Dwayne Haskins wasn’t going to be denied against Maryland: the hometown team, the team he was once committed to. Ryan Day saw it in his quarterback’s eyes. He had something to prove.

When the Ohio State head coach reflected on the quarterback’s career, that’s the game that came to mind from Haskins’ 2018 season, the one that represented his former starting quarterback most.

It wasn’t only the fact that it was Haskins’ first return home. It was a chance to silence critics.

“He wanted to prove to everybody that he wasn’t just a throwing quarterback because the quarterbacks we had previously, with J.T. (Barrett) and Braxton (Miller), they were runners and they could also throw the ball,” Day, who was Ohio State’s offensive coordinator in College Park that day. “I think Dwayne saw himself as a passer, who could also run the ball. He tried to show it that day, and it was a very difficult game. He stepped up in a big way.”

It was the game that Day saw Haskins really grow up, recording 405 passing yards and three touchdowns — a typical passing day for the Ohio State redshirt sophomore — but with three touchdowns on a career-high 15 rushes, leading the Buckeyes to a 52-51 overtime victory on the road against the Terrapins

Haskins wasn’t a running quarterback. He wasn’t even a dual-threat option in that same vein as J.T. Barrett or Braxton Miller.

But Haskins didn’t want to be pigeonholed as a quarterback, using that game to show that he could run the ball if the situation arose.

Looking back on that 2018 season, the record-breaking campaign that allowed Day to break out as an offensive coordinator, the season that helped set the course for the No. 1 scoring and the No. 1 total offense in the country that took the field in 2021, Haskins was in the middle of it.

Despite being recruited and brought in by head coach Urban Meyer in the 2016 class, Haskins was Day’s first quarterback, the one he helped mold. And it’s set the tone for each of his quarterbacks moving forward, from Justin Fields to C.J. Stroud.

When Day first arrived, though, Haskins was already showing the quarterbacks coach something that he could work with.

“Quickly, when I got here, you could just recognize, you could just see the wrist, you saw how quickly the ball comes out, you see the accuracy, you see all those things. You still see a young person who is still trying to figure out the game, but you could just see how talented he was and how quickly the ball came out,” Day said.

Then he saw the confidence oozing from a quarterback who spoke his future into existence as an 11-year-old walking through the Woody Hayes Athletic Center for the first time.

“‘This is what I’m going to do,’” Day recalls Haskins' mentality being, clearly shown in the video in Ohio State's football facility. “Then he did it. I think that’s the legacy he’s going to leave behind to so many younger people… You can set a dream, a goal and go achieve it.”

That confidence set the precedent for the position moving forward, influencing Fields in his two seasons as Ohio State’s starting quarterback and Stroud’s first in 2021.

It set the tone for an Ohio State quarterback’s relationship with his receivers, with Day saying that the group headlined by Terry McLaurin and Parris Campbell “believed in who he was,” giving them the chance to play with confidence.

As Day got to know Haskins, though, the success didn’t come as a surprise to the then-offensive coordinator.

“I always felt that he always felt that he was built for this,” Day said. “He always knew that this was going to happen to him and he just walked with so much confidence in that way.”

With that came a calm and a confidence for Day, With that came an expectation that with each quarterback Day had after Haskins he would have the same attributes: anticipation, a special throwing motion, poise under pressure and an ability to read opposing defense and get the ball out quickly.

He saw it in Fields. He saw it in Stroud. He saw it in Kyle McCord. He saw it in Devin Brown.

And it’s all because of the progress and the talent Day saw in Haskins from his first day with the former four-star quarterback from Maryland.

“It kind of catapulted the offense, the receivers, the passing game just in general,” Day said. “It’s kind of hard to put into words what he meant when this all had happened so fast. He had a major impact on this whole thing.”