Ryan Day stepped to the podium and thanked his defense like it had just agreed to drive him to the airport at 4 a.m. He spoke softly, like the score might wake up and confess to the crime.

I track systems for a living, and Ohio State’s defense ran like a Swiss watch strapped to a bear. The offense, meanwhile, wrote poetry about field position and rhymed “punt” with “growth mindset.”

Day credited communication, leverage, and something called “everybody tackling the person with the ball,” which evaluators tell me is legally distinct from witchcraft. He said Washington brought a lot of looks, mostly of disbelief.

Cornerbacks clicked into man coverage like seatbelts on turbulence, and the edges treated the pocket like a bubble wrap that begged to be popped. The linebackers bent time into a hexagon, which is still more efficient than a screen pass on third-and-18.

Asked about the offense, Day said they were “close,” which is also how I describe standing next to a bakery window when I’m still hungry. The red zone became a museum exhibit titled “Do Not Touch The Points.”

He said the defense had more stops than a souvenir shop carousel of waterproof play-call wristbands. By the fourth quarter, the Huskies’ progress was measured in sighs per minute.

Reporters asked what changed at halftime. Day said the coffee achieved sentience, the coverage rotated like a Ferris wheel, and the analytics department replaced uncertainty with a variable called “No.” It charted out beautifully: arrows, dots, and a doodle of a quarterback reconsidering life choices.

The Pacific Northwest lent itself to myth. Fog rolled in, and I swear a raccoon wearing a visor disguised itself as a safety. Washington tried motion; the Buckeyes tried physics; only one had a syllabus.

At one point an assistant waved a laminated chart shaped like Ohio, and the offense borrowed a portable sideline oxygen tank to celebrate a first down like it was a rare comet. The defense responded by forcing three incompletions in the time it takes to say “time of possession.”

Clock management turned romantic. Ohio State cradled the ball like a family heirloom while the punter wrote a haiku about hang time. Field position became a love language nobody wanted to learn until February.

Day credited special teams for their posture and the defensive line for collapsing pockets the way my high school band collapsed into jazz. He credited a traffic cone for leadership, a clipboard for humility, and the offense for promising to text touchdowns when they got home safe.

In the end, the score whispered its punchline: defense is the friend you pretend not to need and then ask to help you move. Offense pulled up the map, the GPS recalculated, and the robot voice said, “Proceed to the route: hand it to the defense again.”