Ohio State’s spring football season is over, but its quarterback competition is not.
Ryan Day said after Ohio State’s spring game on Saturday that he expects the competition between Justin Fields and Matthew Baldwin to continue into preseason camp.
“I don’t think right now that we’re going to make a decision on that,” Day said. “I think it’ll continue through the preseason.”
Day noted that the Buckeyes have only three scholarship quarterbacks, with Chris Chugunov in line to be the third-string quarterback while walk-on Danny Vanatsky is the only other quarterback on the roster, so they all need to be ready to play. As such, Day wants to see all of his quarterbacks grow over the course of the summer moving into the fall.
“They’re probably all going to have to play in one way, shape or form along the way,” Day said. “So they’ll keep pulling for each other and as long as that room gets strong, that’s the key.”
Last year, Urban Meyer named Dwayne Haskins as Ohio State’s starting quarterback following the conclusion of the spring, in which he battled Joe Burrow and Tate Martell for the job. That was a different situation, however, as Meyer felt as though he owed it to Burrow – who ended up starting at LSU last season as a graduate transfer – to give him an answer.
Fields completed just 4-of-13 passing attempts for 131 yards and a touchdown on Saturday – with most of those yards coming on a 98-yard touchdown – while he also ran the ball eight times for 38 yards and a touchdown. Baldwin completed 20-of-36 passes for 246 yards and two touchdowns, but he also threw two interceptions.
Overall, Day said he felt as though “both of them had positive days.”
“I think that they both did a good job today,” Day said. “They both flashed at times. Still a work in progress. We still got work to do. But I thought that they gave some of the receivers a chance. Some of it’s hard, when you’re not in the tackle situation; is it a sack, is it not? Do we break out? And Justin, he can kind of create on the edge a little bit, so didn’t get a chance to see that as much. I thought Matthew made a couple really nice throws down the field.”
