Though the quarterback situation at Ohio State remains fully up in the air entering Saturday afternoon's spring game, the players who will eventually be on the receiving end of passes from one of Kyle McCord, Jack Miller, or C.J. Stroud aren’t worried.
According to wide receivers coach Brian Hartline, a large chunk of helping an unproven quarterback through his first snaps at the collegiate level falls upon his wide receivers.
Entering the 2021 season, the Buckeye receiver room appears to be one of Ohio State's deepest, most-experienced position groups.
“I love this situation with a young quarterback. It asks us and demands us to be more detailed than ever,” Hartline said, referring to his wide receivers. “Having a young quarterback that is learning it all for the first time, but they also don’t have a large body of work-- I think it’s awesome.
“I think it really provides a lot of clear direction on what’s expected.”
Justin Fields lining up under center for two seasons was a gift to Buckeye wideouts, Hartline said. The soon-to-be NFL quarterback made up for plenty of mistakes and consistently turned precarious situations into scoring opportunities.
Ohio State will not have the luxury of a player like Fields in 2021. That means this group of wide receivers have to be at their absolute sharpest on every down of every game.
“We don’t have the cloudiness all the time of a quarterback making us ‘right,’” Hartline said. “They obviously do, but anytime quarterbacks make you right, it kinda covers up the real problems, the real inefficiencies.”
Luckily, Hartline and company have an unmatched combination of experience and overwhelming talent returning to campus.
No matter who is throwing the passes, having a tandem like Chris Olave (729 yards receiving in 2020) and Garrett Wilson (723 yards) is a luxury most teams can’t afford.
Toss in Jaxson Smith-Njigba, a healthy Julian Fleming, and Jameson Williams, and there’s more than enough proven talent for these young quarterbacks to work with.
Still, to Hartline, perfection is the goal every season, and that goal takes on an entirely new meaning when working with a trio of players who haven’t thrown an in-game pass since high school.
“Production doesn’t mean it was good. Production means it was good enough, and we’re trying to aim for excellence,” Hartline said. “There’s a little more ownership now on knowing we gotta take care of our duty to handle and to help the young quarterbacks.”
To the receivers themselves, it’s a simple equation: Putting yourself in the best possible position to catch passes puts the quarterback in the best possible position to throw those passes.
“It hasn’t been a hard type of task. We’re out there every day getting to it,” Williams, a junior, said. “QBs throw it to the wide receivers, we gotta get open. It’s not that hard of a task.”
Two things were made very clear by each wide receiver who was asked about entering the season with a new quarterback: No, they don’t know who will win the job, but yes, they’re 100 percent confident that whoever ends up replacing Fields will be Ohio State's starting quarterback for good reason.
At this point in the spring, that level of confidence from the Buckeyes’ most proven targets is certainly reason for cautious optimism surrounding this team’s ongoing QB battle.
“Every year we recruit. We recruit the top dudes. This has been going on forever. Coach Day is one of the best at his job in the country,” Wilson said.
“I’m very confident, and everyone on the team is confident that whoever’s slinging the ball back there is gonna be ready to go week one, and be able to take us where we’re built to go.”
