The fifth seed On Friday night, the Texas Longhorns faced the Ohio State Buckeyes, who were ranked eighth, in an attempt to secure their first trip to the national championship game since 2009. Texas had a chance to equalise the score with less than four minutes remaining in the Cotton Bowl Classic, which was a defensive contest from beginning to end at AT&T Stadium. The Longhorns drove all the way to Ohio State’s one-yard line, down by seven points. The Buckeyes’ defence held firm when head coach Steve Sarkisian called a run up the middle with Jerrick Gibson on first down. Texas attempted a toss play to Quintrevion Wisner on second down but lost by a significant seven yards.
Texas ultimately failed to locate the end zone. Jack Sawyer of Ohio State ended the game on fourth down by scooping and scoring on Longhorns quarterback Quinn Ewers and stripsacking him. In the end, the Buckeyes prevailed 28–14 in the second College Football Playoff semifinal. Kirk Herbstreit of ESPN, who was on the call for the game, acknowledged that he was taken aback by Sarkisian’s decision to not use backup quarterback Arch Manning on the goal line. Manning has proven to be a reliable option in short-yardage and red-zone runs this season. Manning had even converted a fourth-and-one earlier in the game. Herbstreit chatted with “SportsCenter” anchor Scott Van Pelt after the game.
“I’m not ever going to second-guess any coach, especially a guy like Sark, who works so hard at that, but I thought you might see the wrinkle of Arch (Manning) come in in that situation with his ability to run,” Herbstriet said. “Maybe a zone read, maybe get them on the edge. Again, I’m not gonna second-guess him but the wide sweep with the Ohio State defense as fast-flowing as they are, led by Caleb Downs, that was a tough one to go to. They tried to catch them napping and they didn’t get it.” Herbstreit and his broadcast partner, Chris Fowler, recognized how dominant the Buckeyes have been in the red zone this season. That’s why the decision not to bring in Manning to give the defense a different look caught Herbstreit off guard. “I think Chris (Fowler) and I were kind of getting ahead of how good Ohio State is in the red area, how dominant they’ve been,” Herbstreit added. “The Penn State game stands up in all of our minds, that goal line stand to preserve a victory. As good as Texas is, it’s tough to do.”
Sarkisian discussed his late-game play-calling after the game. For the first-down play, he said, “We didn’t get much movement at all.”
“When we got down to the 1, we went to a heavy package which is Jerrick’s package,” Sarkisian said. “We ran it and we obviously didn’t get much movement at all.” On the second-down play, which resulted in the seven-yard loss, Sarkisian said, “If you block it all right, you get in the end zone.” “That’s one of those plays if you block it all right, you get in the end zone,” he added. “We didn’t, and we lose quite a bit of yardage. At that point, you’re kind of stuck behind the 8 ball because we knew we were in four-down territory because of the score of the game.”
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