Denzel Burke’s assessment of Will Howard’s performance after Ohio State’s first two spring practices was perhaps the first moment that it became a real question whether Howard would be Ohio State’s starting quarterback this season.
Burke is known for his honesty during interview sessions, so his evaluations of his teammates carry more weight than most. When he speaks positively about a player, like he has repeatedly with freshman wide receiver Jeremiah Smith, there’s good reason to buy stock in that Buckeye. When his assessment of a teammate is more lukewarm, it’s an indicator that player isn’t yet where the Buckeyes need him to be.
Burke’s initial assessment of Howard in March clearly pointed toward the latter.
“You know me, I'm gonna just keep it real: I want to see more,” Burke said then. “I know he has a high potential, and I'm excited for him. 13 more practices (in the spring at that time), so we'll see.”
Given that, it’s no surprise that Burke was asked multiple times about Howard’s progress during his interview session on Tuesday at this week’s Big Ten Media Days. And his evaluation of the transfer quarterback from Kansas State continued to be a mixed bag.
On a positive note, Burke is impressed by the leadership Howard has shown this offseason, saying he has confidence that Howard is capable of leading the Buckeyes to their goal of winning a national championship.
“When you're in the weight room, you kind of get a little taste of what guys are like, who they really are in the weight room, and I've seen flashes of him being a dog and being a leader, and that's going to correlate to the field,” Burke said. “And just being able to see that and the moments we have together as a team and just seeing how he moves around, how he acts, I'm really excited.”
As for Howard’s on-field performance as a passer, however, Burke still wants to see more in preseason camp before giving Howard his endorsement.
“I’ve definitely got to see a lot more, definitely going against this defense we're in,” Burke said. “I saw a little bit of flashes towards the end, a little something new, but fall camp is really going to test him. They're going against the best defense in the country, so we just plan on getting him better and hoping for the best, man. The sky's the limit.”
While Howard didn’t perform well enough this spring to lock down the starting job, raising questions about whether he’s the quarterback the Buckeyes need to achieve all their goals this season, there are reasons for optimism he can get there. Some growing pains are to be expected for any quarterback acclimating to a new offense, and that’s especially true when practicing against a defense that’s expected to be the best in college football this season. Howard has a proven track record of effective quarterback play at Kansas State, where he earned second-team All-Big 12 honors last year, and he told Eleven Warriors earlier this month that he’s feeling “so much more” comfortable after six months with the Buckeyes than when he first arrived on campus.
Ohio State wide receiver Emeka Egbuka saw Howard’s comfort grow over the course of the spring and expects that growth to continue when the Buckeyes return to the practice field next week.
“He's doing better with every single practice,” Egbuka said. “He's getting more and more reps. He's becoming more and more comfortable.
“What I like about Will is that he's a fifth year, he's a vet guy. He's played a lot of football, got a lot of football under his belt. He's coming from a really different program and a really different offense in Kansas State and now transferring to Ohio State, and he's took the coaching and he's kind of ran with it. And he's developed at a rapid rate. You see him get better and better at each practice, which is really encouraging to see.”
The expectation remains that Ohio State’s starting quarterback job is Howard’s to lose, as the Buckeyes didn’t bring him in to be a backup. But the door remains open for Devin Brown or possibly even freshman Julian Sayin to win the job away from Howard if Howard doesn’t show clear improvement during the Buckeyes’ August practices.
Ryan Day didn’t give much indication during his Big Ten Media Days interview sessions about when he expects to name a starting quarterback or how close the competition truly is. A clear answer isn’t likely to come during Ohio State’s first four practices of camp – the four practices that will be open to fans – as Day said the Buckeyes plan to have players practicing on two fields at once to give players as many reps as possible during those four practices before starting to narrow things down after those practices.
That said, Day expects preseason camp to paint a clearer picture of who Ohio State’s starting quarterback should be this season now that all of their newcomers – Howard, Sayin and Air Noland – have had the spring and summer to get acclimated, making them more prepared to show off their skills on the practice field.
“Going into the spring, you had Lincoln (Kienholz) and you had Devin who were really the only ones that really knew the offense. So we wanted to kind of get through the spring, see what that looked like, go through the summer, and now the first two weeks of preseason, I think we'll have a better idea of kind of where everybody is based on their knowledge of the offense,” Day said. “Some guys have really stepped up in the summer, and whether it's leadership, there's a lot of different things you can evaluate in the summer. But it's going to come down to what happens on the field.”
