Pittsburgh Steelers rookie and former Ohio State star Jack Sawyer solidified his spot in Buckeyes lore during January’s College Football Playoff semifinal win over Texas with a victory-clinching fumble return touchdown in the final minutes. It was the highlight of a career for a multi-year starter who won a national championship but never beat Michigan during his tenure.
And one of those four losses to the Wolverines, Sawyer says, was particularly difficult to comprehend.
“I think they beat us straight up last year, obviously, and the year before, but my sophomore year, we left the field and we were like, ‘This feels weird,'” Sawyer said during a recent podcast appearance on Not Just Football with Cam Heyward. “We lost by double digits, and it felt like we had beat the shit out of them all game. You know, we ran a screen pass that we had never put in — not the formation, not the look, anything.
“And you see them on the sideline, they’re doing (the signals), and we change it, we audible to it or whatever, and when we run it, all the D-linemen as soon as the ball is snapped, the linebackers, everybody, they sniffed it out.”
Sawyer’s referring to Ohio State’s 45-23 blowout loss to Michigan in 2022’s battle of the unbeatens when the Wolverines came to Columbus and piled up 530 total yards on the Buckeyes.
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Ohio State suffered two turnovers in the game and were outscored 21-3 in a decisive fourth quarter that featured touchdown runs of 85 and 75 yards from Donovan Edwards.
Michigan lost to TCU in the playoff semifinals that season before winning the national championship the following campaign.
“It’s just good scouting,” Sawyer said. “Come on.”
Stalions admits to knowing 2022 Ohio State’s plays
That 2022 loss to the Wolverines coincides with the same season Michigan later became the focal point of a sign-stealing saga that warranted NCAA attention. Former Wolverines staffer Connor Stalions, who resigned from his position as a team analyst in Ann Arbor the following season in 2023 amid the NCAA’s investigation, recently admitted to knowing “almost every single call” of four games in 2022, including Ohio State.
“There were 7 games in my time at Michigan where I knew almost every signal the whole game: 2021 MSU, 2022 MSU, 2022 PSU, 2022 OSU, 2022 TCU, 2021 Georgia and 2021 Wisconsin,” Stalions wrote earlier this month on X. “We lost 3 of those games because we didn’t tackle well, and Georgia was historically good. We won the four other games because we dominated the line of scrimmage & tackled well.”
Michigan received a formal notice of allegations in the case last August that featured several Level I violations surrounding the alleged sign-stealing operation spearheaded by Stalions. Michigan responded to the notice by accusing the NCAA of “grossly overreaching” and “wildly overcharging” the university despite a lack of evidence.
Michigan is still awaiting the NCAA’s final punishment for the advanced scouting operation. Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said this spring he has not had any conversations with the NCAA about a potential postseason ban stemming from the governing body’s investigation into allegations of impermissible scouting,
“I have not had any conversation about postseason bans or penalties that are coming,” Manuel told 247Sports. “What I can point to is that Charlie Baker when we won the championship, said they won it fair and square. That’s something I can say that gives me some sense that they understand that this was a team who won that championship fair and square. I look at that, and as we move forward, we’ll see how it goes.”
The Big Ten suspended former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh for three games late in the 2024 season as a result of its own investigation into the sign-stealing scandal.
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