Buckeye Coaches Explain Why Will Howard Was The Choice

At the start of fall camp for the Buckeyes, head coach Ryan Day said he’d like to have a starting quarterback named within the first two weeks. Speaking with reporters exactly two weeks after saying those words, Day was asked if his team now had a starting quarterback.

“We do,” he smiled. “Will Howard will start in the first game against Akron. He is our starting quarterback.”

There is never one reason why a quarterback wins the starting job. The duties are too many and too complex to have it all hinge on just one aspect of a player’s game. And when it comes to Will Howard, there were plenty of reasons that Day and offensive coordinator Chip Kelly made the decision they did.

“I feel like, quite honestly, Will’s taken control of the team in the last four or five days,” Day said. “I don’t think anybody will be surprised in that locker room.”

The Buckeyes went into preseason practice with five scholarship quarterbacks. Howard and Devin Brown were the main competitors for the starting job, with redshirt freshman Lincoln Kienholz and true freshmen Julian Sayin and Air Noland getting looks as well.

“When you take the aggregate of all the numbers, Will graded out significantly ahead of the other guys in the team work,” Day said, referring to the periods of practice that featured the 11-on-11, good-on-good battles. “Devin right now would be the number two. Now we still have a big scrimmage on Saturday, so these guys are going to continue to work. Julian, Lincoln, Air, they’re all going to compete.”

Trusting The Process

Will Howard spent his first few months on campus learning the offense. He transferred in from Kansas State in January and while he had flashes in the spring, he wasn’t as crisp as he needed to be. He grew from that experience, did the film work necessary, and has been in the playbook non-stop.

It has clearly paid off for him.

“Will has really taken a command of the offense, I believe. You feel him in the huddle. You feel his experience,” Day said. “I think he did a really good job, as we talked about, of changing his body in the offseason. So he’s become a threat both with his legs and with his arm. And the more he understands what he’s doing out there, and when he does, he’s really executing very well. I think the guys are excited when he gets in the huddle. Not to say that they’re not excited when the other quarterbacks are in there, but they do feel Will. And I know he’s excited about leading the team.”

Howard arrived at Ohio State weighing in at 249 pounds, which caused a bit of a stir. He has dropped 15 pounds and added more speed to his game. Howard has nearly 1,000 career rushing yards to his name, which is another aspect of his game that the coaches love.

But it’s not at the top of the list. That part of the pecking order is always reserved for one thing.

“I think decision making is at the top of the list for all quarterbacks, just because that’s what the game is,” Kelly said. “Are you putting us in the right play? Are you getting us out of a bad play? Are you making the decisions to throw the check down instead of forcing it into coverage? It’s not just who has the strongest arm, but the decision-making process has always been at the top of the list.

“Then after that, it would be repetitive accuracy and then athleticism, and I think Will has all three of those. His ability to help us in the run game is going to be a really big plus for us this year because he’s not just a guy that’s going to hand it off back there. I think people are going to have to respect him with the ability to run.”

Taking Control

Will Howard changed his body and entered fall camp with a much better understanding of the offense. This allowed him to play faster, throw the ball with more confidence, and better footwork. Coaches and teammates saw him feed off of the fact that he was making the right reads and having success against a very good defense.

“I think after the first week, you just started to see him take control, make good decisions, and that’s the biggest thing,” Day said. “We have a good defense this year, so we don’t need extraordinary play. I did say this at this time last year, we need someone who’s going to take care of the football, make good decisions, make the routine plays routinely. He’s got to play well on third down. He’s got to play well in the red zone and win the game in a two-minute drill. That’s what we ask our quarterbacks to do, and we have a good surrounding cast around him. So taking care of the ball is very, very important, but then also scoring touchdowns.”

In his four years at Kansas State, Howard was never considered a pinpoint passer. His career completion percentage is just 58.8%. Last year in his first full year as a starter, he completed a career-high 61.3% of his passes. The last time the Buckeyes had a starter complete a lower percentage was 2012 with Braxton Miller (58.3%). (Ohio State also went undefeated that year, so do with that information what you wish.)

When you have the receiving options the Buckeyes have, you’d like your quarterback to complete a higher percentage of passes and have the kind of accuracy that an offense can rely on.

To hear defensive coordinator Jim Knowles tell it, Howard has done just that.

“Well, he is making all the throws,” Knowles said on Thursday. “He stands in the pocket, he has got great vision, arm strength. We have got great receivers and he is putting the ball in places where only the receiver can catch it, so to me it is not just the arm strength, but he is making the pinpoint passes, too.”

Location, Location, Location

Ryan Day knew that work would need to be done in the area of accuracy and everything that impacts ball location. Some of that just comes with comfort in the offense and the quarterback finally understanding all of his options and why those options are in the order they’re in. The more confident a quarterback is with where the ball is going, the better the ball will get there.

“You only go off of what you see in practice, and I have seen some significant progress made there, the location,” Day said. “I think you’ll notice the poise in the pocket. When you’re tall as he is, he can see over the line, he can see over the trees, and he’s got a good feel in that pocket.”

The feel in the pocket was another area of focus, but it’s one that Will Howard has done pretty well with in his time at Kansas State. With 27 career starts, there is a certain comfort level for a quarterback. But Howard has never considered himself a finished product. With only 15 practices permitted in the spring, in order to move closer to that finished product, players have to make the time to work on their own. Howard thrived in that area.

“There was certainly some things that we needed to work on, and I think Chip did a great job of addressing those things and making sure he knew that he had to go work on those things,” Day said. “But as you know, in the offseason, he has to do that. He has to go and work with some people. He has to go to work with that and watch the film and figure out how he needs to keep his feet moving and the different things that come with it.”

Through all of that extra work and study, Howard came to preseason camp a much more prepared quarterback. In the spring, he was learning and relying on muscle memory. Now, he’s just playing ball.

“A big part of it is when you can anticipate what’s going on as opposed to react, it’s all the difference in the world, and he has a better handle on it,” Day said. “A big part of that is the work he has put in. He comes in early, he puts work in, he studies the film. He understands what the schemes are. He understands the structure of the route combinations, and he’s done a good job in the run game.”

Making The Grade

This has been the earliest Ryan Day has ever named a starting quarterback during a competition. Even earlier than Justin Fields in 2019 and CJ Stroud in 2021. Last year’s competition didn’t fully end until after the second game of the season, despite the fact that Kyle McCord started the first two games and played the bulk of the snaps in both.

Last year’s competition went longer than Day would have liked, but the decision being made this early didn’t have anything to do with any bad taste from the delays last year. Rather, this was all about measureables.

“We grade everything,” Kelly said. “Obviously he graded out the highest at the position. There’s a lot of data driven information with that, in terms of decisions that he makes on the field, running the offense, and it’s just as critical to be that guy in the run game as it is in the pass game in terms of what we ask the quarterback to do here. So I think he’s really worked extremely hard in the offseason from the end of spring ball to now, he’s made great strides.

“We gave him a plan over the summer to work on and he took it and ran with it. So where he is now is pretty impressive. And the one thing that he has is experience. He’s been in a huddle, he’s been in a huddle in a lot of games, he’s been in a huddle in big games, so this isn’t new to him. Columbus is new to him, but playing college football isn’t new to him. So I think that experience really started to shine through here during camp and I’m excited to see where he goes with this.”