Ohio State football: How much read-option will they use?

Even though they had Justin Fields for two years, the Ohio State football team didn’t run too much read-option. Will that change now that they have quarterback depth?

A staple of the Ohio State football team’s offense under Urban Meyer was the read-option. He would love to let his quarterback run that play and make the decision. They even ran that when Dwayne Haskins was the QB and Ryan Day was the offensive coordinator.

Under Day, that play hasn’t been a staple of the offense. In fact, it has been rarely used. Fields wouldn’t run that play more than five or six times a game, if that. It wasn’t that Fields didn’t have the ability to do that, in fact he’s the fastest QB the Buckeyes have had since Braxton Miller, they just wanted to keep him healthy.

In all honesty, the Buckeyes couldn’t afford to let Fields get hurt. That was especially true in 2019. Last year, they ran Fields a little bit more because they had C.J. Stroud and Jack Miller behind him. Now you add Kyle McCord to the mix and you have three good quarterbacks on your roster.

All three of these guys can run the read-option. McCord is no doubt the slowest of the three, but he is still quicker than he looks. No matter who the quarterback ends up being this Fall, all three of them can run that play. That’s good because I think Day would like to use it more.

I still wouldn’t expect them to run it more than 10 times a game. Day likes to use a more NFL-style offense. Those offenses typically don’t utilize the read-option that much. They typically use more RPO’s. The Buckeyes will definitely utilize both a lot in 2021.

The bottom line is that the Buckeyes won’t be as afraid to run the quarterback more this season. That should mean more read-options too.