EASIER THAN TEASING A FORMER ROOMMATE, OHIO STATE NEARS A NATIONAL TITLE
Jack Sawyer rambled and forced a Quinn Ewers fumble, returning it for a score in another wild victory for a Buckeyes team that has been unstoppable since an inexplicable loss to Michigan in November
Why wouldn’t Jack Sawyer know where to pinpoint his area of attack? He studied the right shoulder of Quinn Ewers for an entire semester as his former roommate. The rise of Ohio State as an aspiring national champion is becoming too simple, isn’t it? A blueblood Buckeye from Columbus converted his pounding of the Texas quarterback into a fumble, before a delightful hop of the football.
He returned the scoop 83 yards, amid roars that reminded us of the program’s reprisal, and finished a 28-14 victory in a College Football Playoff semifinal Friday night. It showed how a defender who rejected the NFL draft last spring would create his glory. All Sawyer had to do was crack Ewers on the sweet side, the ideal way to counter an ex-teammate who transferred because C.J. Stroud was the starter.
“I saw the ball pop out right to me after I tackled him. I was just thinking, I’ve got to stay on my feet, because I almost blacked out when I scooped it and saw a bunch of green grass ahead of me,” Sawyer said.
Floored on the turf, Ewers lost a chance to tie the game with 2:13 left. This is where consequential contests become classics. “I felt him. I started drifting away, thought I was going to be able to get the ball off before he got there,” he said. “I saw Jack running with the ball down the sideline. Jack’s a good player who made a great play.”
That succinctly, Ohio State plays Notre Dame in a finals envelope that showcases two colossal programs a week from Monday. The Buckeyes are loaded with $20 million in NIL profiteers. The Fighting Irish are filled with well-compensated transfers. Welcome to the modern world of a sport that legalizes what used to be cheating.
“I can’t say enough about Jack Sawyer,” head coach Ryan Day said. “He’s a guy who loves being a Buckeye, loves his teammates. As a captain, he does everything we ask him to do. You make a play like that in that moment, we talked about it. If you want to leave a legacy behind, you become a legend. He just became a legend at Ohio State. I mean, he’s become like family to me.”
He refused to leave the program without winning. Say what you will about Day, but Sawyer and several players worthy of the NFL decided to remain and overcome annual losses to Michigan and a resulting depression. They lost another in late November, in a stunner, and guess who was there to prevent the Wolverines from planting an “M” flag on the banks of the Olentangy River? Sawyer tore away the banner and launched a skirmish that required pepper spray from police. He has been immaculate in three playoff games with fierce pressures and pass breakups. The Buckeyes have whipped Texas, Oregon and Tennessee. Not only are they overwhelming favorites to win for the first time since 2014, they are beginning to resemble an all-time postseason team.
“The resiliency of this team from a month ago has been incredible,” Sawyer said. “We sat up here last year with a sore taste in our mouth and heard a lot of things. We come back and heard the same things a month ago. But we kept swinging."
To see him overcome Ewers was fascinating theater. The quarterback grew up in Austin and decided to play at Ohio State, but Stroud was better in a career that has extended to another postseason with the Houston Texans. “Boy, it was strange how it all shook out," Day said. “He decided he really wanted to play. And it was disappointing for us, but we certainly understood. He's had a great career at Texas and a lot of people here still have good relationships with him and think the world of him.”
Ewers might have felt the same way until Sawyer crunched him. "Obviously, it's not like I tried to give him the game,” he said. “He is a great player, great individual, great person. It sucks.” Ewers will move on to the next NFL draft, allowing Arch Manning to finally take over at quarterback for Steve Sarkisian — unless the coach also takes a bigger job, knowing NFL teams will make inquiries.
At least Texas remained in the same ballpark with Ohio State until the final minutes. “I don’t regret any decision I’ve made on going,” Ewers said. “The main reason I went (to Ohio State) was I felt like I had a great relationship with the coaching staff, they were winning a lot of games, and I wanted to be part of something like that. The reason I came back to Texas was one, to be closer to where I’m from, and just closer to the resources that I have and the relationships that I’ve built over time just being from Texas. Coach Sarkisian once told me, ‘That's why the rearview mirror is so small, and the windshield is so big.’ You put the past behind you and focus on what's ahead.”
What’s ahead for the Buckeyes is a likely ninth title in a program valued at almost $2 billion, highest in the country. It wasn’t long ago when they were trashed at home, which prompted Nick Saban and Kirk Herbstreit to pummel fans. “People on the team getting death threats, our head coach getting cussed out, people saying he should never come to Ohio again,” receiver Emeka Egbuka said. “All this type of stuff. And I'm sure now when you scroll Twitter, Instagram, everyone's going to be singing our praises.”
Mostly, they will sing choruses to No. 33, who bleeds scarlet and breathes gray. He had one last word for his old roommate. “Just walking off, he said, ‘Screw you,’ and started laughing,” Sawyer said. “That’s my boy.”
Soon enough, a trophy will be his only partner.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.