Sometimes, there are moments in football where a team knows.
It knows it’s the best team on the field that day. It knows it’s the best team on the field that year. It knows that it’s on the doorstep of something special.
That’s what happened to the Ohio State Buckeyes and coach Ryan Day last month when they successfully executed a 3rd-and-11 game-sealing pass from quarterback Will Howard to freshman (soon-to-be sophomore) sensation wife receiver Jeremiah Smith to kill any hope of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish’s chances of a late fourth-quarter comeback, eventually winning the national championship game 34-23.
According to Day, however, the play wasn’t accidental. Appearing on “The Joel Klatt Show,” Day, who has since mellowed out and is in full off-season mode with the calendar shifted from January to February, recalled Smith’s now-legendary catch and how it came to be.
It stemmed from a meeting before the game in which the team reached a consensus about utilizing Smith in critical, gotta-have-it spots.
“‘If you have Jeremiah Smith one-on-one to the field with the game on the line, would you take that chance?’ Day asked. “And everybody in the room said yes.”
Day said the players, including NFL-bound receiver Emeka Egbuka, watched the pass go up…
