Ryan Day Looking For Toughness, Leadership At Quarterback

Will Howard was not the most talented starting quarterback that Ryan Day has had in his Ohio State tenure, but he may have been the best leader.

When former Buckeye receiver Emeka Egbuka said last week that he had never played with a field general like Howard, that included former Buckeye quarterback great CJ Stroud.

When Egbuka played with Stroud, the quarterback was just a redshirt freshman and redshirt sophomore, so even though he was the starting quarterback, he was still learning how to be a leader.

Howard, meanwhile, came to Ohio State last year as a fifth-year senior who imprinted himself on this program almost immediately. Now with Howard off to the NFL, the Buckeyes must find a new starting quarterback, and it will be up to three young players to make that happen.

Redshirt sophomore Lincoln Kienholz has thrown the most career passes of the group — 22. Redshirt freshman Julian Sayin threw the most passes last year — 12. And true freshman Tavien St. Clair won’t throw his first pass as a Buckeye until probably sometime in September.

They’re all talented, but the Buckeyes need to see more than just talent when choosing a starting quarterback.

“They’re young,” Day said on Friday. “They’re going to have to compete and we need a quarterback to be tough. We need him to be a leader.”

The leadership aspect can oftentimes be overlooked on the outside, but it’s a constant concern of coaches on the inside. Fortunately for this group of quarterbacks, they had a first-hand look at what true leadership looks like at the position.

“I’ve said this before they’ve had a great opportunity to watch Will — even Tavien, because he was a big part of being around these guys last spring,” Day said. “I don’t think he missed a spring practice. He would come during the season for all the games. He was with us for the last two weeks or the last two games. He was able to see what that looked like. Lincoln was with him every day. Julian was with him every day. That’s the standard of what the leadership should look like. Now they’ve got to go do it.”

Leadership and toughness are the keys. The talent to play at Ohio State is already understood. They wouldn’t have been recruited if the talent wasn’t there. Development takes time for everybody, but while that development is taking place, the intangibles need to be showing up each step of the way.

Whoever wins this job is going to join a select group of talented players. But if they want to achieve the ultimate goal, it’s going to take more than a strong arm and clean footwork.

“Being the quarterback around here you start listing the guys who have been here most recently and down the history of Ohio State football. You’re in some of the best names who’ve ever played the game,” Day said. “The biggest thing they have to do is they’ve got to lead and they’ve got to be tough. Long way to go on it. Don’t have any evaluation to go with right now but it’s going to be a big spring for those guys.”

Spring practice gets underway on Monday March 17. The on-field quarterback competition will officially begin. Most expect the actual competition to be between Julian Sayin and Lincoln Kienholz. They are the more experienced players, and the likelihood of a true freshman winning the job — no matter how talented he is — is just not that high.

But Tavien St. Clair is still going to get his shot. He’ll get the same number of reps as Kienholz and Sayin in the spring.

“Early on we’re going to try to roll. We’re going to try to go three groups so those guys get an equal amount of reps,” Day said. “We’ll split up who goes where. Even last year with Will we did that. Guys were getting reps with the ones. Guys were getting reps with the twos, the threes. There were times where Will was out there with the threes early on and just rolling. If you put one guy with the ones and one with the twos sometimes it can look a little different because of the younger guys and older guys. We’re going to roll them and we’re going to try to get the best evaluation we can.”

Showing toughness during spring practice will be difficult since quarterbacks are not allowed to be touched, but the leadership can still show up throughout any practice.

So while the quarterbacks are cycling through and throwing to receivers Jeremiah Smith and Brandon Inniss on one rep and a mix of true freshmen and scout teamers on the next, all of it will matter.

“We’ll evaluate everything,” Day said. “Specifically early on in the spring we want to roll those guys the best we can because the number one goal of spring is to get individual players better. We can get scheme in and all that but fundamentally, technically we’ve got to get better as football players. Then once we get into the summer we start putting the scheme together and we start coming together with the chemistry of the team.”