With his senior season cut in half, along with his chances to make a mark at Ohio State, Trey Sermon made up for lost time on Saturday –– and then some.
But even that might be an understatement.
In a Big Ten Championship Game that featured questionable play-calling in the pass game, not to mention a career-worst performance from Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields, Sermon almost single-handedly saved the Buckeyes’ playoff hopes and ran right into the record books.
“There was a time probably after Week 2 and Week 3, we really weren’t sure what’s going on. Just maybe not hitting the hole right, didn’t have a lot of confidence, and we didn’t know Trey, so we weren’t sure exactly what we had there,” head coach Ryan Day said. “And then to see him preserve again through all that and play the way he did in this game and break records like that –– that’s tremendous.”
There have been no shortage of legends to play running back at Ohio State, including college football’s only two-time Heisman-winner, but Sermon, a transfer from Oklahoma, ran for more yards than Archie Griffin, Ezekiel Elliott, J.K. Dobbins or Eddie George ever did in a single game on Saturday.
Passing George’s previous Buckeye record of 314 rushing yards in 1995, Sermon rushed for 331 yards and two touchdowns to power Ohio State to a 22-10 win over Northwestern and a fourth-straight Big Ten title for the program.
“They brought me here for a reason,” Sermon said. “They know that I’m a great player and I can make an impact, and I just had to really believe that in myself as well. Just trust my coaching and just trust my teammates around me.”
The Buckeyes needed everything Sermon gave them too, as Ohio State went into halftime trailing Northwestern 10-6, marking the first time a Buckeye team has failed to score an opening-half touchdown since the 2018 season.
The passing game sputtered without junior wide receiver Chris Olave, and Fields finished the game with an abysmal 65.1 passer rating, completing just 12-of-27 passes for 114 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions.
Sermon finished the first half with an impressive 60 yards on just seven carries, but it may have taken Day a little bit longer than some of his players to realize that the first-year Buckeye had an all-time performance brewing.
“After he broke a couple out, even in the first half, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s about to go off,’” Ohio State redshirt junior center Josh Myers said. “I knew it was just a matter of time, and man did it feel good.”
The Georgia native had 271 yards in the second half alone, including six rushes of at least 20 yards, two runs of at least 30, and a 65-yarder to boot.
But despite 144 yards in the third quarter, Sermon’s production yielded just one touchdown for the Buckeyes, who entered the final frame up only 13-10 on the Wildcats.
Even Sermon’s best rush of the day, a 65-yard rush on the first play of a drive that began back at the Ohio State 7-yard-line, ended with no points for the Buckeyes. Inexplicably, that big run was Sermon’s final touch of the drive, and senior kicker Blake Haubeil missed a 42-yard field goal to cap it off.
On the next Buckeye drive though, it appeared the Ohio State offense had finally figured out its winning formula, feeding Sermon on 5-of-7 plays, including a 33-yard to set up a 9-yard score to allow the Buckeyes to retake the lead.
The next time Sermon scored, it would be to close out the game once and for all, as the Buckeyes chewed up four minutes of clock on an 80-yard drive, running Sermon seven times for 69 yards and the eventual 3-yard touchdown to make it 22-10 Buckeyes.
That still wasn’t it for Sermon though, as he nearly scored again in the waning moments, taking four handoffs –– one for 23 yards –– on the final four snaps of the game to get the all-time Ohio State record and put the Buckeyes just two yards away from the Wildcat end zone.
“When I’m in the zone, I just feel like personally, everything just really slows down,” Sermon said. “The game really just slows down and I’m able to see everything develop and continue to be decisive and make the right reads and make the right cuts.”
It was all part of a Big Ten Championship Game MVP performance for Sermon, who didn’t even start the game as regular starting running back Master Teague got the first rush of the day before going down with an undisclosed injury.
But regardless of Teague’s injury status, whenever Ohio State takes the field next, Day and company should be hard-pressed to lean on anyone other than Sermon, who has arrived right on time for the Buckeyes.
