NEW ORLEANS — For the last three seasons, Tom Herman and Cardale Jones have been bound together on a journey for better or for worse.
Most recently, this path is at a climax that was evident during Sugar Bowl interviews Sunday in New Orleans, where each tried to interrupt the other’s session with reporters with goofy antics.
First it was Herman, who weaved through a crowd around Jones to stick a recorder six inches away from his face like everyone else. It worked to perfection.
Later, when it was Herman’s turn to talk, Jones attempted to do the same before promptly being foiled since a quarterback built like a large tight end isn’t exactly advantageous for the element of surprise.
“You're 6-foot-5, 250 pounds,” Herman shouted. “You think I didn't see you coming?! Damn.” Jones flashed that ear-to-ear smile he made after helping Ohio State win the Big Ten Championship in his first-career start and slunk away.
The moment is an example of a special rapport between the two, one perhaps best explained by a deep bond sewn through years of highs and lows.
If winning a conference title and silly pranks fall into the category of the former, what Jones called a “very uncomfortable conversation” after Herman accepted an offer to become Houston’s next head coach earlier this month falls into the latter.
“It was just a little bit of a,” Herman said, before taking a lengthy pause. “(He) knows it’s part of the game, knows it’s part of the business so to speak.
“But me and him have had our — I wanna say our ups and downs — but it was down for a long time and now trending up and really up to where we’re very, very close. So that hurt. But you gotta move on and he’ll be fine and we talked it out. Hugged it out.”
Jones said: “It was just emotional. You get close to someone like that for three years and then they leave, but he set the record straight. It’s not like he’s out of my life or whatever or anything like that, he’s just not my coach.”
Of course, Herman has been so much more than just a coach to Jones, who might not still be at Ohio State if not for his mentor. After all, most of Jones’ career has been edged by doubt and disappointment.
During Ohio State’s two-a-days in August, Herman recalled, he walked off Ackerman Field with head coach Urban Meyer who asked him, ‘Do you think Cardale Jones can ever play quarterback at Ohio State?’”
This is a question that’s been asked before and often when it comes to Jones, whose howitzer for an arm and big-bodied figure has long been nullified by apathy on and off the field.
If Jones continued on this path, as Meyer has said before, it would have taken him on a “one-way bus ticket” elsewhere. A change was necessary, but whether or not it would happen remained unclear.
Can Cardale Jones ever play quarterback at Ohio State? After he threw for 257 yards and three touchdowns against Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game, we know this to be a self-evident truth.
But it took someone to believe in Jones first despite logic that suggested otherwise for a long time.
Why?
“Because I’m a sucker, maybe. I don’t know. I know this, it’s probably for the same reason my wife has to come with me when we go car shopping or TV shopping,” Herman said.
“I think that this kid was put in front of me for a reason and it was my job to believe in him to the very end until he proved to me that I could no longer believe in him never again.
“And we weren’t at that point. So it was my job to believe in him and, again, he’s still got some fine-tuning, but I just figure it’s my job as a position coach to believe in my guys. He gave me a lot of reasons not to, but to me it was never a final straw, this is it, you gotta go. He was close in some other people’s minds, but I saw what was in there.”
Can Cardale Jones ever play quarterback at Ohio State?
For Tom Herman, whose hot and cold relationship with his mentee nears its end sooner or later, it's never been in doubt.
