Ohio State Football: All eyes on Miller, Stroud as spring ball begins
The Ohio State football team started spring practices yesterday. All eyes were on the two freshmen quarterbacks.
When the Scarlet and Gray start practices in early March, you know spring is right around the corner. The Ohio State football team took to the field at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center yesterday for the opening of 2020 spring ball practices.
While there are many position battles up for grabs this spring and into training camp, the focus will be on the two freshman quarterbacks, Jack Miller and CJ Stroud, who are battling it out with senior-transfer Gunnar Hoak for the backup quarterback job.
Miller and Stroud were early enrollees to Ohio State’s football program back in January and have positioned themselves to see reps for this football team next season. And obviously if one is clearly better than the other that would give him a leg up on the starting position in 2021 assuming Justin Fields leaves for the NFL.
This is a crucial time in Miller and Stroud’s development as they need to be able to learn and understand the playbook more than anything. Both saw reps in yesterdays practice and looked like they had an understanding of what they were doing, even though both quarterbacks had moments where the looked like true freshmen, according to Cleveland.com.
Head coach Ryan Day anticipates a close battle for the No.2 quarterback spot saying this, via Eleven Warriors:
"“We’ll kind of let those guys compete for that backup role,” Day said. “Who knows what happens in the spring. My guess is those guys will just keep working at it, and the competition will go into the preseason.”"
So as we continue through these practices it may be hard for one to the quarterbacks to get an edge over the others unless one of them is clearly playing at a high level. With coach Day in no hurry to name the backup, expect this competition to go right up to the first game of the season, and even then we may not know until its time for the second quarterback to take the field.