OSU’s Trey Sermon rides Ezekiel Elliott-esque run into championship game, up Draft boards
There always seemed to be something standing in the way for Trey Sermon.
When he started out with the Oklahoma Sooners, it was the obvious college football hurdles — veterans sat ahead of him on the depth chart and Oklahoma was a perennial powerhouse in position to let young players develop.
As he got older, some of it was inexplicable and some of it was unavoidable — he had just 62 touches in 10 games last year before a knee injury cut short his final season in Norman while he was averaging more than 7.0 yards per carry.
Sermon’s best chance to become the Sooners’ workhorse had seemingly passed him by, so he decided to transfer to the Ohio State Buckeyes and then he faced the most unlikely hurdle of all.
The COVID-19 pandemic started to shut down normal life about a week before Sermon settled on Ohio State. The running back lost all semblance of a normal offseason as he rehabbed his knee and his lone regular season in Columbus lasted all of five games.
It took him every single one of those to start feeling like the dynamic halfback he had always shown flashes of. Everyone agrees: The week before the Buckeyes’ regular-season finale against the Michigan State Spartans was an inflection point.
“I was just feeling good, just practicing, just hitting the holes and really just getting in sync with the offensive line,” Sermon said. “Once I got that feeling again, I just started to just try to be consistent, continued practicing hard, running a little extra — just doing all of that. I felt like it translated over and, I mean, it kind of showed in the Michigan State game.”
Trey Sermon vs. Ezekiel Elliott
It started with 10 carries for 112 yards and a touchdown in East Lansing, and continued the next week in the 2020 Big Ten Championship Game, when he erupted for 331 yards and two touchdowns on 29 carries to beat the No. 15 Northwestern Huskies.
On Friday, the senior faced his greatest stage yet and delivered with 31 carries for 193 yards and a touchdown in No. 3 Ohio State’s 49-28 dismantling of the No. 2 Clemson Tigers in the 2021 Sugar Bowl.
Quickly, comparisons to another Buckeye running back’s spectacular end-of-season outburst emerged. At the end of the 2014 season, Ezekiel Elliott ran for 696 yards and eight touchdowns on 76 carries in three postseason games, beginning with the 2014 Big 10 Championship Game.
Two games into his postseason, Sermon is on pace to surpass Elliott’s run by nearly 100 yards and he’ll have a chance to solidify himself in the same conversation as the Dallas Cowboys star when Ohio State (7-0, 5-0) faces the No. 1 Alabama Crimson Tide in the 2021 College Football Playoff National Championship next Monday at Hard Rock Stadium.
“It’s just a great feeling,” Sermon said. “It’s been a lot of great running backs that have come through here and Zeke is one of the best running backs, and just to be in that conversation — it’s an honor.”
Said coach Ryan Day: “It’s really remarkable what he’s done. ... He has a chance to go down in Ohio State history as one of the best runs ever if he can have another performance in this game like he did the last two.”
Late rising NFL Draft stock
The 2019 season in Oklahoma has proved to be an aberration — Sermon’s breakout postseason even prompted Cleveland Browns quarterback Baker Mayfield to call out the former Sooners running backs coach Jay Boulware on Twitter because of how little he used Sermon — and he’s positioning himself to be one of the first tailbacks taken in the 2021 NFL Draft.
His talent — and a 900-yard season in 2018 — were enough to earn him preseason accolades. Pro Football Focus named him one of the top 10 returning running backs in college football for 2020, and PFF and Athlon Sports both picked him as a preseason first-team all-conference running back.
After a relatively quiet first four games with 232 yards as he split touches with fellow running back Master Teague, Sermon is putting together a postseason to justify the hype and could climb up to the second day of the upcoming NFL Draft. Maybe he’ll even be a target for the running back-needy Miami Dolphins.
Circumstances have never quite been right for Sermon. As his career winds down, they finally are and he has a chance to make history next week against Alabama (12-0, 10-0) in Miami Gardens.
“It was pretty rough in the beginning, just coming here and not being able to be around everybody, and then everything gets shut down,” Sermon said. “Over time, of course I’ve gotten more comfortable. ... We’re all playing well, and we got to where we wanted to get to, so everything turned out pretty good. Now we’ve just got to finish.”
