Ohio State football: OSU excited for visit from The Mighty Quinn

The Ohio State football team will be bringing in the number one player in the class of 2022 in June.

The excitement is building. You can feel it. It’s almost palpable. Every website I visit is talking about it. Columbus is preparing for a celebrity visit. The Mighty Quinn will be appearing at Ohio State on consecutive weekends in June.

Quinn Ewers isn’t an actor, reality tv star, or rock star, although he certainly has rock star hair. He’s a senior-to-be at Southlake Carroll High School in Texas. Ewers isn’t just the number one quarterback in the 2022 recruiting class, he’s the number one PLAYER in the 2022 recruiting class…and he’s committed to the Buckeyes. That’s more than enough to qualify as a celebrity to Ohio State fans. He’s visiting the school on the weekends of June 4th and 11th.

I remember the hype surrounding Terrelle Pryor when he signed with the Buckeyes. But, Pryor was more athlete than quarterback. I’ve not seen this type of excitement for an Ohio State quarterback recruit since Art Schlichter in the late ’70s.

Yes, I know Schlichter’s adult life has been a prison-sentence-riddled dumpster fire, but the guy is the best high school quarterback I’ve ever seen. I saw Schlichter play in the 1978 North-South All-Star game in Canton. Playing for the South all-stars he toyed with the heavily favored North and led his team to an easy 27-0 win. If Ewers is anything like the Schlichter I saw, Buckeye fans are in for a treat.

What are the Buckeyes getting in Ewers? He’s 6’3”, 205 pounds and has a gun for an arm. When he attended one of the regional prospect-type camps in April, he showed he can make all types of throws from the pocket or on the run. A core injury last fall prevented him from really stepping into his throws (his coach said he played at about fifty percent), but there was no hint of that at this camp.

All reports say he was impressive firing darts at receivers. As a sophomore, he completed 74% of his passes. That’s phenomenal for any level, much less high school. That number dropped a bit last year because of the injury, but make no mistake, Ewers is very accurate.

He also proved his toughness by playing through that injury and leading his team to the state championship game. 247 Sports called him the best junior quarterback prospect they’ve seen since Trevor Lawrence. The Buckeyes are getting themselves an elite talent.

Ewers originally committed to Texas in mid-August of last year but changed his mind in late October. The Buckeyes became the clear and immediate favorite to land him. A few weeks later he announced his commitment to the Ohio State football program.

When Alabama offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian took over as the head coach of Texas in early January, many who cover that program speculated he’d probably be able to flip Ewers back to the Longhorns. Here we are nearly five months later and Ewers is still intending to be a Buckeye. According to an article from 247 Sports, his dad says the commitment is solid and other coaches have gotten the message as the phone calls have slowed to a trickle.

Ewers, who has bleach blonde hair (it’s a tradition among the players at his high school) worn at kind of a hockey player flow length, is visiting Ryan Day and the Buckeye program on his own next weekend. He returns the following weekend accompanying his favorite receiver, Landon Samson. If you’re concerned about Ewers being insufferably arrogant, you can relax. He doesn’t have much of a social media presence and his coach describes him as a boring kid who likes to hunt and fish.

There is a line from a Bob Dylan song that goes, “You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn.” Buckeye fans are hoping this proves true and the boring kid from Texas leads our favorite college football team to multiple championships.