No matter when their offense has sputtered at times throughout the season, Notre Dame has been able to rely on a defense that carried them all the way to the national championship game.

But against an Ohio State team obviously on a rampage, the Fighting Irish and coordinator Al Golden had no answers.

Like Texas last week, the Irish took away deep plays, but Buckeyes offensive coordinator Chip Kelly called yet another brilliant game in carving up Notre Dame in building a lead. Al Golden had no answers as defensive coordinator, and that’s saying something.

Simply put: Notre Dame couldn’t get off the field, allowing conversions on all six third-down attempts from the Buckeyes in the first half and 9-of-12 for the game and piling up 445 total yards.

“We’ve just got to get off the field on third down,” an obviously frustrated Marcus Freeman told ESPN’s Holly Rowe going into the locker room at halftime. “We’ve got to be able to cover. We were trying to play a little man, and they convert, and then we play a little zone, and they’ll convert. We’ve got to get some things fixed.”

In other words, no matter what they tried, nothing worked. Tennessee, Oregon and Texas—the other three Buckeyes opponents throughout the playoffs—can commiserate.

They made a terrific Irish defense look pedestrian. This was a unit that entered the game allowing just 14.3 points per game, second nationally behind the Buckeyes. They were ninth in total defense and fifth in third-down defense, allowing a conversion rate of just 29.8 percent.

Ohio State took those numbers and threw them in the paper shredder, dominating every time it had the ball and decisively winning a game that started so stellar with the Irish’s early lead.