'Clicking on all cylinders,' Ohio State is now the team to beat in the College Football Playoff

PASADENA, Calif.

A few Ohio State players crouched behind Ryan Day before lifting a white bucket of red roses and dumping the petals on their coachs head.

As he realized what was happening, Day grinned, the smile stretching all the way up to his eyes.

Day was, quite literally, stopping to smell the roses after the Buckeyes 41-21 win over No.

1 Oregon here in the College Football Playoff quarterfinal round.

Theyll play Texas next in the Cotton Bowl with a trip to the national championship game on the line.

This is what we were waiting for.

This is the Ohio State football team that was promised and these Buckeyes are more than capable of winning it all.

It didnt take long for them to show us what that looked like on Wednesday afternoon at the Rose Bowl.

Ohio State scored four touchdowns in the first half on drives that combined for a total of two minutes, 58 seconds.

The tone was set just three plays after the games opening kickoff, with a 45-yard touchdown pass from Will Howard to freshman phenom Jeremiah Smith to open the scoring.

Oregon had barely stepped onto the pristine grass at this pristine stadium before the Ducks found themselves trailing by 34 points in a CFP quarterfinal game.

Ohio State manhandled the team that had been the best and most consistent in the nation all year long.

The Buckeyes not only avenged a one-point October loss to the Ducks, but they also completely obliterated the memory of the game and what we thought we knew about both of its participants.

Ohio State is now the undeniable favorite to win the College Football Playoff in little less than three weeks time.

Texas should be worried.

Ask Oregon, which was previously unbeaten before running into this version of the Buckeyes.

Or ask Tennessee, which suffered the first round of postseason bludgeoning back in Columbus.

There appears to be nothing anyone can do once this offense gets going this way.

They clicked tonight, and we didnt, Oregon coach Dan Lanning said when the game had mercifully reached its end.

I didnt get our team prepared, and thats a great team.

When you play a great team like Ohio State, you cant not be clicking on all cylinders.

And they were.

They were clicking on all cylinders.

We really didnt have the ability to stop them.

That much was clear.

Ohio State racked up 500 total yards of offense, averaging 18.8 yards per catch and 5.8 yards per carry.

Smith tallied 187 yards and two touchdowns on just seven receptions, earning him Rose Bowl offensive MVP honors.

Afterward, Lanning called the true freshman NFL-ready.

Hes still got two seasons of college ball to play.

Meanwhile, the Ohio State defense sacked Oregon quarterback and Heisman Trophy finalist Dillon Gabriel .

The Ducks had only allowed five total sacks in each of the past two seasons.

Sometimes its not your day.

I think that was us today, Lanning said.

It wasnt their day against Michigan.

Ah, yes.

Michigan.

Ohio States stunning 13-10 loss to its hated rival the fourth straight such loss to the Wolverines for Day became even more inexplicable after the rout at the Rose Bowl.

How could that team lose to a rather pedestrian Michigan and then dominate both Tennessee and Oregon like this? Why did Buckeye offensive coordinator Chip Kelly insist on attempting to run the ball between the tackles into the strength of Michigans defense when its otherworldly receivers would surely have broken open the game if theyd gotten the ball? Smith himself was only targeted twice in the second half of the game.

We may never get a satisfactory explanation for the confounding Ohio State game plan and even poorer execution that day.

But its clear, based on what happened afterward, that this roster was capable of so much more.

Its not just that Ohio State boosters spent $20 million to retain the best players from last years team and bring in elite complementary pieces from the portal.

Its that there was too much talent at basically every single position on the field for this team to fail to live up to its potential.

This version of Ohio State was always there somewhere, waiting to be unlocked and unleashed.

Kelly called an aggressive and wildly confident game.

Day seemed looser than he had in ages, almost as if he had nothing to lose despite hot seat talk and a poor track record in the biggest of the Buckeyes big games.

But what was said and done previously no longer matters.

These last two wins and particularly Wednesdays over a very, very good Oregon team that appeared shellshocked by nightfall have done more than enough to cool that seat.

These are big wins on big stages against tough, physical opponents with rosters filled with NFL talent.

When things are going good, youve got to hug the guys you love the most, and when things arent, youve got to hug them even harder, Day said.

You just hang in there and you keep swinging.

Thats life, and this team is resilient.

When you surround yourself with great people with great character, you find yourself working through difficult times.

At the end of the day, we wanted to win a national championship, and the way that we got here wasnt what we expected.

It wasnt what we planned for.

But nonetheless, we had an opportunity to come back and play Oregon after we had already played them early in the season, and thats the only thing that mattered.

The guys have been doing a great job staying focused.

The staff has stuck together...

Those guys have worked hard to stay together, and now weve got an opportunity to go play Texas.

Theres a lot of football ahead of us.

And there isnt for Oregon, a team that had won all of its regular-season games and the Big Ten championship to boot.

The Ducks wouldnt make excuses for their early CFP exit, but they did face two unique challenges that certainly didnt seem fair from the outside looking in.

First, they were the No.

1 overall seed in an unbalanced bracket that required that the top-four seeds be conference champions.

That allowed Ohio State, a team ranked sixth by the selection committee, to fall all the way to the No.

8 seed.

Typically, a 1-8 game features the lowest-ranked team in the bracket.

But there were two teams (Boise State and Arizona State) that were ranked lower than the Buckeyes, and seeds No.

6 and 5 (Penn State and Texas) got to play them in the quarters.

And Penn State and Texas both advanced to the semifinals.

Through three quarterfinal games, the losing team has been the one that received a first-round bye.

Lanning said he didnt think Oregon was rusty.

But its worth further exploration in the offseason, if that layoff ended up hurting more than it helped when it was supposed to be a reward.

The flip side, of course, is that Ohio State played in the first round and jumpstarted a postseason run that may end with scarlet and gray confetti falling in Atlanta on Jan.

20.

Day has said repeatedly that he believed a first-round game could be a springboard to something like that, just the way weve seen teams that squeak into the postseason in the NFL or MLB win wild-card games and go on a tear.

Perhaps theres something to that theory.

Heres another: Id argue that Ohio State would not be in the position its in right now were it not for that horrendous loss to Michigan.

Day wouldnt go so far as to say hes grateful for it, but he acknowledged that the version of the team he coaches today couldnt be that without going through what it did.

I know that youre a sum of your experiences, Day said.

This team has had great wins this season.

Its had some tough losses, and we have learned from those.

Youve got to grow and youve got to build and youve got to make sure youre focusing on your strengths and making sure that you understand what your weaknesses are.

And I think thats a big part of it.

Ultimately, it comes down to our guys.

These guys are resilient.

Were at a place where you can hear a lot of noise, but they didnt do that.

Im very, very proud of our staff, and Im very, very proud of our players.

But were far from done.

Not with the Buckeyes looking like this ..

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