Ohio State’s 2024 season was nothing short of legendary. Ryan Day and the Buckeyes captured their first national title since 2015, and many are calling their playoff run one of the greatest in College Football Playoff history. The story of Ohio State’s 2024 national title didn’t start with run easy money or a parade. It was what went down in the shadows, right after the ugliest day of the season. Former Buckeye QB Will Howard admitted on Cam Heyward’s Not Just Football podcast that the Buckeyes basically told Ryan Day and the coaches, “step aside, we got this.” A player-only summit became the turning point, the exact moment the natty dream stopped being hype and started being real.
The low point came at the hands of Michigan again. A 13-10 L had Buckeyes looking like a lost program, stuck in neutral against their biggest rival. The offense coughed up just 77 yards on the ground, went 6-for-16 on third down, and let the Wolverines celebrate their fourth straight win in the series. For Day, now 1-4 against Michigan, the pressure had already haunted Day’s family. For a team that carried the country’s best roster on paper, they looked like JUCO football. And for the players, it was humiliation. Especially for Will Howard.
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Howard straight up said he didn’t want to show his face in public: “It felt like I couldn’t go outside… it was bad. You talk about it all year, 364 days about beating the team up north, and it was brutal, man.” That’s when the leadership council tried the usual route—Day called them in, sat them down, tried to find answers.
But the Buckeyes couldn’t see eye to eye with their coaches. Too much frustration, too many raw nerves. So the players made a call: forget the staff, forget the normal grind, it’s time to lock the doors and fight it out ourselves. Monday rolled around and instead of film study, the Buckeyes had a bare-knuckle, player-only meeting. Howard revealed how it went down: “We decided that we wanted to have player-only meeting on Monday… we wanted to get together and kind of hash things out.” And hash it out they did. D-linemen barking at O-linemen, DBs calling out running backs. And Vet calling out underclassmen.
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By the end, Howard swore they had clarity. “The fact that we were able to come out of that meeting and have the maturity to turn it into a positive really speaks to the leadership of our team,” he spilled. And that’s the key: maturity. This wasn’t a roster full of kids. It was literally stacked with seniors like WR Emeka Egbuka, RB TreVeyon Henderson, Cody Simon, DE Jack Sawyer—the Buckeyes who could’ve bolted for the draft but stayed for unfinished business.
Once the College Football Playoff rolled around, Ohio State looked like a squad possessed. Tennessee got cooked first, 42-17, the Buckeyes racking up 482 yards. Oregon, the team that beat them earlier in the season? They flipped the script and held them to just 87 rushing yards in a 41-21 smack down. Texas came next, and the defense suffocated them to just 14 points. And then Notre Dame, the final boss. A 34-23 win sealed the natty. Over those four games, OSU averaged 36 points and allowed just 18, forcing seven turnovers and committing only two.
Howard said it plain: “That loss and that meeting to a less mature group really could have broken us. But because of our maturity… when we got to the playoffs, it felt like no one could touch us.” The receipt backed him up. Ohio State’s efficiency skyrocketed, their ground game suddenly popped off, and their defensive pressure flipped games. That players-only chaos meeting became the ignition switch for one of the greatest runs in playoff history.
Will Howard almost chose Notre Dame over Ohio State
Funny twist? Will Howard almost wasn’t even in scarlet and gray. The now-Steelers QB admitted Notre Dame was his top transfer choice until the Irish blindsided him. “I thought I was gonna end up at Notre Dame… I was about to commit that day, and I called my agent and he’s like, ‘Sorry buddy, they just told me they took Riley [Leonard].’” One phone call later, Howard’s entire path changed.
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Day, meanwhile, played things sneaky. He didn’t want to upset his QB room before the Cotton Bowl, so he kept Howard on ice until after. Howard recalled how it went: “I finally met with them down in Dallas, kind of a secret meeting… At that point, I wasn’t really sure what the interest level was.” But then Day laid it all out. The Ohio State Buckeyes had eyes for only one QB out in the portal. Just Howard. “You’re the only quarterback I’m recruiting in the portal. I think you can come and win us a national championship.”