Ryan Day hasn’t recruited and developed a star quarterback since C.J. Stroud. How will he do with Julian Sayin? That might be the biggest question heading into the season.
Like any good Ohioan, I spent much of this college football offseason wondering if Ohio State will be good enough on the line of scrimmage to beat good teams.
That’s a concern until those groups prove themselves over the course of the season. But there is another more uncomfortable question.
What if the Ohio State quarterbacks don’t pan out?
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And here’s another: What if Ryan Day has lost his golden touch with those guys?
The head coach of the Buckeyes is riding high after leading the Scarlet and Gray to the national championship. That proved him not only as an Xs and Os guru but a leader of men, particularly the way he rallied the troops after the Michigan debacle.
The love and respect his players showed for him before and after the College Football Playoff run was something to see, and winning is the ultimate validation.
But, hey, the honeymoon can’t last forever, right?
A high noon showdown with Texas is a heck of a way to come back to earth, too, especially with Will Howard now a Pittsburgh Steeler. But many assume Julian Sayin is next in line at the Ryan Day Ohio State Quarterback Factory.
Day made his name as a QB whisperer, but lately the results haven’t been as impressive.
And by that I mean Day hasn’t actually recruited AND developed a great quarterback since 2019 when C.J. Stroud was a late addition to the 2020 recruiting class.
The other signee in that class, four-star Jack Miller from Arizona, ended up being a miss.
Yes, Kyle McCord had some good days, but in the end…not good enough. He left for Syracuse…and had more of the same.
So was Kyle McCord, a five-star signee in 2021 who was good but not good enough in his first year as a starter before running away to Syracuse. There he threw for a lot of yards but also 12 interceptions against a weaker schedule.
Day’s 2022 quarterback signee, Devin Brown, talked a good game but never backed it up. He just lost a quarterback competition at Cal to a freshman.
(Quinn Ewers was in there, too, at least for a little while. He never really lived up to the considerable billing he received coming out of high school during three years at Texas, either, but of course that is more of a Steve Sarkisian problem.)
Lincoln Kienholz came out of South Dakota in 2023, but he couldn’t beat out Brown for the backup job last year and eventually fell behind the true freshman version of Sayin, too, on the depth chart.
Maybe Sayin is a transcendent talent, but that is a big leap anywhere, not just with the defending national champions. At 6-1, 208, he is not an imposing figure, but everyone raves about his arm.
His moxie we can’t know until his guys are trading paint with other-colored helmets, but Sayin was the No. 1-ranked quarterback prospect in the country coming out of Carlsbad, California, in 2024.
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Unlike Brown or Kienholz, he was Day’s first choice in that cycle (though Sayin initially chose Alabama), so that may count for something.
Following Day’s work with Dwayne Haskins Jr. and Justin Fields (who was a transfer from Georgia, meaning Stroud is the only quarterback Day actually got out of high school and nurtured into a star), Stroud became the third Heisman Trophy finalist in a row Day tutored at Ohio State.
Day also coaxed more efficient passing from fourth-year starter J.T. Barrett upon his arrival as quarterbacks coach and offensive coordinator in 2017, so everything pointed in one direction for the coach for the first six years.
Now what?
Haskins, Fields and Stroud set the bar high. With elite quarterback play now a trademark of Day’s program, it is interesting to wonder if he can replicate that magic with Sayin — or anyone else for that matter.
Easy to forget…in the day of who’s next, and he has to be better.
Summer is the season for optimism, of course, and that is especially true at a place that recruits like Ohio State. The Buckeyes are arguably the most consistent program in the nation since at least the 1940s, and the primary reason is players.
No matter the recruiting base, Ohio State has always found players from the Paul Brown era through Woody Hayes to Earle Bruce, John Cooper, Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer and now Ryan Day.
These days talent acquisition is changing because of name, image and likeness payments, and that could cost the Buckeyes in the long run. I wouldn’t bet on it, but that is a discussion for another day.
Even if NIL means the spreading of elite players across the country looking for a big payday out of high school, the quarterback can be a cheat code.
A great one can make up for a few recruiting losses at other positions (see Oklahoma in the previous decade and to a certain extent Clemson), but that task is still tall.
Beyond that, the quarterback issue — if there turned out to be one — is also worth considering in the overall context of the team.
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Day’s 2021 and ’22 teams were young but elevated by Stroud, while the ’23 group needed more consistency from the position to reach its full potential.
Instead, that squad watched Michigan hoist the Big Ten and national championship trophies after McCord gave away a touchdown in first quarter of The Game and J.J. McCarthy pulled one out of his…um, hat… in the second quarter.
Last year, the quarterback issue reared its ugly head against the Wolverines again when Howard was temporarily knocked out of the game after taking a hit to the head.
He returned shortly but did not look like himself, raising concerns not just about his health but also the coaching staff’s trust in the backups if he wasn’t able to run the offense at peak capacity.
You’ll remember this guy…won’t you…for doing a lot in such a short amount of time?
Howard rebounded to be the type of field general the Buckeyes needed in the College Football Playoff, and he will go down as a Buckeye legend as a result.
To get to the CFP last year, Howard flashed at times, but the overall quality and experience of the roster helped him more than it did McCord in those September, October and November games.
He became the right complement the team needed, both with his leadership and passing ability, even when the offensive line was significantly weakened by injuries late in the season.
Going into the playoff game against Tennessee, I was among many to write off the Buckeyes because the offense just hadn’t looked like the juggernaut it was supposed to be most of the regular season.
Howard and the rest of the crew (with Day doing more of the game planning, as it turns out), proved all of us doubters wrong then, of course, but that is now history.
Howard spent four years at Kansas State, where he started two dozen games, so Day didn’t have to start from scratch there.
What will the quarterbacks’ roles be in the next chapter?
Supporting? Starring? Somewhere in between?
Are the Buckeyes good enough to win if the answer is not B?
Answers start Saturday.
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