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Offense-
Thinking on how to begin writing this breakdown, it seemed like the most appropriate place to start is Troy Smith. He has been maligned much of his career at Ohio State, but now looks to be in complete command of his team. And, make no mistake, this is his team. His performance against Notre Dame--408 total yards alone--piggybacks a sensational game v. Michigan. In fact, it caps a year for him that was downright efficient if not excellent. Against ND, he threw for 342 and ran for another 66, with several of those runs on key third downs (8-12 3rd down conversions).
However, it wasn't just all Troy. To rack up 618 total yards, you have to have others that contribute. Ted Ginn Jr. showed his brilliance as a wide-receiver running as crisp of routes as he has all year. He was sure handed and absolutely torched the ND secondary. Santonio Holmes also went over the century mark for receiving yards and is probably as versatile as any receiver at Ohio State in some time. Who will forget his devastating block on Ginn's reverse? Our speed at wide receiver absolutely horrified the secondary of Notre Dame. But, ND also had to respect our running game and Antonio Pittman. AP went for 136, lost only 2 yards all game long and nearly broke a few runs even before his backbreaking 61 yard jaunt in the 4th.
In reality, much of the offensive performance can be centered around 4 huge plays: Ginn's long TD, Ginn's reverse, Holmes TD reception and Pittman's icier. These plays accounted for 4 touchdowns and sparked Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis to say this:
"I was disappointed in the number of big plays we gave up. There's a number of big plays, you know a lot of times when you look at statistics, if they're nickel and diming you, and getting 5 and 10, you can live with it and say they're physically kicking your butt, but when you give up that many plays that was disappointing."
The other way to look at it is, it's one thing to get 1 or maybe 2 big plays on your D. But, when you get 4, 5 and 6 big plays like Ohio State did - you're getting you butt whipped physically.
I have to give major kudos to our offensive line as well. I would be remiss if I didn't mention our two departing seniors Rob Sims and Nick Mangold - both of whom will be playing in the NFL next year. Each played well and were our pulling specialists all year. I also thought Kirk Barton did a particularly nice job on pass rush specialist Victor Abiamiri. The protection Troy received allowed him to find the open man or take off when the play broke down. We did encounter a few false starts but that's minor and fairly typical.
Earlier in the year, I was outspoken on our lack of ingenuity as far as playcalling. We were not adept in the shotgun and we tried to run from the shotgun too often. I often mentioned we rarely worked the deep middle and rarely ran a simple sweep. As they year progressed, we saw our offense morph into one that attacks defenses and the entire field. We used less shotgun and ran out of conventional sets more and more. Once we mastered the shotgun, the staff went back to it v. Michigan and Notre Dame. I have no problem with this as it was highly effective. I did like how we setup our plays in the Fiesta Bowl. In particular, the deep middle route Santonio scored on was setup by two earlier plays. In those earlier plays, we ran out of the formation which got the ND safeties cheating up. Below, I have screenshots of the formation in question:
Run:
Run:
Play-Action Pass (for a TD):
As you can see, the play involves an HB (White, Jr.), TE (Frost) and WR (Holmes) in a diamond formation near the offensive line. We have one back set and another receiver split wide. The first two screenshots were running plays by Pittman. The third was play action that led to a wide open Santonio Holmes. It's great to line up and play smashmouth football but it's equally fun to deceive the defense.
This rating was a tough call for me. In many ways, the offensive performance v. ND could be called exceptional, after all they did rack up 618 yards and 34 points. But, what holds back this performance were two fumbles inside or near the redzone and three stalled drives inside the 30. In the post game celebration, these things are lost or forgotten, but assuredly the coaches know they could have been even more efficient. This could and probably should have been a blowout win. Even still, a very fine performance.
Defense- 
Heading into this game, the biggest question-marks were two-fold: How will we handle ND's big, physical WR's? and How will we cover for Bobby Carpenter's loss? Both were answered pretty triumphantly.
