.) The Big Ten champ just beat the SEC champ, but the Big Ten champ doesn’t play an SEC schedule. That’s no small thing.
In Year 3, Meyer got the Buckeyes where he thought they might be in Year 4, which augurs even brighter tomorrows. But back to the caveat: This is college football, where nothing is a given. And that’s something Meyer, once so driven that he flamed out at Florida, understands.
“There’s something I’ve learned over my journey,” he said Tuesday, “and that’s that I’m going to enjoy this darn thing.”
He meant Championship No. 3. But we shouldn’t be surprised if No. 4 follows forthwith.
