There’s a reason Ohio State was able to win the first-ever College Football Playoff with a third-string quarterback last season. His name is Ezekiel Elliott. It was Elliott who carried the Buckeyes to the national championship with 696 yards rushing and eight touchdowns in three postseason games, and Elliott begins the 2015 season as the Heisman Trophy favorite whether he’s taking handoffs from Cardale Jones or J.T. Barrett. College football stories The sheer firepower the Buckeyes showed in a 59-0 win over Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship, a 42-35 Sugar Bowl victory over Alabama and a 42-20 rout of Oregon in the CFP championship prompted Associated Press poll voters to make them the first unanimous preseason No. 1 in history. During that stretch, Elliott had 220 yards and two TDs against the Badgers, 230 and two TDs to upset the Crimson Tide and 246 and four TDs to batter the Ducks and Heisman-winning quarterback Marcus Mariota. When Barrett, the second-stringer who led the Buckeyes in the regular season after a preseason injury to Braxton Miller, went down in the season finale at Michigan and was replaced by Jones, coach Urban Meyer put the ball in Elliott’s hands. “The way coach Meyer runs the offense is that, whenever you have the hot foot, he’s going to keep feeding you the rock,” Elliott said. “I just got hot at the end of the season, and the O-line was blocking everything very well.” The defining moment of the season came with Ohio State clinging to a 34-28 lead and pinned at its 15-yard line with 3:37 left in the Sugar Bowl. Elliott found a crack behind left guard Billy Price and exploded 85 yards for a TD after a block by wide receiver Evan Spencer wiped out the inside linebacker. “If you watch the play on tape — I’ve seen it 5,000 times — there was no hole there,” Elliott said. …
Continue Reading: Forget QB duo, Ezekiel Elliott is the straw that stirs at Ohio State
