COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ryan Day decided Saturday’s spring practice would be a good time to do something unique with
Ohio State’s
quarterback battle.
The 2025 competition is between a trio that’s played a combined 87 snaps of football. Only 40 of those came against legitimate competition and that was two years ago.
This is the least Day has known about his quarterbacks since the 2021 season, leading to some creative approaches. That’s why he decided this week that it was important that
Julian Sayin
,
Lincoln Kienholz
and
Tavien St. Clair
were live, meaning the defense had free reign to hit them.
That’s the best thing Day could’ve done for this competition, even if it’s a risky one, given you only have three healthy quarterbacks right now. There’s a ton you can learn about a quarterback when he knows he’s liable to take a hit that you can’t learn otherwise.
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For St. Clair — who spent most of Saturday’s practice working with the third-string — you got to see how he responds to constantly being under pressure. You saw him extend plays, moving the offense down the field with both his arm and legs. You saw him put his shoulder down and initiate contact with a linebacker to fight for extra yards.
Some moments weren’t so great, where his happy feet led to him leaving the pocket much earlier than he needed to and abandoning plays before they developed.
For Sayin, you saw how a player of smaller stature — 6-foot-1 and 203 pounds — than
Will Howard’s
6-4, 235-pound frame last season reacted to having much larger defensive linemen in his face. There were times where his quick release bailed him out despite throwing off his back foot, allowing him to complete passes over the middle of the field.
There were also times where those same mistakes allowed
Jermaine Mathews
to walk away with the only interception of the day.
Kienholz had the strongest day of the trio. He led two touchdown drives during a team period, including one where he ripped a 40-yard pass down the sideline to
Carnell Tate
. If you were looking to see who could be the most consistent on Saturday, Kienholz fit that description.
He also had low moments as defensive linemen and linebackers got their hands on quite a few of his throws at the line of scrimmage. Plus, there were moments where he was inaccurate, even if he was bailed out by questionable pass interference calls (none of which were on
Davison Igbinosun
, for what it’s worth).
Nobody won the quarterback battle on Saturday. Nobody lost it either. There’s not a power ranking that come out of the day that people should use as gospel for how this battle eventually ends.
The person you already thought was going to win this battle coming into the offseason is probably still going to win it
.
The only victory that came from Saturday is the only thing that actually matters. Making sure that the eventual winner was pushed to the highest degree. Sayin and Kienholz are doing that for each other and St. Clair is even doing some positive things as well.
In ensuring that that happens, Day has introduced a new element that coaches tend to stay away from by making them live.
Spring is about individual development. It’s also about throwing every possible situation at your quarterbacks just to see how they respond. Day said on Monday that his thoughts on the quarterbacks this spring have been a “mixed bag to the negative,” and that was on full display on Saturday.
You saw some good, some bad and everything in between. And you got to see it in the most game-like environment possible, because those non-contact black quarterback jerseys meant nothing.
