Ohio State football coach Ryan Day should name starting QB sooner than later | Oller

A secret is no secret to the secret keeper, so by definition Ryan Day already knows who his starting quarterback will be when the Buckeyes open Aug. 31 at home against Akron. Even if the rest of us don’t.

We may suspect which QB gets the nod between Will Howard and Devin Brown – my money is on Howard – but we also want to wait until a week or so into fall camp to make a final prediction. But Day can’t afford to wait, not with camp beginning Thursday and Akron less than a month away.

Many fans want to believe fall camp is for determining starters through position battles. OSU coaches, especially on offense, are farther down the road. They have to be, or else risk repeating what went wrong in 2023.

One of the perplexing issues dogging Ohio State last season was a failure to get off to fast starts. For all their offensive firepower, the Buckeyes never got out of the gate as quickly as Day wanted. The slow starts were especially noticeable in the first two games against Youngstown State, when OSU led only 14-7 after one quarter, and Western Kentucky, when it was 7-3 after 15 minutes.

It didn’t improve from there: 0-0 vs. Notre Dame; 0-7 vs. Maryland; 13-0 vs. Purdue; 3-3 vs. Penn State; 0-3 vs. Wisconsin; 7-0 vs. Rutgers; 14-0 vs. Michigan State; 0-7 vs. Minnesota; 3-7 vs. Michigan; 3-0 vs. Missouri.

Mar 20, 2024; Columbus, Ohio, USA; Ohio State Buckeyes head coach Ryan Day and quarterback Devin Brown watches as quarterback Will Howard takes a snap during Pro Day at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center.

Quarterback Kyle McCord took much of the heat for the Buckeyes performing more like tortoise than hare, but upon closer inspection the problem was more with Day waiting too long to name McCord the full-time starter. Despite an entire spring and summer/fall to make his pick, Day did not make McCord’s role official until after the…


Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/ohio-state-football-coach-ryan-100931238.html

Author : The Columbus Dispatch

Publish date : 2024-08-01 10:09:31

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