Mike Vrabel says Michigan ‘pissed off’ Ohio State en route to playoff national championship

Something changed inside the Ohio State locker room coming out of November’s loss to Michigan, a setback that ignited a historic run through the expanded College Football Playoff en route to a national championship. New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel, who watched from afar last fall as a consultant for the Cleveland Browns, said the setback woke the monster before the postseason.

“They just pissed them off, I think,” Vrabel said this week on The Triple Option podcast with Urban Meyer. “At least, they used [Michigan] to piss them off and end the tournament.”

Vrabel previously served on Meyer’s staff from 2011-13 as the Buckeyes’ linebackers and defensive line coach. Vrabel starred at Ohio State in the mid-1990s and is a native of Ohio, his lone win in four tries against Michigan coming in 1994.

Former Ohio State stars Jack Sawyer and Will Howard said this month that winning the national championship was more important than beating the Wolverines.

Michigan won four straight in the rivalry series and used its 2023 victory as a springboard to its own national championship run in the final year of the four-team playoff format.

 “That takes no emphasis off how important The Game is,” Sawyer said during a recent appearance on the Footbahlin podcast with Ben Roethlisberger. “If anyone tells you they’d rather go 1-12 and just beat The Team Up North, you’re crazy. You’re playing this game to win championships. And make no mistake about it, no one wants to beat those guys more than we do.

“But at the end of the day, there’s nothing we could have done after that. We have our shot to go chase the ultimate goal, which is to win a national championship.”

Howard, who only played for the Buckeyes during the 2024 season after transferring from Kansas State, only got a taste of the rivalry but knows the bad blood stands the test of time.

Howard had his only two-interception game of his senior campaign during the loss to the Wolverines before throwing eight touchdown passes over four near-perfect starts in the playoff for the national champions.

“Me, just being new to the rivalry, obviously I was a Penn State fan,” Howard said, “I think that the rational Buckeye fan would say, ‘Give me the championship every day of the week.’ I would hope so. And obviously, we literally talk about it every single day and there’s a huge emphasis on it. No M’s in the building, I don’t think I’ve worn blue this whole year. It runs really deep and it means a lot to a lot of people.”