With the new college football playoff format, an undefeated season is no longer required to play for a national championship. However, Ohio State entered 2024 with legitimate hopes of an unbeaten regular season. Those hopes were dashed on Saturday night in Eugene in bizarre fashion, as No. 3 Oregon held on for a 32-31 win over the No. 2 Buckeyes.
Critical late-game mistakes, including two by QB Will Howard, derailed what looked like a promising drive that would have sent the Buckeyes coasting into their second bye unbeaten.
Here's a look at the moments that made the difference in Oregon's win over Ohio State on Saturday.
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Ohio State vs. Oregon box score
| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | F | |
| Ohio State | 7 | 14 | 7 | 3 | 31 |
| Oregon | 6 | 16 | 0 | 10 | 32 |
Oregon seemed to have an answer for each Buckeyes scoring drive, but Ohio State didn't take its foot off the gas in a back-and-forth game.
Ohio State took the lead back after Dillon Gabriel put the Ducks in front early in the fourth quarter, going back in front on a Jayden Fleming field goal, and the Buckeyes appeared to catch a break when they just barely forced another Oregon field goal in the red zone with under two minutes remaining.
With 111 seconds to work with and just a field goal required to win, Ohio State and its loaded WR corps seemed to be in a favorable position. Early on, the drive met those expectations. A big completion to Emeka Egbuka took the Buckeyes into Ducks territory with 34 seconds remaining; a field goal from that spot would have been 46 yards, but there was plenty of time for Howard and the offense to get even closer. That's where it all went haywire.
An incompletion was followed by a costly pass-interference call against freshman WR Jeremiah Smith, effectively knocking Ohio State out of field goal range. Time was already dwindling on the Buckeyes, but Howard didn't realize just how quickly that was happening. He took far too long to get the next play off, apparently not realizing the clock had started once the ball was lined up, and the snap didn't occur until the 15-second mark.
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Oregon gave Ohio State a lifeline on the next snap, inadvertently putting 12 defensive players on the field and making the path to field goal range a bit easier for Howard, who had time to get a quick completion if he could find one.
Rather than attempt a pass, however, Howard took off running in a scene that made Cowboys fans shutter with the memory of Dak Prescott's ill-fated run in the final seconds of a playoff loss to the 49ers.
Howard had plenty of room to run, but he ran for far too long. By the time he slid, the clock had already hit zero, and there was no timeout to take. The game was over, and Ducks fans swarmed the field within seconds.
WILL HOWARD DOESN'T GO DOWN AND OREGON WINS 😱 pic.twitter.com/hjUVwCzGPE
— FOX College Football (@CFBONFOX) October 13, 2024
Howard told reporters after the game that he and the offense "gotta go back and look at [the final play] and figure out what we did wrong there." The Ohio State QB admitted, "I gotta get down, I guess."
"I worried about trying to get enough yards to make a field goal and get us into field goal range. But we gotta go back and look at it and figure out what we did wrong there. I gotta get down, I guess."
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 13, 2024
Ohio State's Will Howard on the game's final play.pic.twitter.com/YbFzo0hIAu
It might have come with much more stress than he hoped, but Oregon coach Dan Lanning secured one of the defining wins of his young career in the moment Howard decided to run for those extra couple of yards — and Howard amped up the pressure on himself and the Buckeyes to get through the final six weeks of the season unscathed.
