COLUMBUS, Ohio — C.J. Stroud was not invisible Saturday night. He just wasn’t in his usual role.
The Ohio State redshirt freshman quarterback ran onto the field with the rest of the room, participating in the pregame stretches like he normally would.
But when the quarterbacks began their pregame throwing routine, Stroud stepped to the sideline. He served as the go-between to set up another play for freshman Quinn Ewers, freshman Kyle McCord and redshirt freshman Jack Miller III, getting the ball to the assistant running the drill, but he wasn’t going to risk the throw, underhanding the ball or using his left arm to get it back for the next set.
After a week without throwing, Stroud was never going to risk it.
As for McCord, his Saturday routine changed dramatically.
He was first in line, taking the keys of head coach Ryan Day’s car with TreVeyon Henderson to his left and flanked by Chris Olave and Jaxon Smith-Njigba on his right and Garrett Wilson on his left.
And Stroud was there with him.
As Ohio State took the field, the redshirt freshman quarterback went with McCord to the north end zone, placed his arm around the freshman and began to pray. Rising out of the kneel in the end-zone turf, the time came: McCord officially took over the Ohio State offense, at least for this particular Saturday night.
But it didn’t come to McCord right away.
After handing the ball off to Henderson for an 11-yard gain, he tried to do it himself: missing Wilson to the right, throwing behind Olave on the bubble screen, overshooting Smith-Njigba on the post to the right.
Day had been there before. He was a quarterback once. He’d been behind the same wheel. His job was to try and calm his freshman down.
“Take a deep breath,’” Day remembers telling McCord. “‘Find the speed of the game. Trust your eyes, trust your reads. You did a lot of preparation to get here.’
“Then I thought he settled down a bit.”
One shovel pass changed the game for McCord: motioning Smith-Njigba across the middle of the field and pushing the ball into the sophomore’s hands and letting him do the rest, racing across the field for a 22-yard gain.
The confidence was there. And McCord started to build, completing 13 of his next 15 passes for 319 yards, throwing touchdown passes to Smith-Njigba and Olave.
“I think he does a very good job preparing, excellent job. He puts a lot of work into this thing,” Day said. “It’s the first time he’s ever played in a college football game, he’s a true freshman, so I think the game is moving pretty fast for him early on. But he was working hyperspeed I think.”
McCord began to air it out a bit, using a 57-yard pass play to Wilson in the first quarter to set up a 3-yard touchdown run by freshman running back TreVeyon Henderson, or an 85-yard pass to freshman Emeka Egbuka to set up Master Teague for the 2-yard score.
McCord was able to showcase that balance that Day had been searching for, matching 385 passing yards with 237 yards on the ground, with running backs averaging 8.2 yards on the ground with five touchdowns.
But it wasn’t all success for McCord, throwing his first interception in Ohio State’s first drive of the second half.
However, it wasn’t about what McCord did. It was how he carried himself.
Smith-Njigba and sophomore Paris Johnson Jr. raved about the freshman, noticing his confidence, his demeanor. Once he got comfortable, he exuded the confidence necessary to lead the Ohio State offense.
As Miller warmed up midway through the third quarter, McCord could hand off the keys confident he did his job, that he stepped up to the challenge Day gave him.
And while the head coach doesn’t know what may come next for McCord, whether it’s another start on the road against Rutgers or back behind a healthy Stroud, he knows what he has.
Rather, he has a sense of what he has. He can picture what it’s like to have a freshman drive his offense.
“You don’t know until you actually play and now we have some things we can build on and grow from,” Day said.
