Buckeyes Building Quarterback Toughness In Variety Of Ways

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day has laid down the mandate that he wants his starting quarterback to be the toughest guy on the team.

They must be able to lead and they must be tough. Players will follow a tough leader, but how does a Buckeye quarterback show his toughness when he can’t be touched in practice?

Ohio State quarterbacks are always decked out in black “no contact” jerseys, so they never get hit in practice. This spring also isn’t expected to be all that physical, though that is nothing new for the quarterbacks.

So how does a quarterback show his toughness when he’s off limits from a defense?

“First guy in, last guy out,” said redshirt freshman Julian Sayin. “I think there’s a lot of ways to show toughness as a quarterback. Taking mental reps, finishing out plays, bursting through the line, I think all those can show toughness.”

The mental reps are always important for every player, but quarterbacks coach Billy Fessler has even told his players that their mental reps help to build the confidence that their teammates will have in them.

Fessler used offensive lineman Austin Siereveld as an example. Imagine Siereveld watching film and always seeing a particular quarterback taking their mental reps seriously. That gives Siereveld confidence in that quarterback to be able to get the job done when it is needed because he is taking everything seriously.

Redshirt sophomore quarterback Lincoln Kienholz is the oldest QB in the room this year, and his idea of showing toughness is right in Fessler’s wheelhouse.

“I’d say mentally,” he replied. “I mean, you’ve got to be on your stuff on the field. You’ve got to make the play when your name’s called. And, I mean, we’re still lifting, so you’ve just got to be a leader out there.”

Toughness for a quarterback is more than just picking himself up after getting hit. It needs to be established well before any games are ever played. And even though it may not seem like it, there are plenty of opportunities for that toughness to be put on display.

“Yeah, we talk about it all the time,” Fessler said. “So if we want to show we’re the toughest guys on the team, we can do that by showing we’re the hardest-working guys on the team. We can show that we are the mentally toughest guys on the team. We can make sure that we don’t ever get too high or too low, and we play with passion and emotion without letting that emotion and passion play with us and affect us.”

The mental toughness that is required cannot be overstated. A called play rarely goes exactly according to plan, so a quarterback needs to be able to handle the split-second chaos as it envelopes him. And then do it again on the next play and the play after that and so on. It’s a lot to handle, but the mental toughness has to be there to not let the chaos compound.

“We talk a lot in the quarterback room about moving on to the next most important thing,” Fessler said. “So if I have a play where maybe I made the wrong read or screwed something up, I’ve got about a half a second to kind of be bummed out about it, right? But I’ve got to learn from it and I’ve got to move on to the next most important thing because so many guys let that first play affect the next play. So we’re really working to continue to grow from that.”