One week into preseason camp, Ryan Day isn’t ready to name a starting quarterback yet, or even a leader in the competition.
Kyle McCord and Devin Brown have split first-team reps through Ohio State’s first week of practices, and Day said Wednesday that the battle between them remains too close to call.
“It's a good battle. It's back and forth, for sure,” Day said. “And they know that this week is important to them. The scrimmage on Saturday will be important. And they're constantly putting up numbers daily. And so we'll compare the statistics, but there's also the eyeball test, and they're both competing at a high level.”
While this isn’t the first time Day has overseen a quarterback competition at Ohio State that continued into August – none of Dwayne Haskins, Justin Fields or C.J. Stroud were named the starting quarterback going into their respective first years as the Buckeyes’ starter until Aug. 19 or later – Day said this year’s competition is different, as each of those quarterbacks were viewed as clear frontrunners to be the starter entering preseason camp.
“I think when you look at where Justin and C.J. were, where Dwayne was in that preseason, there wasn't as much of a competition, I guess is the best way to put it. Where this is a really strong competition, so that is unique,” Day said.
Day has said all along, dating back to the spring, that he wants to see either McCord or Brown separate himself from the other before naming a starting quarterback. That hasn’t happened yet, but Day believes it could begin to happen by the end of this week, particularly on Saturday, when the Buckeyes are set to hold their first full scrimmage of camp.
A scrimmage isn’t the same as a game, as the quarterbacks still won’t be hit during the scrimmages. Still, Day said putting the quarterbacks in game-like situations is a crucial step to evaluating their readiness to be a starter, and Ohio State will do that more and more now that they’re a week into camp.
“The hardest thing about playing the game of football is you don't really get a feel for what you have until you play the game,” Day said. “For a quarterback, how do you simulate the pass rush? It's impossible to do. Having two 300-pound guys going against each other, like four of them going on at once right in front of you. And then trying to process what's going on with the coverages and the protections and what's the down and distance and the situation, where the ball could just be a little bit off, the ball gets tipped up in the air for an interception or it's completed right here for a first down. When do you decide to throw it or pull it down? You have all these different things and decision-making processes.
“So you just feel that when you have team work (in practice). Seven-on-seven, routes on air, okay, you get to see if they have the ability to get it done. But now, as you're starting to see some of the situational things like today, we worked on short yardage, we worked on red zone. We had a couple of different things yesterday in third down, third-and-long. You're starting to see some of these situations and you're starting to see some of this stuff start to crystallize. Can they do these things? And what does it look like? And if you take a small sample size, it's harder. When you get these bigger sample sizes as we start to put more and more practices behind us, then you can start to see what their progression is or the areas that they need to improve.”
Day hasn’t committed to any timeline for naming a starting quarterback, saying the competition could even continue into the start of the season if neither QB clearly emerges over the other during the preseason. But Day has said that he would prefer to name a starter before the first game week, and he didn’t rule out the possibility of naming a starting quarterback next week depending on how the scrimmage goes.
“I don't know,” Day said when asked if he would be ready to name a starting quarterback at his next scheduled press conference on Aug. 16. “But I will say that I think by this time next week, we'll have some more clarity on where we're going.”
