Ryan Day addresses how Ohio State will approach setting plan at QB moving forward
Ohio State will roll out Kyle McCord as the starting quarterback on Saturday against Indiana in the Buckeyes season opener. But head coach Ryan Day will also let Devin Brown, who battled McCord all camp for the starting job, get some run.
Other than making sure Brown gets some meaningful snaps after McCord starts the game, Day has no real strict plans for the quarterback position moving forward. Once he has some real game tape, he thinks he’ll be able to form a more concrete plan of action.
“In practice, you see certain things but to get tackled and to move the team down the field, finish off drives, do well on third down, do well in the red zone, that’s going to continue to play itself out during the season. And there’s been teams that have done this similar before,” Day said. “And ultimately I told the guys when I met with them today, the goal is to go win championships. And when the season’s all said and done, the story is going to be written.”
Ohio State can’t afford to, in Day’s words, “ride the rollercoaster every drive, every game.”
As such, it’s not going to be a short leash for either quarterback. One mistake won’t result in them getting “benched,” as Day hesitated to even use the word as such.
“This isn’t going to be a situation where they need to be worried about getting ‘benched’ being in the game. That’s not the case,” Day said. “They have to go play through some of that stuff. CJ [Stroud] kind of went through it his first couple games when he was here as a sophomore. And you just don’t know how it is going to play out.”
What day does know, though, is that everyone is on the same page of what the goal is: Win the next game. And as more tape gets put down, Day will likely get closer to make a long-term call on the starting quarterback.
For now, though, the focus is to beat Indiana.
“But all we can do is just do the best we can right now, go win the first game is the goal and how that looks, I don’t know exactly how it’s going to be. A week from now, we’re in a different place. We have more to go on, bigger sample of in-game and we go from there. I just don’t have a crystal ball and I’m not sure how it is going to shake out. But I think what we’re doing is fair based on what we’ve seen this preseason,” Day said.