The Ohio State Buckeyes know who won’t be playing quarterback for them on Saturday at USC.
They’ll be without Julian Sayin, the Heisman Trophy-level QB in his second season as OSU’s starter.
Sayin injured his throwing arm against Indiana on Oct. 17 and is out indefinitely.
After a Buckeyes bye week, though, the question remains as to who will be playing QB at Southern Cal.
Ohio State has two options, Luke Fahey and Tavien St. Clair. They’ve presumably put them both through the paces over the last two weeks. One will be on the field first against USC.
Which one? That’s still a mystery.
Ohio State Starting QB This Week
Buckeyes coach Ryan Day isn’t giving anything away at all when speaking about Fahey and St. Clair.
“Both will be ready to play,” Day said on Wednesday, via USA Today. “Guys on the team have confidence that if both were put in the game, that they can do their job.”
Day had actually said earlier that he didn’t plan to keep the decision a mystery, so either he changed his mind before making those comments or he truly hadn’t made a full decision yet.
It’s unlikely he’s considering a bold strategy of rotating the two QBs, but you never know.
Fahey was the one who came in when Sayin got hurt against Indiana, but the two weeks of prep for USC could open the door either way. St. Clair was the more highly touted prospect, a five-star recruit from Bellefontaine, Ohio.
“Going into the last few games, Luke’s been ahead of Tavien, in terms of what we’ve seen,” Day said on Oct. 20. “That’s why he went in first. But now we have to come up for air and put together a plan. So, we need both the guys to practice really well.”
Tricky Part of Prep Work
The tough part for Ohio State is that the Buckeyes actually had a great opportunity on their hands, if they used it right.
With the bye week, it was a whole extra week for their new starting quarterback to get comfortable in the offense and the gameplan before playing USC.
The problem is that Ohio State may have spent much of the two weeks splitting reps between Fahey and St. Clair to see who deserved to start.
On the one hand, that would help the Buckeyes make an informed decision. But on the other, it doesn’t maximize reps for the guy who actually gets the gig.
Now to be fair, there’s a lot we don’t know. Day might’ve given the heavy majority of the reps to one QB for most of the last two weeks and just not shared that info publicly.
But even without knowing in advance, none of the in-week discussion matters that much. All that’s going to matter in the end is how Ohio State’s quarterback, whoever it is, plays on Saturday at USC and beyond.
Ohio State’s Starting QB vs. USC Made Anything But Clear