With 12 days to go until Ohio State’s season opener at Indiana, Ryan Day feels confident that either Devin Brown or Kyle McCord can successfully lead the Buckeyes’ offense this season. But he isn’t ready to pick one to start over the other yet.
Coming off of Ohio State’s second and final scrimmage of preseason camp, Day was more upbeat when speaking about his two potential starting quarterbacks than he was a week ago when he said neither of them had been consistent enough to win the starting job yet. After both quarterbacks graded out as champions Saturday, Day said he and his assistants feel confident in both quarterbacks – enough so that he feels both of them have earned the opportunity to play in the first game.
Day has said all along that he wanted to name a starting quarterback no later than this week, and he said Monday that he still would have liked to see a clear starter emerge by now. The way Day spoke about the two quarterbacks on Monday, however, made it seem more likely than not that the quarterback competition will continue into the start of the season.
“You would like to have somebody who's the quarterback to play the whole game. But for me to say, ‘Hey, this guy should just play the whole game and the other one shouldn't,’ that's not the right thing to do right now, because they both deserve to play at this point,” Day said.
Ohio State hasn’t had a quarterback competition continue into the season since 2015, when Urban Meyer left everyone in suspense on who would start the season opener at Virginia Tech until Cardale Jones took the field for the first snap. That season served as a warning to the drawbacks that can come from two quarterbacks playing regularly, as a talent-laden Ohio State offense never quite found its rhythm with Jones and J.T. Barrett trading the starting job multiple times throughout the year.
That said, there have been other recent examples of a quarterback competition playing out into the season and yielding better results. Michigan did it just last season when Cade McNamara and J.J. McCarthy split starts in the first two games before McCarthy emerged as the starter, and the Wolverines ended up winning the Big Ten championship. Clemson won a national championship with Trevor Lawrence in 2018 after allowing the quarterback competition between him and incumbent starter Kelly Bryant to play out over the first month of the season.
Realistically, Ohio State shouldn’t need to make a firm decision on its starting quarterback until the fourth game of the season at Notre Dame. The Buckeyes should be able to win comfortably against Indiana, Youngstown State and Western Kentucky with either quarterback, and both quarterbacks would likely see playing time regardless if those games become the blowout wins they should be – though considering the season opener is still a Big Ten game on the road, Day says Ohio State has to ultimately do what it feels will give it the best chance to win that game.
“Bottom line is you have to do what's best for Ohio State to win the game, period. Because we have to be 1-0 on Saturday night,” Day said. “That’s our first goal of the season is to beat Indiana on the road. So we're gonna do everything we can to win that game, and make the best decision to put the guys in the right spots to be successful.”
That said, Ohio State doesn’t feel like it would be clearly better off with one quarterback over the other in Bloomington right now. Day said he took a straw poll of his coaching staff after Saturday’s scrimmage on who each coach felt should be the starting quarterback and that the results were “almost split right down the middle.” If that doesn’t change over the next week, it’s likely both quarterbacks will see snaps with the first-team offense against the Hoosiers.
Day said there have been a couple of times over the course of preseason camp where it looked like one quarterback was going to separate from the other, but that the other quarterback promptly caught back up over the next practice or two. As long as that continues to happen, Ohio State will likely allow the competition to keep going.
“There was a point twice in camp where I thought one was pulling away from the other, and then two practices went by and the other one really played well and the other one kind of leveled off. And I would let them know, too. Right then and there. I’d say ‘You were pulling away and he just kind of took over a little bit,’” Day said. “And so one thing's for sure is they can't take a down off. They can't take a play off. And they're pushing each other. And that's good. And I kind of used that racehorse analogy. I mean, they're running down the stretch against each other and one pulls away, the other one goes. I mean, they're going hard. So the bottom line is that finish line isn't right now. We're gonna keep going and keep running and give them the opportunity and we'll just keep evaluating it.”
Day isn’t ruling out the possibility that one quarterback could pull away from the other more firmly this week, and Day said that quarterback would be named the starter if that happens. But given that the quarterbacks remain even in the eyes of Day, it may take actual game action for one quarterback to more clearly emerge as Ohio State’s best option this season.
“Yeah, that's fair to say,” Day said when asked if both quarterbacks would play against Indiana if the competition remains tight after this week.
“for me to say, ‘Hey, this guy should just play the whole game and the other one shouldn't,’ that's not the right thing to do right now, because they both deserve to play at this point.”– Ryan Day on Kyle McCord vs. Devin Brown
If the competition continues into the season, Day anticipates one quarterback will separate from the other early in the season based on their in-game performance.
“Ultimately, it’s going to come down to how well they play,” Day said. “Will I be surprised if we get into Week 6 and both of them are playing exactly (the same)? I guess they could be. But usually when you start getting into games, you start to see somebody pull away. And I thought maybe that would have happened by now. But it's neck and neck.”
Of course, there’s always the possibility that the Buckeyes could need both quarterbacks to start games this season even if one emerges as the initial starter this week. Day has repeatedly referenced Ohio State’s 2014 national championship season, when Jones began the year as the third-string quarterback and ended it as the starter following injuries to Braxton Miller and Barrett, as evidence of that. So it’s a positive for the long-term outlook of Ohio State’s 2023 season that it has two quarterbacks who have made a strong case for being worthy to start.
But Ohio State needs to have one quarterback it can consistently rely on before it gets into its biggest games of the year, and whether the Buckeyes have that one guy remains in question, especially compared to the elite standard of play set by Ohio State’s most recent quarterbacks. Day’s track record of developing elite quarterbacks is reason for optimism that the competition will yield a successful starter in the long run, though, and Day himself expressed that optimism Monday.
“I know in my heart, this thing’s going to work itself out,” Day said. “I'm proud of the way the guys are competing, I am. If I felt any other way, I’d say it. But now they're going to have to keep pushing through and competing and if it goes into the season, it goes into the season.”
