ARLINGTON, Texas — The question of the night for the 85,689 football fans inside AT&T Stadium, the sight of the 2015 NCAA National Inaugural Championship game being played in the house that Jerry Jones built was really simple.
Who is Ezekiel Elliott?
Ohio State University football coach Urban Meyer is glad that he knows Elliott and so are the many Buckeyes fans that witnessed history.
Ohio State University won the NCAA football championship by rolling over the University of Oregon 42-20, in spite of committing four turnovers.
The effort by his team against the Ducks, especially by the Buckeyes sophomore running back Elliott brought tears of joy and happiness from the eyes of Meyers.
“This goes down as one of the greatest stories in college football history,” Meyers said about the title run made by the Buckeyes. “The chase is complete. Those guys accepted their final mission and did it!”
It was a job well done by every phase of the game for OSU, the offense punished the Ducks’ defense by controlling the line of scrimmage and allowing Ohio State University quarterback Cardale Jones and Elliott to complete the devastation of Oregon’s defense.
Elliott carried the ball 36 times for 246 yards and scored four touchdowns. Jones threw the ball 23 times and completing 16 passes for 242 yards, he also threw for a touchdown and ran for a score. When Jones did not throw the ball he contributed to the 296 yards of rushing yardage by the Buckeyes running attack, running with the ball 21 times for 38 yards.
“It means everything to us, just being able to accomplish this great accomplishment,” Elliott said after the game. “Winning the National Championship after everything we went through this season, losing Braxton, then losing to Virginia Tech and how we rebounded against that and the tough game at Penn State that went into double overtime, then traveling to Michigan State in that hostile environment, then losing J.T (Barrett) and having this clown step in. It seems like we’ve been through everything and it made us who we are.”
In the third quarter, Jones kept his cool when he lost the grip of the football and the fumble was recovered by Ducks’ defensive end Arik Armstead. When he returned to the sideline it was Meyer that was visibly upset and losing his composure not Jones.
“Long story short, we weren’t supposed to be here,” Jones said. “We had every–all the odds were stacked against us through the whole season and for us to be sitting right here as national champs, it only means a lot to me but our community, Buckeye Nation and our hometown.”
The defense for the Buckeyes kept the pressure coming and getting to the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner University of Oregon’s quarterback Marcus Mariota, forcing the Ducks to punt the ball away six times.
Mariota was able to complete 24-of-34 passes for 333 yards, he threw two touchdown including a 70 yard strike to Byron Marshall that breath hope for the Ducks as the cut the lead down to 21-17 with 11:23 left in the third quarter.
It was not like the Ducks did not have a chance to catch the Buckeyes, the four turnovers made by Ohio State gave Oregon plenty of opportunity.
Oregon’s offense got into the red zone four times but could only score one touchdown. The Ducks ran 71 offensive plays for a total of 465 yards against the Buckeyes.
Ohio State University defense showed that it is true what all coaches say, that you can’t win a championship without defense.
“Yeah, defense won the game, I think we tackled well. I don’t want to take away from these two guys to my left and the offensive line but we lose that game if we don’t stop them on turnovers,” Meyers said. “We consider that a stop when you hold them to a field goal. Championships are won with defense and our defense has been on a difficult journey the last couple of years.”
University of Oregon football coach Mark Helfrich said that he is proud of his guys and that the Ohio State University defense played an outstanding game.
“Well, they’re an outstanding defense. We knew that coming in and they did some different things both on that drive throughout,” Helfrich said about the Buckeyes defense after the first offensive series for the Ducks. “We had a couple opportunities to covert a couple of third downs and had some plays there to be made, didn’t execute in the red zone.”
For the Buckeyes, it will be an off season full of celebration and for the Ducks it is just another bitter pill for them to swallow but sometime it take some disappointment to make a team better. For the Buckeyes, the work of representing the NCAA as the 2015 football champion is only nectar that will get sweeter as the days go by.
Next summer when football season begins, teams in the Big Ten and the teams around the nation preparing for the new football season will know the answer to the question of who is Elliott but how do you stop him will be another question.