It was my opinion going into this game that too much was being made of the ND offense. Ohio State fans were clubbed with the notion that Charlie Weis, when given an entire month, would keep even the '85 Bears on rollerskates. We, of course, aren't the '85 Bears but our defensive aggression was going to be used against us and we just need to accept it. Well, for the first drive, it looked pretty damn correct. Our defense did absolutely nothing except watch ND march 75 yards (or so) for a TD. This, of course, is nothing new to Ohio State fans. Our defense tends to play very vanilla starting a game - which led to opening scoring drives for our opponents such as SDSU, NW, ND, etc.
Once we moved away from vanilla sets, we started to disrupt Brady Quinn and their offense. It was no secret that emphasis for this game was to affect and pressure the QB. This made it difficult for Quinn to hit Samardzija or Stovall and lessened the burden on our corners. The Buckeye D also ended up with 5 sacks (almost 7 as two came at the LOS) with Mike Kudla checking in with 3 and AJ Hawk with another 2. Speaking of Hawk, for a guy that gets gameplanned every week, his 12 tackle, 3.5 TFLs and 2 sack performance was pretty special. (Absolute robbery he didn't win the Butkus but that's another argument for another day).
While Notre Dame did try to release OL to the 2nd level to body up Hawk and Schlegel, the defensive line did a fantastic job of collapsing the pocket. I thought ABC did an injustice to our defensive line by not mentioning our DTs enough. Quinn Pitcock and Marcus Green were constantly bullrushing and roaming free to turn plays back inside or flushing Quinn. Their statistical totals may not have been impressive but their work was essential to our overall success. Young DE, Lawrence Wilson also played well. His PT increased with the injury to Carpenter and this was really on the only "wrinkle" we changed from the Michigan game (as it relates to BC). A very good sign as to the confidence of our coaches.
All in all, the defense held ND to roughly 330 total yards (ND did accumulate 20 or so garbage yards on their final drive, which I discount). This is all the more impressive when you factor in their opening 75 yard drive. From that point forward, ND managed roughly 255 total yards. Although Michigan (and perhaps Tenn) were in the same neighborhood as far as holding ND in check, I call this performance by the Buckeyes clearly the best job against ND. ND had an entire month to prepare (as we well know) whereas they only had 1 week to devise a gameplan for the Ds of UM and UT. ND did have some success with quick, 3 step drops. However, the Pittman run sealed the game as clock became a major factor.
I rate this game as 3.5 Buckeye leafs. Having no turnovers (Donte Whitner did cause a fumble but recovered by ND) and allowing the opening TD drive slightly diminishes the overall effect. Losing 9 starters (Whitner and Youboty have declared for the NFL) will certainly test this staff heading into next year.
Special Teams- 
Coming off an 1 Leaf performance v. Michigan, it was my hope our special teams would come out on fire. They didn't. In fact, we have back to back games were they were substandard. Whereas kickoffs and kick coverage was very strong, having two FGs blocked is unacceptable. The first block came as a result of Ryan Hamby not sealing the inside rusher. The 2nd block was as a result of allowing too much penetration by ND. Notre Dame's Trevor Laws jumped about 1 centimeter to get the block which points to a breakdown upfront. These blocked FGs were huge because they not only wasted 6 points, but they gave much needed momentum to Notre Dame.
To find a brightside of this, we did only have to punt 1 time the entire game - and that came in the 2nd half no less. Punter AJ Trapasso got one downed inside the 20, byproduct of a ND block in the back.
::Other Thoughts & Observations::
* Doug Datish and TJ Downing were at the goalline when Ginn scored on his reverse. Think about that for a second. Impressive.
* Malcolm Jenkins has a bright future at Ohio State, but he had a very rough stretch in the 2nd Q. Once he gets more technique and timing, he's a potential All-American.
*The play that Pittman scored on to ice the game was nearly broken for a TD earlier in the 4th quarter. We ran the same play to the same side of the field but safety Tom Zbikowski made a TD saving tackle about 12 yards downfield.
*Anyone notice the new offensive wrinkle of having Pittman shuffle behind Troy while in the shotgun? At first, I thought this was Troy adjusting his protection but now I'm inclined to believe it was a strategy to get ND to adjust their defensive alignment just ever so slightly.