Fields wins battle of star QBs
NEW ORLEANS — Justin Fields threw six touchdown passes to outshine Trevor Lawrence as No. 3 Ohio State avenged last season’s painful College Football Playoff loss to Clemson with a 49-28 victory in the Sugar Bowl semifinal Friday night.
The Buckeyes (7-0) head to the CFP title game for the first time since the inaugural playoff to face No. 1 Alabama on Jan. 11 at Hard Rock Stadium in South Florida. Ohio State beat the Crimson Tide in the semifinals on the way to the 2014 national championship.
“Now we’ve got an opportunity to win the whole thing, and then you’ve got an opportunity to write one of the best stories in college football history,” Ohio State coach Ryan Day said.
In amatchup of quarterback prodigies from Georgia, Fields might have given the Jacksonville Jaguars something to think about when they pick first in the NFL draft.
Lawrence is the presumptive No. 1, but Fields outplayed him on this night, going 22- of-28 for 385 yards. He set a Sugar Bowl record for TD passes and did it playing more than half the game after taking a vicious shot to the side that forced him to miss a play and spend time in the medical tent.
Lawrence was 33- of-48 for 400 yards and three total touchdowns in what’s expected to be the junior’s final college game. His final pass was intercepted, but Clemson (10-2) went 34-2 in his starts and won a national title when he was a freshman.
The third meeting between Clemson and Ohio State in the playoff, and their fourth bowl matchup since the 2013 season, was a game the Buckeyes had been pointing toward ever since a 29-23 loss to Tigers in the Fiesta Bowl last year.
That score was everywhere the Buckeyes turned in the Woody Hayes Athletic Center in Columbus this year.
A chance for revenge nearly was derailed when the Big Ten canceled fall football in August because of the pandemic. An abbreviated Big Ten season caused more headaches, with the Buckeyes having three games canceled because of COVID-19 issues, including their own outbreak.
The playoff committee still liked Ohio State enough to put the Buckeyes in the final four, despite much griping from various parts of the country, including Clemson.
Day talked all week about what a remarkable tale it would be for the Buckeyes to survive this roller coaster of a season and still reach their goal.
“Everything we’ve been through this year, to come out and play the way we played, I don’t know what to say about this group,” Day said.
Clemson took a 7-0 lead on the opening drive and then went up 14-7 with Lawrence and Travis Etienne running for scores.
From there it was all Buckeyes. Fields threw touchdown passes to tight ends Luke Farrell and Jeremy Ruckert on consecutive drives to give Ohio State a 21-14 lead early in the second quarter.
The Buckeyes kept rolling behind Fields, though not without a major scare.
Fields scrambled on a third-and-long and took a hard shot to the right side from Clemson linebacker James Skalski that put the Buckeyes star into a fetal position before he rolled over onto his back in obvious pain.
The play was reviewed for a targeting foul that resulted in Clemson’s top linebacker being ejected and a first-and- goal for the Buckeyes.
Fields came out for one play, then returned to throw a 9-yard touchdown pass to Chris Olave that made it 28-14.
“I took a big shot … but what really kept me going was my brothers, and my love for them,” Fields said. “I’d do anything for these guys.”
Fields continued to carve up the Tigers, hitting Ruckert for a 12-yard score with 11 seconds left in the half.
A year after blowing 16-0
first-half lead in last year’s excruciating semifinal loss to Clemson, the Buckeyes handed the Tigers their largest halftime deficit (21) since the 2012 Orange Bowl against West Virginia (29 points).
The second half started with Clemson looking like it might have another comeback in it. Fields was intercepted in the Tigers’ end zone and Lawrence came back with an 80-yard touchdown drive to cut it to 35-21.
Nervous time for the Buckeyes? Not for long. Fields threw a perfectly placed bomb to Olave for a 56-yard touchdown pass thatmade it 42-21 with 4:55 left in the third quarter.
And if there was any doubt, Fields threw another rain-making TD pass to James on Williams that officially went into the books as a 46-yarder, but traveled over 50 in the air.