COLUMBUS, Ohio – Training camp for the 2019 football season kicks off at the end of the week and there are plenty of questions surrounding Ryan Day’s first team as head coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes.

Talent will not be one of the questions surrounding this team as the Buckeyes are loaded at every position, despite losing nine players to the NFL Draft and several others to graduation. It is a case of ‘next man up’ and that has worked very well for years at Ohio State.

That does not mean that someone will walk in and replace the production of a Dwayne Haskins or a Parris Campbell or a Nick Bosa (even though the Buckeyes had him for a grand total of two-plus games last season) or most notably an Urban Meyer.

Fortunately for the Buckeyes, Justin Fields, KJ Hill, Chase Young and Ryan Day are all front-and-center for 2019 and will step into their roles as the team looks to stay atop the Big Ten and finally breakthrough back into the College Football Playoff after a way-too-long absence.

What are some of the biggest questions about this team going into a training camp that gets underway on Friday? We take a look at a few of them here on the eve of Day’s first camp as the head coach of the Buckeyes.

With apologies to Ryan Day and the staff, there is little doubt that Justin Fields will be trotting out with the offense for the first offensive series of the year against Florida Atlantic. We understand the messaging that ‘nothing is given, everything is earned’ and that Fields still needs to reach out and earn the starting role.

That’s going to happen during training camp.

Who is going to emerge as the No. 2 quarterback?

Chris Chugunov would appear to be the next man up at the start of camp based on his time within the Ohio State program in 2018 and experience at West Virginia, limited as it may be. Gunnar Hoak is in his first year with the Buckeyes and did not even have the benefit of a spring practice in Columbus to start to learn the program. With the Kentucky Wildcats, Hoak attempted 26 passes and completed 13 of them, throwing for 167 yards and two touchdowns.

On the other side, that was 26 more pass attempts than Chugunov had last season, playing in one game and being relegated to handing the ball off when Haskins had to leave the field due for a play.

To say that the Buckeyes don’t have much in the way of experienced depth behind Fields, a quarterback who is limited in his own experience, would be an understatement. But it would not be entirely different if Tate Martell and Matthew Baldwin were both still part of the program. Martell entered games really as just a red zone change of pace quarterback, but did attempt 28 passes in late-game action when outcomes were already well decided. Baldwin did not see the field last season coming off of a knee injury that led to him taking a redshirt.

The difference is, fans were used to the idea that one or both of those quarterbacks could be the next man up whereas Chugunov and Hoak were never really in the plans 365 days ago.

Someone is going to have to step up and seize that No. 2 role behind Fields and it is safe to say that the Buckeyes will need to count on one of those quarterbacks to make some plays in 2019 if the team wants to accomplish all of its goals.

The publications all state that the Buckeyes lost four starters on the offensive line, and they are not wrong in that statement. Most teams that lose four starters on the line may have two players on the roster that have starting experience, that lone returning starter and maybe one other player who had to step in for a spot start due to injury or who at least has seen 100-plus snaps during his career with fill-in duty.

The Buckeyes are in much better shape than that. They return Thayer Munford, the lone returning starter from the 2018 line and as long as he remains healthy, a top-end offensive tackle to lock down the left side.

Couple that with Jonah Jackson, a Rutgers transfer, who will come in and lock down one of the offensive guard positions, likely left guard, as a former all-Big Ten level performer. That gives Ohio State two returning starters right there, granted one started at a league foe. Add to the mix Wyatt Davis, who has a couple of career starts of his own when he had to step in for an injured Demetrius Knox during the B1G Championship Game and the Rose Bowl. Also factor in the potential of Branden Bowen either finding his way to the right tackle position or truly being that sixth man with both tackle and guard experience, starting at guard in the 2017 season before a broken leg shut down Bowen’s career to date.

Now the Buckeyes are looking at having three-plus players with starting experience and the task of replacing an offensive line is not as daunting.

Yes, the team has to break in a new center with Josh Myers, but the reports have been glowing for how Myers has looked and responded.

Then there is right tackle, the real question mark of the training camp. Will Bowen and his experience lock down that position or will it be former five-star Nicholas Petit-Frere that rises up and takes the spot in a youth movement.

The Buckeyes don’t have a lot of time to try variation after variation of the line when it is important for the line to get settled and work as one unit. But most observers will be curious to see what the line looks like as the offense moves back to more of a balanced attack and the Buckeyes employ a more mobile quarterback in Fields and will need the line to be able to protect him as he tries to extend plays with both his arm and his legs, especially with not much of a safety net behind him on the depth chart.

Ohio State’s linebackers were in the crosshairs of the fans last season as many felt that some of the team’s shortcomings on defense were exacerbated by inconsistent play from that unit.

Let’s not forget, the team lost Tuf Borland in the spring to an Achilles injury and there was a fear that he might be lost for the season. He bounced back after six months, something that is almost unheard of but did not appear to play the same way he did just a year before.

Pete Werner had 58 tackles for the Buckeyes but sometimes struggled to shed blocks and got taken out of plays while Malik Harrison was tied for the team lead with 81 tackles.

Baron Browning came into the program as a five-star and has just not broken through yet, but has that been scheme slowing him down or development or something else?

Then there is the talented linebacker class of Teradja Mitchell, Dallas Gant and K’Vaughan Pope. They have been waiting in the wings and could really make a push this training camp for playing time under the watchful eyes of Al Washington, Greg Mattison and Jeff Hafley, all coaches who were not here a year before and will be looking at the defense with fresh eyes.

Plus there is the scheme change that will see the Buckeyes employing a ‘bullet’ position as well, a hybrid strong safety/linebacker type, a role that fits perfectly for Brendon White but others could push him, as well.

Who are the right pieces? The Buckeyes have rolled players at cornerback before, could that happen as well at linebacker this year if there are enough players who need to get on the field? It will be interesting to see who works with the first team, especially with a player like Mitchell really pushing hard to find the field in more than just special team duties.

We could go through position group after position group and come up with questions about each of them but all eyes are going to be on Day. Last year coming out of Big Ten Media Day, there were all sorts of questions about the state of the Buckeyes and what might happen in terms of Meyer and how that might affect the team.

None of that is there now, there is no controversy (knock on wood) going into camp and this is Day’s team. This is his team now, this is his staff now. How is this new staff going to come together? With five new coaches that were not part of the team last year, will they have different ideas of who needs to see more playing time with no direct history to 2018 in Columbus?

Honestly the position battles will all sort themselves out but the most interesting study really may come down to Ohio State’s 40-year-old head coach and how he adapts to this new role as the season is just a little bit more than a month away.

BuckeyeGrove will be at Friday’s camp opening with full coverage of day one of Training Camp 2019. You don’t want to miss it.