Ewers won’t be the starter for the season opener but could see playing time later this fall.
Following his arrival in Columbus over the weekend, new Ohio State quarterback Quinn Ewers practiced with his teammates for the first time on Monday. But rather than immediately throw him into the fire that is the Buckeyes’ ongoing quarterback competition, head coach Ryan Day is focused on easing him into action instead.
“We’re going to show him around the locker room, show him around the facility and get him going,” Day said during his press conference this morning. “Obviously, he just got here in the middle of camp. We have a good plan in place to try to get him going here. He’s had a great attitude and I’m happy he’s here.
“Like I said, he’s just trying to figure out where to stretch out right now.”
There’s no denying that Ewers, who was widely regarded as the top-rated quarterback in the country before reclassifying, is a bit behind C.J. Stroud, Jack Miller and Kyle McCord in the battle to be the Buckeyes’ starter for the season opener at Minnesota on Sept. 2 – especially after Day announced that Stroud has started to separate himself from the others on the roster.
That doesn’t mean that Ewers won’t have a role this season, but he’ll have to learn the playbook and transfer that information onto the practice field before that can happen.
“I don’t know,” Day said. “It’s a long, long way to January, so I guess anything could happen. We’re just going to take it one day at a time and see how everyone is working in that room. I think, overall, the quarterback room has made some good progress this year. When you look at all of the guys, I think Jack and Kyle have both grown, so we’ll kind of see how things shake out.
“We’ve got another week of camp and once we kind of break on Saturday, then it’s all kind of Minnesota. That’s when you start looking at depth charts and where guys are. But we’re a long way away from that when it comes to Quinn.”
It wouldn’t be unprecedented for a highly touted true freshman to unseat the starter midway through or late in the season – even in the midst of a national championship run. After all, that’s exactly what happened at Alabama and Clemson, when Tua Tagovailoa replaced Jalen Hurts in 2017 and Trevor Lawrence replaced Kelly Bryant in 2018.
At the same time, this was only practice No. 1 for Ewers, who is still getting to know his teammates and has yet to fully immerse himself into the program.
“Everyone has a unique situation, and I know it was hard for him to leave his high school teammates. I know it was very, very hard for him to say bye to his high school coach. They were very, very close,” Day said. “It’s just one of those things that we have to start embracing different situations like this and I know our guys are going to do the same thing.
“It’s not like we haven’t had high-profile guys come into the program. That happens here and so he’ll do a good job of working his way in and earning the respect of the team, and they’ll embrace him.”
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